Day 11- Houtbos

Today we got up quite early as we had women’s and men’s prayer. At the Oshoek Service Centre they hold these both on the same day. Oliver set up his cafe and made sure everyone had hot drinks ready for prayer time.

Here are a couple of paragraphs about our time this morning before we continue with the main blog. 

Women’s Prayer (By Pippa) 

Today we had woman’s prayer in Osheok, around the fire as it was so cold. We started by going around the group saying how we were feeling and how we slept. After that we sung a worship song before praying together. The bible verse we read today was Acts 9:36.

Tabitha got ill and died and they washed her body and put it upstairs. Peter was in Lydda and he came and prayed and urged Tabitha to get up and she did. 

During her life Tabitha had been a good woman and had done good works to help others. When she died many people mourned her death and were broken without her. The message of this verse was to think about our lives. Have we blessed and made significant impact on enough people with Gods love that they would be broken if we died today. The verse also reminds us to be like Tabitha in our lives. She was kind, she helped others and made clothes for the poor. This reminded us all to keep working towards helping others in our daily lives. We concluded with prayers after reflecting on this verse. 

Men’s Prayer (By Oliver) 

This morning we had an opportunity to have another Men’s prayer session while the women had their prayers inside around the stove, the men sat outside in the sun. Senzo led the the session. We had an opportunity to share how we are feeling, at this point Senzo shared some sad news that Sthobela A, a community that hands previously supported that had now graduated, has had the roof stolen in the past week - we prayed for this situation.  We then read a passage from Mark 9: 35 “He sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, "Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else." 

We were then encouraged to think about our positions in the world and our communities as well as within our families. We discussed our beliefs that God had called us all here at this time to be servants to him, and that we had put our personal lives behind us to serve God and our community in South Africa. We discussed about God being the wisdom of all things and that we should turn to him and use him as the foundation of all of our decisions. We also thought about how we should use the wisdom of others who have been put into our lives for us to learn from. 

We had a time of individual prayer and then we prayed all together for everything we had discussed and was on our hearts from this mornings prayer session.  

After women’s and men’s prayer we got ready to go out to Houtbos. It was really cold so we layered up and went to community. 

When we got there the smaller children were not in school as the primary school was being cleaned so we played with them. Oliver and Nick helped polish the Care Point floor, Pippa and Noah set about chopping the vegetables whilst Alice and Rachel played with the small children. 

We then all got the balls and bats out and played some batting games. 

Then it was time to do the morning meeting with the Care Workers where we sung and said how we were. We did this outside in the sunshine which was extra special. We then prayed for some of the prayer points and then Nick shared some words of encouragement. He shared from Matthew 5:14 about being a light of the World like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden! This felt very apt given being on top of a mountain in the sunshine! 

Some of the team then went out on Holy Home visits (see separate blogs) and some of us stayed at the Care Point (Pippa and Rachel) to play with the children. We got some bubbles and skipping ropes out and played with them for a while until the groups on the Holy Home visits came back. 

When they returned we played with the parachute until it was time for their prayers and worship before lunch! Lunch today was rice, mince and beetroot.

After lunch we got the speaker out and danced with the children as they love it. 

And after we finished dancing the children surprised us with wanting to sing and dance for us which was really nice.

As it was our last day in Houtbos we were saying goodbye when some of the care workers and children wanted photos to remember us. That was lovely. 

When we got back to the service centre we had a debrief with Virginia before settling down for the night. Oliver then produced some random portable camping shower contraption that we all then gave ago! It worked quite well! Gift shared her story over dinner and now we are looking forward to playing rage and going to sleep to be rested for our day in Osheok tomorrow. 

By Rachel