That's All for Now, Folks!

I apologize for the formatting difficulties and weirdness in the blog... I also hope that my daily entries are understandable! :)

Saturday, July 9

Today was our shopping day. We got to sleep in and then we headed to the mall in downtown Windhoek. Along with the stores inside and outside the mall, there are a few “markets” along the walkways and right down the street. These markets are really just artists selling their things on tables on the ground, but a lot of their things are very good. A lot of wood carvings, jewelry, baskets, and bowls. All of these things are made out of very interesting things too! I got a pair of earrings made out of recycled paper and ostrich egg, and bracelets made out of some sort of bone or ivory or white stone. I also got a few other things to give to friends and supporters. After a delicious lunch at Mugg &Bean, we finished up our shopping at one other little market and then came back to Stephan and Beverley’s. We played some Yahtzee, ate dinner, and a few others watched a movie. While today was very relaxing a nice, I wish we were starting our long journey home tomorrow. After church tomorrow, we are doing more shopping which we don’t really need. I guess I am just ready to head home. But soon, we will be home and I can’t wait. I miss my family a lot and my own bed. I have had an absolutely wonderful time on this trip, and words can’t even describe how I feel about this trip.

Friday, July 8

Today we went to the Okapuka Game Reserve. Words can't even begin to explain how amazing it was to see all of the animals and the beauty in the game park. I will upload pictures so that this can hopefully help you see what I saw.

Thursday, July 7

Today we went to Dune 7! I woke up this morning, not feeling well again, so I was not sure if I would travel to the dunes with the team or not, but I didn’t want my mom to miss anything again by staying back with me, so we went. The dune buggy rides were first, so I made a little bed out of the back seat in the van, enjoyed the sun, and got a good start on my new book, “Bite of the Mango.” The rides lasted about an hour and when everyone got back, they were tired, hot, and a little unhappy with the rides because everyone had to travel at one speed that was too fast for some and too slow for others. I was still not feeling great, but it didn’t seem like I missed much on the rides. Then we drove over to the dune, had lunch, and people started to hike. Of the 19 people that were with us (our team of 15 minus Joyce, and the Banda family), 16 attempted to climb. Sandi, Karen, and I were the only ones who didn’t try. Karen and I because we weren’t feeling well, and Sandi didn’t because she didn’t want to. Lynda was the first to the top, and Tresford was last, but only because he left a lot later than everyone else. Julie, mom, and Joshua started up and couldn’t finish because it was too hot outside, which I could understand because it was very, very hot. Yeshua went up part way and came down about 3 times, but after we gave him some water and he changed his pants (he was wearing jeans, which are heavy and hot) he started on his way with his dad, and they both made it. This was so much fun, and I got some great pictures. I was a little bummed that I couldn’t go on the buggy rides, but not so much when it came to the climb because it was just way too hot. After we finished climbing and everyone emptied out their pockets, socks, and shoes of the sand, we headed back. When we got back to the Beach House, we had to pack up our things because the next day we were heading to Windhoek to stay with Pastor Stephan.

Wednesday, July 6

Last night I was given the choice to go with the men back to Arundis, or stay with the women and go to the hospital today. This was a tough choice because I wanted to go back to Arundis and see the children because I hadn't gotten to the day before, but I would have nothing to do at Tresford and Fabiola's until about 1:30 or 2pm. However, if I stayed with the women and did hospital visits, I wouldn't get to see any of the kids or Pearl again. As I lay in bed this morning, trying to decide what to do, I struggled because I had pros and cons for both options. I finally decided to stay with the women because I was still feeling weak and tired, and I was running late because the men were leaving at 8am and the women weren't leaving until 10am. However, at about 9:45am, I was laying in bed when Carol came into my room and said "Rachel, I need you. We have a special visitor." I was very curious and got up, even though I still wasn't feeling 100%. When I walked toward the door, Carol told me that she has met this woman on the beach and that she was deaf, so she brought her home because she knew I knew some sign language. How crazy is that?! Carol called it a "divine appointment." Anyways, I signed with the woman, asking her name and her baby's name, if she was a Christian, and what her story was. While we both signed, I know American Sign Language and her sign language was different - maybe Afrikaans sign language? We signed for a bit while mom made her a big bag of food and Carol praised God for this opportunity. The woman's name is Melania, and she was trying to get money to travel to see her parents. We gave her a little money, but not a lot. It was hard though because when we went to ride with Joyce and Fabiola to downtown Swakop to shop; Joyce mentioned how the woman's story was likely not true. I wanted so badly to believe Melania in that she was just trying to get to where her parents are.  Any who, after we finished with Melania, we went to downtown Swakop to shop. We started at the wood carver's market and just walked around town, going in and out of shops that looked interesting. I was feeling a lot better today, but I was still very tired so I often had to sit down and rest for a few minutes. While in Swakopmund, we had lunch at The Village Cafe. It was delicious! Sandi, mom, Carol, and Julie all got baked potatoes covered in cream sauce with chicken, mushrooms, and cheese. Mystomach couldn't quite handle that, so I got toast and scrambled eggs, which were very good. After having lunch at the cafe, we wandered around for a bit more. We were supposed to catch a taxi and be back at the Finnish House at 2:30 for hospital visits. But while we were shooing, we saw Fabiola's truck, so we waited by it so we wouldn't have to pay for a taxi (not that they're expensive - about $1 US dollar from where we were to where we were staying). But when Fabiola, Joyce, and Lynda returned (they were shopping for Fabiola’s new fridge, some dishes, etc) they said they still had a lot to do so they said maybe we will do the hospital ministry later, maybe not. As bad as we felt, we were relieved to have more shopping time and more down time, since we hadn't had hardly any. For dinner we had delicious pizza - finally! But I overate a bit and then despite the fact that I was feeling better during the day, I felt bad again the next day.

Tuesday, July 5

Not much to write about today... the boy's HC is going on right now but I am at the Beach House, very sick.

Monday, July 4

Happy Independence Day! Woo! Today we had the first day of HC – for the girls. We headed out at our normal time, although I’m not sure why. We headed straight for the town hall to set up for HC and then went back to Tresford and Fabiola’s house, where we sorted through all the remaining junk we had. This included decorations from WOV and TOV, toiletries, toys, and clothes. When we leave, all of these supplies stay with Fabiola so she can continue to give them away. We finished all this around 11, and we weren’t eating until 12, so I took some time to catch up on a little reading. At 12 we went to the restaurant and enjoyed some baked ziti, which was wonderful! Julie has been such a great cook while we have been here. After lunch, we went to the town hall to do last minute prayers and introductions to the helpers Fabiola recruited. When we opened the doors, there were already a lot of girls outside. Joyce let in girls 10 at a time. Each girl got a ticket, a peanut butter and jam sandwich, and a piece of candy. Beauty was the first girl in, which I loved! We seated the girls based on their height, with the shortest in the front and the tallest in the back. When the program started, Joyce first said a prayer over all the girls. Then we sang a song, and all of the puppeteers – including myself – went behind the makeshift curtain/cover thing we had made. Pearl was “Angie,” and I was “Paul.” We talked about what it meant to be undignified for God, and then we sang the song. Caleb, Trey, Joshua, and Yeshua helped with the smaller puppets that came up and sang and danced after the song started. After the puppet show, things proceeded normally. We had the drama, sang more songs, made the bracelets, and Fabiola asked how many of the kids wanted to accept Jesus into their heart. The amount of girls that raised their hands was overwhelming. We had 382 girls in attendance and at least 2/3, if not more, raised their hands. After this, we did the prize drawing. I was amazed at how loud the girls were over the Barbie dolls! They absolutely loved them! While only a few girls got prizes, all the girls were good sports. When the prize drawing was over, the girls got a wordless book to remind them about the colors of the bracelet, a certificate saying they memorized John 3:16, and a package of cookies. We tidied up and headed home, but we were a little bit later than normal because the HC didn’t end until 5, and we normally leave at 4. It was definitely worth it though! We got back exhausted and smelly, but had a wonderful time.

Sunday, July 3

Today we went to Pastor Tresford’s church. When we went to Pastor Stephan’s church last week, I thought the service was long. But today’s service was long – about 2 ½ hours. Maybe services in Namibia are just long, or maybe services in America are short? I don’t know. After service, we went back to Tresford and Fabiola’s, changed our clothes, and had lung. We then went back to the town hall and started preparing the dresses, hats, cookies, and juice for the children we had invited. We told all the children who were at the service that morning to come back at 2pm with their ticket and they would get a special surprise. During the service that morning, Fabiola, Don, Hank, Caleb, and Trey went to Walvis Bay (about a 90 minute drive from Arundis) to pick up the Samaritan’s Purse shoeboxes. At 2pm, when the children started showing up, we escorted them to a chair and gave them cookies and juice. Once all the children were seated, all the boys got to choose a knitted hat and all the girls got a drawstring dress that the Senior Saints made. After each child got a dress or hat, we also distributed the gift boxes. Each child got a box according to their gender and age. The boxes were filled with candy, toys, toiletries, and whatever the person making the box wanted to fill it with. All the kids were so excited! It was loads of fun to see the kids open up their boxes and see all their new toys – even Sarah, who is less than 2 years old. She got a bucket hat and sunglasses, which I put on her because they were so adorable. The kids headed home with their boxes and new garb in tote, and we headed home with dirty jeans and tired bodies.

Saturday, July 3

Today we had the TOV conference! The day started off great, with delicious eggs made by Julie for breakfast and a few rounds of Uno in the car with the boys got me awake and ready for the day. Because we set up a majority of the things yesterday, we didn’t have quite as much work today. We set out the food and I fixed the decorations. The girls started showing up around 9:15, even though they couldn’t come in until 9:30. They were just so excited to be there! We started off the same as yesterday – escorting the girls to their seats and serving them, but just juice today. Joyce started off with a prayer and a prize drawing, and then we got down to business. Julie was the first to speak, and she talked about the girls’ value and worth in God’s eyes. She did such a wonderful job! Then it was my turn to talk about peer pressure, temptation, and how to overcome these. I was a little nervous because I haven’t faced too many situations involving peer pressure, so I lacked examples and was worried that the girls would struggle relating to what I was saying. However, they all seemed to pay attention and were very interactive when I asked them questions. They seemed receptive, and I hope they were because what I was talking about was extremely important. After my talk, we did more prize drawings, sang some songs, and served the girls some fruit. Lynda, mom, and Fabiola also spoke. Fabiola and Joyce did a very interesting activity where the girls wrote down their sins on a note card. They wrote small sins and big sins, such as lying, stealing, cheating, gossiping, etc. Many even wrote about how they had already sex – one had already had a baby, and one was pregnant. It was hard to see so many girls write about their sex before marriage, because they didn’t understand how much a treasure it is. After girls wrote down their sins, they pinned the cards to a large wood cross at the front of the room. This symbolized that they were giving up their sins and God was going to forgive them. After this, Fabiola did an alter call and many girls accepted Christ for the first time. Then Karen spoke about the importance of purity and read the girls the purity vow they could take. I was so excited at how many girls stood up to sign this vow! I pray for them, that they would have the strength and willpower to remain pure until marriage, as they vowed to do so. When this was all done and the girls had received their gift bags, we headed down to the restaurant for lunch. Mom and I sat with two girls named Maisie and Diana. Maisie was 12 and Diana was 16. Maisie was more shy, and didn’t talk much but Diana told us her story. Her mom died in 2003 during childbirth of twins. About a year later, Diana’s dad gave up all the children to foster care/living with family and moved to Swakop. Diana now lives with two couples that adopt children and she has 9 other “siblings.” After we finished lunch, the girls were all very eager to have their pictures taken, so we got lots of pictures! We then headed back to Tresford and Fabiola’s to unload, and then we came home. Our team walked to the grocery store and mom and I bought some diet coke, cereal, and hot chocolate. We still have a lot of snacks left, so we didn’t really need to buy a lot of food. After dinner, we played a few rounds of Yahtzee and I am now in bed. Goodnight!

Friday, July 1

Today we had the WOV conference! We had to wake up 30 minutes earlier than normal, at 5:30. We left for Arundis at 7:15, and stopped to pick up Arvan. After dropping him off at Tresford and Fabiola’s, we headed straight for the town hall to set up for the conference. I was put in charge of decorations, which was loads of fun! Except I didn’t have any tape, so I started off using band-aids as tape, to hold up the floral strings to the front of the stage. Don then gave me some medical tape, which was incredibly helpful and I actually got the strands to stay. I wrapped some plastic flowers around the paper strands and set some other plastic flowers on the speakers and music equipment. After everything was set up, Joyce gave everyone jobs for when the women started arriving. Mom, Pearl, Katherine, and I were asked to serve the women hot water for tea or coffee after they were escorted to their seats by a few other team members. We started off with a prize drawing, just to break the ice. After giving away a few purses, we sang a song and Joyce talked for a bit. Fabiola introduced everyone from our team, and then Julie and Sandi shared their testimonies. We served the women juice and fruit after they finished their tea or coffee and cookies. We sang another song, Pastor Stephan came and spoke to the women, gave an alter call, and almost every woman went to the front to accept Jesus as their Savior! Praise the Lord! We then sang and danced to the song, “Undignified,” which the women loved. We all had so much fun dancing like crazy and clapping and singing as loud as we could. After Joyce gave away the last of the purses, we gave each woman the gift bags we had put together. Joyce asked the women not to open their bags until she said so, and when they opened their bags, they literally squealed with excitement! They were all so excited for the scarves – many of them put the scarf on right away. After they looked through their bags, we walked to the restaurant for lunch. The women at the restaurant prepared a delicious meal of chicken, rice, vegetables, and potato salad. After eating all of my chicken and most of my potato salad, I was so full. We got take away boxes and I gave the remainder of my rice and vegetables to the women I was sitting with. One woman even took what I left of my chicken, which was just skin, fat, and bone. They are all so hungry that they will eat almost everything – this point was proven when we gave the women their food staples bag… A few women were so happy that they clapped and nearly danced out of their seats. It’s amazing how excited the women were about this small bag. Joyce said this bag of food would probably last them about a week and a half of feeding their families. After lunch with the women, we cleaned up the town hall from WOV and set up for TOV, which required pretty much the same stuff. When we finished setting up, we went back to Tresford and Fabiola’s. Pastor Stephan was preaching at an evening outreach at 6pm, but it was only 3pm by the time we were back at Tresford’s. Hank and Joyce gave us he option to go home and stay home, or stay the whole evening – through the service. Most people chose to go home, but Ken, Don, Chris, and Hank stayed. When we got home, we finished preparing for tomorrow, and then went back to the Beach House. I read for a bit, and then finished my speech for tomorrow at TOV. We had some dinner, and I played a few rounds of Uno with the boys. Then we headed off to sleep!

Wednesday, June 29

After a solid night’s sleep, we headed off to Tresford and Fabiola’s. We stopped to pick up Arvan, who was going to help with the cabinets at Tresford’s. When we arrived, we started by preparing bags for today’s home visits. I got to sit with Pearl and talk about the puppet show, drama/skit, and my talk for TOV. We discussed my idea of doing the song, “Undignified” with the puppets and doing a bit of dialogue prior to the song. My puppet is a boy named Paul, and hers a girl named Angie. We practiced a few times and then moved on to the drama, which I was worried about because I was clueless when it came to ideas. However, Pearl had a great idea to do a skit with a girl who has a big red paper heart. She starts off with this hear, and some women will represent sins, for which the girl will trade her hear. By the end of the sins, her heart will be wrinkled and torn. Jesus will come along and offer her a new hear, but she will deny because her heart hurts too much. Jesus will use the verse John 3:16 to convince the girl, who will agree. Jesus will then give her a larger, brand new red heart and she will deny all other sins. We will be practicing this skit tomorrow morning, before visiting the schools. After this, we talked about peer pressure and the things teens are faced with, especially in Arunids. Pearl gave me a few pointers, and I am feeling much more confident about my talk for the TOV conference. Carol, my mom, and I then went on our first home visit to see Caroline, who has been on crutches for about 30 years. In 1980, Caroline was in a car accident that broke her leg. We aren’t sure if her surgery was bad or what, but Caroline’s pain has never decreased and she is unable to put any weight on her leg. We prayed for Caroline, gave her family food and clothing, and then left. After picking up the rest of the team members, we went back to Tresford and Fabiola’s for a little while. We wanted to see Johanna, but we could only see her between 1 and 2, when her mom would be home. So after dropping the rest of the team off for lunch, we went to Johanna’s house. While there, we learned that she had tuberculosis at a young age, and the treatment she received caused her to lose most of her hearing. She also has one hearing aid, but it doesn’t work at all. Fortunately, my mom was able to find her old hearing aid that the doctor cleaned up so she could give it to Johanna. When my mom fitted the aid to Johanna’s ear and switched it on, we could see instantly that Johanna’s hearing improved and she couldn’t stop smiling. As my mom spoke with Johanna, I was able to speak with her mom about how frustrating it can be to live with someone who is hard of hearing. Johanna’s mm them opened up to me and told me how frustrated she gets when Johanna can’t hear her. Because I face this same situation with my mom, I was able to explain to this woman that God made Johanna with this feature for a reason, and that she is beautiful in His eyes. I explained that this is a serious test of patience, as almost every day is. But god has plans for both Johanna and her mom, and will use Johanna’s hard of hearing to show His plans for them. As Carol presented the Gospel to Johanna, she began to cry and accepted Jesus as her savior. We were so excited! She was especially emotional when Carol spoke about how God forgives our sins, mistakes, and past, which we later learned from Fabiola, was because she was recently tested HIV positive. After a lunch of power bars, mom and Carol went on to another home visit while I stayed at Tresford and Fabiola’s to play with the kids. I had so much fun with the kids, and was sad to go. I had dinner of toast and apples, and am now getting ready to play some Phase 10 with mom.

Tuesday, June 28

Today we had our first home visits! Well, first we woke up and got ready, and Julie made us a wonderful breakfast of eggs and I made the toast. Anyways, we went on our way and when we got to Tresford and Fabiola’s, we finished sorting, made the food staple bags, and the WOV/TOV gift bags. In the food staple bags, we put some flour, soup, tea, wheat, beans, peas, noodles, sugar, candy, and cookies. We put together about 45 of these bags, and then went to store them in the closet. However, when I opened up the closet to pile in some food bags, a large spider crawled across the wall, and well, I shouted. Joyce came running, and when I showed her the spider, she ran to get the Doom. When she came back and began to spray the spider, he crawled into the other closet that is adjacent to the first closet. The bad part of this was that the second closet had bags of blankets in it that we needed for our home visits. We slowly pulled out each bag, hoping the spider wasn’t hiding in it. But the spider was still inside the closet, and after being sprayed a few more times, he died and ended up flushed down the toilet. After we finished storing the food bags, we did the WOV prizes, which were purses a friend of Joyce’s made out of placemats. We put a scarf, a sewing kit, and some sort of jewelry in each purse. Then we did the TOV prizes, which were a few jewelry boxes with earrings in them, purses with hair ties and sewing kits, and a bag with school supplies. When we finished prizes, Fabiola gave us our home visit assignments and we gathered the clothes, toiletries, toys, and other supplies based on the needs of the family. I visited two homes with my mom, Carol, Fabiola, and her daughter Pearl. We first visited Robert, his mother Oligen, and her daughter. Robert is deaf, blind, and paralyzed. He can’t talk or communicate and his mom takes care of him, and has for the past 17 years. Robert is now 31 and was accidentally shot in the throat/neck area when he was 14. His parents had alcohol problems and when they realized how much care Robert would need, Oligen chose between her husband – which included the alcohol issues – and Robert. Carol did and amazing job telling the story of Jesus via touch, because this is the only sense he can still use. While his mom said he can’t hear, Carol asked Pearl to translate anyways. I choked up quite a bit when Carol did this story, because she is wonderful and had such patience and faith that somehow Robert would understand. We prayed over Robert and his mother, to whom we provided clothes, food, and toiletries for the whole family. After we left this house, we went to visit Johanna, but she wasn’t home and neither was her sister, Helvi. Her brother Joseph was home and he accepted his clothes and toiletries and asked us to come speak with his mom and sisters tomorrow. Johanna is hard of hearing, and my mom found one of her old hearing aids and was able to have her ear doctor clean it up and provide her with the things she would need to make the hearing aid work. My mom was very excited and hoped that this aid would be able to help Johanna hear better than she does now.

After we finished our home visits, we went back to Tresford and Fabiola’s, and all the kids were still playing outside. I was excited because I had thought about staying behind from home visits so I could play with the kids, but I didn’t so I was glad to still have the chance. Playing with the kids in TONS of fun, and I really enjoyed it! I just need to start working the Gospel into our play, so I can speak with the children about God. At a little after 4, we headed back and made it to the Beach House in time to walk the beach, take some pictures, and enjoy the sunset. After having dinner and playing a few rounds of Yahtzee, we decided to call it a night.

Monday, June 27

We woke up today, got ready, and started off towards Arundis. The drive from Swakopmund to Arundis is about 40 minutes, on a good day. When we arrived in Arundis, we were at Pastor Tresford and Fabiola Banda's house, where we unloaded all of our supplies. The men jumped right in on the work projects, which included the remodel of the kitchen and painting the house, while the women started sorting through all of the ministry supplies. Each team member had brought with them a ministry bag - each contained 50 pounds worth of supplies that we would use for the trip. Dresses, hats, plates, flowers, and other things that would be used for home visits, Holiday Club, TOV, and WOV, along with a few other things.The women spent basically all day sorting, and the men spent all day working. We said goodbye to the Banda family around 4pm, and headed back to Swakop. We ate our dinner, said our goodnights, and turned the lights out, in hopes of a good night's rest. Because of the time change and jetlag, this was a little difficult, but eventually it was done.

Sunday, June 26

This is the first day that I could find my notes from. The days before this were just travel days, so I can easily summarize those. On Thursday, June 23, we flew overnight from Seattle to New York. This flight is about 6 hours long, and I struggled to sleep. After this, we had a 5 hour layover in JFK, and then we left for Johannesburg, South Africa. This flight is about 16 hours, and I managed to sleep a bit. We had a few hours in the Joburg airport before we flew to Windhoek, Namibia. This flight is only about 2 hours long. We were picked up at the airport by Pastor Stephan Nell and Hank and Joyce. It was great to see their faces! For the first night (Saturday, June 25 - Sunday, June 26), we stayed at the Otjari House. This is a house that is used mainly for missionaries who are staying in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia.
Anyways, on Sunday morning we woke up early, showered, and got ready for church. We had to keep our things packed, since we were only staying in this house for one night. We then prepared to hop into the van to travel a short drive to Pastor Stephan's church in Khomasdal. We had to pile our whole team, along with ALL of our bags - suitcases, purses, and carryon bags. Let's just say I ended up sitting cross legged with two suitcases to my left and one in front of me... I couldn't even see my mom, who was sitting across the aisle from me. After we piled in, uncomfortably, we headed off to Pastor Stephan's church, which was only about 10 minutes away. We sang "Happy Birthday" to Hank in the van, since today is his 70th birthday. When we got to KCC, Khomas Community Church, we met up with Stephan and piled out of the van. We went inside and met his wife, Beverly, and found out seats. We also got to meet Desmond, who was worked with this team in the past. The service started off with a little worship, and some introductions. Pastor Stephan then showed a slideshow of pictures of our team, Hank, Joyce, their daughters, and children in Namibia accepting Jesus. Stephan spoke a bit about Hank and the lives he has changed here in Namibia, and basically, how awesome he is. There was a prayer for Hank – for safety, good health, and strength, and then another round of “Happy Birthday.” The church service was long – about 3 hours. But it was very good! After church, we mingled with the people outside for a bit, then hopped in the van and rode for about 3 ½ hours to Swakopmund, where we found our houses. Sandi, Carol, Julie, mom, and myself were in the Beach House, while the rest of the team was in the Finnish House. We unpacked, made ourselves at home, enjoyed the view, and got settled in for the night.

Daily Updates

As I look back on the things I wrote for each day, I love rereading all the information. However, I seem to have misplaced my notes from the first few days, but they were only travel days. I will summarize what I can remember when I update with the information from that day. Other than this and a few days where I was too tired to journal, I have almost every day. I will now start with the daily updates!