After just spending a day in the city at a giant park with restaurants, water features, and boutique shops, Monday morning woke us up to another reality in South Africa.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our first house visit was at the home of a single mom named Brenda.  She has two daughters, Samkelisiwe, aka Sam, who was is the after school program, and a 2 year old baby girl.  Brenda has Aids and was recently released from the hospital after a tough couple of days.  I wish I had the words to describe to you the experience of visiting with Brenda, but I don’t.  I simply couldn’t stop the tears, and it wasn’t so much a sadness, but a brokenness for what we saw and the reality of her life.  One thing that challenged us was seeing Brenda’s two year old be so unresponsive to our blowing bubbles with/at her, smiling, and trying to get her to play.  I kept comparing this two year old girl to our six month old nephew, Asher, who laughs, has eye contact, and interacts with anyone willing to give him attention  It was a special moment when, during prayer, Brenda’s daughter reached up to one of our team members and wanted to be held!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right after visiting Brenda we were able to visit a gogo, or grandmother, who is the caretaker for six of her grandchildren.  All of her own children have passed away.  ARTSA had been developing a relationship with her for a few weeks and she had mentioned that her desire was to eat meet just once more before she dies.  We brought her a food parcel that day and the impact that made was bigger than you would expect.  She quickly went inside, retrieved her prayer shawl, and began signing, dancing, and crying.  It may sound trivial that she was given meat, but the part that was amazing was how grateful she was for the blessing that God has provided.  

 

One of our last house visit was to that of the home of a 23 year old named Patrick (no pictures, sorry!).  While having no children of his own, he is raising the four sons and one daughter of his deceased sister.  The shack they live in was the smallest we visited all week.  We brought him a food parcel and visited with him for a while.  He was so thankful and joyful about our visit, you could see the new hope beaming from his face.  He is unemployed and was concerned that he didn’t know how he was going to feed the kids after we left.  We were touched by his story for many reasons, one of those being that it is so clear that God has given him the strength to take on raising these children.  Please pray for Patrick - he is a great man who is clearly called to be a leader in his community.