Hello, dear friends and supporters!!!
Look for updates soon and (internet-access willing) often as I embark on my next adventure...a year of service in South Africa with the ELCA's Young Adults in Global Mission program. I leave home in about 7 hours bound for a week of orientation in Chicago. From there, the 43 of us scatter across the globe to 6 different placement countries (11 of us will be headed to South Africa together.)
I can't wait to see where this path is heading and to have you all along for the ride.
Stay tuned.
Peace and Love.
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Praise God we heard from Jessie!! This was her post on facebook:
ReplyDelete"MOM, DAD and all concerned friends...we are safely in Pietermaritzburg after 3 days, 3 continents, 3 flights and 3 hours of sleep. It's good to be home, South Africa. :) Updates ASAP. Love you all! :)" Hope this works, I really don't know what I am doing!!!
From Jessie today 9/2/10: Until she gets internet, we will try to update through the comments.
ReplyDelete"Our flights were good…glad we had other people to hang out with. We had a 9 hour lay-over in Frankfurt so we took the train into town so we could breathe something other than airport/airplane air. It was a nice overcast day there that lent itself nicely to eating on a patio at a restaurant and just walking around for a few hours.
We’ve been in Pietermaritzburg since we landed on Friday. Brian and Kristen [country coordinators] picked us up and dumped us off at the Backpackers hostel where we’re staying and let us take our first showers 3 days while they grabbed us some dinner – pizza and soda. Haha.
Sunday we had church at the Seminary up the street which was interesting to say the least. The Lutheran church in SA is very divided across racial lines still and though the churches have “tried” to come together on things, it has been pretty useless. Sunday though they had planned a joint service with some of the different sects but there was a lot of tension to be felt in the room. It was weird. Right after church we headed into Durban to catch our first soccer match. We were at the Moses Mabhida World Cup stadium (the one with the arch over the top) and it was beautiful. We of course also purchased our first vuvuzelas
Monday started in with real “orientation” and we had a few speakers at the Seminary challenge us about our worldviews and our reasons for being here. Pretty earth-shaking stuff but definitely important for us to be thinking about.
Tuesday morning we had another brief morning session (we tried to learn the clicks of some of the languages…gah) and then Brian and Kristen took us to the Bisley Nature Reserve. We hiked for a few hours and had ridiculously close encounters with Zebra and Giraffe and we saw a couple of Wildebeests. It was really sweet. They are such beautiful animals to begin with but watching them in a way more natural environment than Busch Gardens was incredibly special.
…it’s still “winter”/first days of Spring, it has been in the 30s Celsius which is really hot in the mid to late afternoon. So we hiked in the morning instead. We drove out to a little town called Howick and visited the uMgeni Nature Reserve. We did a lot more hiking up along this ridge. It was just gorgeous. Not as many animals, although the Zebra herds just chill by the side of the road so we were definitely much closer to them than the day before.
This morning we’re going to a Zulu cultural center to learn some of the traditional aspects of that way of life. And just for good measure and to keep up with our themes of juxtaposition this week, we’re heading to the mall then to pick up things we may need and to shoot these emails out at the café there. Internet has been dumb this week. Brian and Kristen took us over to the one by their house the other day so we could do quick updates but since no one had had it really at all our time was really short so as to move all 11 of us through quickly.
… the plan is to leave Pietermaritzburg for our sites on Monday. We’ll have one on ones this week and learn more about our sites and the plans for getting us there but Brian told me I will probably be staying in Bloemfontein on Monday night which is where Andrew will be placed, he’s the closest person to me. I also say “the plan” because civil servants went on strike just a few days before we left Chi-town for here. So far it’s teachers, hospital workers, and a few others. Yesterday the petrol pump workers joined in solidarity. We’ll see how things are on Monday but it’s definitely adding another layer to everything here. They’re asking for an 8.6% increase in salary and benefits and the government has offered 7%. I’m sure you can find out more information than I can since you have internet and I don’t. haha.
Jess"
From Jessie 9/10
ReplyDeleteDear Friends and Supporters,
I hope this update finds you very well. I am writing this sitting at my new home in Kimberley, South Africa. How crazy is that? Just a little less than 5 months ago I was offered a placement here for the year with the ELCA’s Young Adults in Global Mission program.
I left Florida on 9/18 and spent 8 days at Orientation in Chicago. It was an incredible week of bonding and learning with the 44 of us that have since been scattered to 6 programs in 9 countries around the world. The 11 here in South Africa were the last to leave O’Hare on the 25th to begin our journey of 3 days before finally arriving in Durban. We flew through Frankfurt, Germany and had a pretty long layover so we were able to take the train to the city center and have lunch, walk around, and breathe some fresh air for a few hours.
We were greeted in Durban by our Country Coordinators, Rev. Brian and Kristen Konkol, and were soon on the 1.5 hour drive to Pietermaritzburg where they live and where we would spend the next 10 days in more Orientation. This orientation was intended to be more relaxing. We heard from a few speakers who wanted to share some of the history and culture of South Africa and the role of the Lutheran Church with us but we also had a great deal of time to hike and simply sit and talk and get to know one another. We stayed at a Backpackers’ Hostel so we made dinner together every night, went to the movies with some of the locals, attended two very different church services, took in a professional soccer match at the World Cup stadium in Durban, and just tried to absorb as much as we could in our first days together.
On Monday (Labor Day in the States), we scattered off toward our placement sites. I (along with Andrew) was the last to leave PMB as our bus to Bloemfontein was over an hour late arriving. Due to construction, we arrived more than 2 hours late to Bloem. Reverend Monama picked us up and was gracious enough to share his home with us for the evening. After visiting Andrew’s placement site on Tuesday, I was met by Reverend Standaar who is my main point of contact in Kimberley. After a wonderful lunch, I left Andrew in Bloem and was driven to Kimberley by Pastor Standaar. He left me with my hosts, the Julius family. They are wonderful and I think we will have a fantastic year together.
In the 2 days I have been here, Pastor Standaar has had a pretty full schedule for me, mostly meeting lots of people. This week and next I will visit with different organizations before selecting a few with which to spend my time. So far they run the gamut from working in the parish Crèche (preschool/kindergarten), a home-based care group (essentially visiting with sickly people in their homes), a school for the physically and visually impaired, serving with a group that uses the concept of soccer to educate youth about HIV/AIDS called GrassrootSoccer, and still some options that I have yet to see. The hard part will be choosing where I want to serve but also remembering to make time for myself and to spend with my host family and others I meet.
I am living in Roodepan Township outside Kimberley and it has been a wonderful place for me so far. We are coming off of winter and into spring so everything is extremely dry and dusty. Yesterday morning, however, we had our first drizzle of rain in many months in this part of the country. Our rainy season should be in full swing soon so things should return to being green and alive very soon. So far, I can’t say that the climate has been all that different from Florida and they even have many of the same palm trees and other plants that you would find around our parts there.
I hope to be able to access the internet once a week to send updates. If you are sending something, please shoot me a message or email so that I can know to look for it. Sometimes things have a way of being delayed here. Know that I am praying for you daily!
Peace and Love,Jess