HIV

We had classes with Dr Vaughn Stannard, the Director of Beautiful Gate and a pediatrician to learn about HIV & AIDS.
Firstly, HIV is the virus and AIDS is simply the last stage of that virus where the person begin the inevitable decline into death. The HIV virus attacks the white blood cells, specifically the CD4 cell, which means that a person with it catches and doesn't recover from diseases and infections that a healthy person would easily be able to fight off.
The kids here are on Anti-Retro virals, which are medicines to slow down the progress of the HIV virus, so they have the possibility of living into their 20's and even more maybe.
What surprised me this week was learning about the discrimination that surrounds HIV. Here it's very stigmatised, so husbands will beat their wives when they find out they have HIV, even though it's usually the husband that gave it to them through infidelity! And parents will abandon their babies, even though it's the parents carrying the virus...the less education a person has, the greater the fear and myths they believe usually. We watched a movie called Yesterday, about how one African woman deals with learning she has it.

Game Park + Table Mountain Photos!

A couple of my best animal photos from the game park drive at Worchester. I hung on the back of the ute with one hand, standing and clicking away with the other.

So this was probably the best photo I got, this giraffe was only about 30 metres from the ute. It just popped up around a corner.

Late in the day on the way back this herd of Zebras heard us coming.

Then on last Sunday we climbed Table Mountain. I am really unfit. 100 metres into it I was ready to turn back.

This is Kari near the bottom looking at our goal - Platteklip Gorge. The top was covered in cloud - the 'tablecloth'. We prob should have realised that if the cable car wasn't going due to high winds, it wouldn't be great weather near the top.

This is the view half way up. It's Capetown waterfront and main city. Pretty spectacular.

Near the top, it starts to look a lot like Mordor from Lord of the rings. The mist boils over down into the Gorge. This is Jenny looking dark and scary. She's also my room-mate.
We could not complete the climb because the winds were knocking me off my feet near the top, and the fog was blinding (and freezing!). It just got too dangerous. However, on the way back, we got a lift back to our van in a BMW driven by a German who manufactures plastic car parts. Loved the faces of the other team members we passed...great day.

Week in Worchester

On Friday we finally came back from Worchester, and it was good to be 'home'. We went there to combine with other DTS's so that the national director of YWAM could teach us all about the Holy Spirit.
It was quite an intense week, and since YWAM is non-denominational a lot of people had to think through the teaching vs what they had previously been taught. I myself am still processing, but I agree with most of it, and have been researching what I don't agree with. Luckily it's not mandatory that we have to agree with it.
We did have one great surprise though - they had organised a day where we drove through a game park and then walked and swam in a dam! I saw rhinos, giraffes, lions, elephants and something called a Dazig that looks like a beaver/possum. I was riding on the back of a ute,s o I got some good photos I think. Will try load them later.
Also I have a cold now and am pretty busy because assignments are starting to be due + I have to do that chapel talk on Friday. It's only 5 minutes, but speaking isn't my strong point.

Kid's Program

I just wanted to tell a cute story of what happened a few days ago when my group had to run the Beautiful Gate Kid's Program. This is just a half hour that's a little bit like vacation bible school for the Americans, and like Beach Mission to the Australians. So there's about 7 of us and we had the half and hour planned...or so we thought.
It was in the chapel, which is a hall with echooey acoustics, so when the kids ran in there screaming and shouting it was mind-numbingly loud.
When we finally got them semi-quiet we sang Father Abraham, shaking our legs and arms, then 'we are marching in the light of God' and 'I'm in the Lord's army', all cute action songs. Then we acted out the story of Joshua nad the Israelites and jericho, with some of the kids being the wall, while a lot of them marched around it 7 times singing. Then we shouted and the 'wall' came tumbling down.
And then there was still 10 minutes to go!
So we sang 'this little light of mine'. And then we were really out of ideas. So the team turned to me to wrap it all up.
"So...Joshua prayed and God heard him...um..have any one of you prayed to God?"
One by one a lot of the little hands went up.
"Okay...do you come out the front and share?"
The kids were like "pick me" "me" "me". They came up and the first boy said something like "I pray to be friends with Jesus."
These are some of the other prayers we got.
"I thank God for the mamas and the people who take so good care of us" The mamas were sitting up the back and they were talking and cheering the whole way through.
"I want to be best friends with Jesus"- This one was quite popular
A 8 yr old girl who is deaf and can't really talk came up and I was thinking 'what in the world are we going to do?' but she just made these noises, then smiled and pointed to heaven and everyone cheered anyway.
And the cutest one was a 3 year old who came up and said "I want to be Jesus baby."

Overcoming Racism...

Actually Grace is mainly teaching us about other stuff, but I find her little snippets of life story interesting.
There was the time when she was a little further into YWAM and one of the other girls, a blonde causcasian, came up to her and said "Grace, I've found a photo of you!" Grace followed her into her bedroom and she pulled out a photo of a white woman with a little brown monkey on her shoulder and said "Look it's me and you!" and then laughed, along with everyone else in that room.
Grace was supposed to play music for the praise evening in a few minutes, but she definitely didn't feel like it after that. She was so hurt she went to talk to another African and prayed about it. The Grace felt God telling her to wash this woman's feet, so she did in front of everyone at the service that evening!
Of all things, if someone had just insulted me for being Chinese, the last thing I would want to do is touch them, much less do an act of service for them. I guess she lives up to her name.

The Beautiful Gate Kids

Finally, a photo of them! These kids are all HIV positive, but also bright and full of life. Today one of the girls who I thought was too traumatised to talk started chatting away to me and pulling on my pants to make me pick her up so maybe she was just shy. Also, their play area is now grassed.

First Lecture

Well, orientations truly over and lectures have begun. It's hard to adjust to sitting for so long in the little chairs with the table armrests.
Today's speaker was Grace Goeda. We all drew and then shared what brought us to Ywam (I drew an ear and zzz), our happiest family moment (I drew an ice-hockey club, it's not the happiest but it's one of the most recent), our challenges (I drew a phone cause it's one of the few ways I can contact Australia) and our dreams (I drew a fork and spoon, not because my dream is eating, but because of that verse 1 timothy 2:20-21 talking about utensils for God's use).
then she spoke a bit about YWAM values and her own background, which I found the most interesting.
She had come to YWAM during apartheid. She had to catch a lift on a fruit truck to get there, and then she found she was in a DTS with white people. She believed so much in her racial inferiority that she slept on the floor in the room she shared with white girls, so that she would be lower than them, and only took showers after they had. It's hard to believe this is possible when it says in the bible that all mankind is made in the image of God. Anyway, thankfully over time she let go of those racist beliefs.
Apartheid has definitely left scars on this country.
And I also found out today that the Minister for Health has been on record saying that eating a certain combination of onions, herbs and garlick would cure AIDS. And the governments ad campaign to educate people on aids just promotes condoms, which my doc said aren't completely effective anyway! ridiculous! No wonder there's an epidemic still!