Missions Momma

My feet are back on the lovely sandy beaches of Cape Town and it feels so good to be back HOME!  I even have the sun burn to prove it!   As I sit and reflect on my time, there are many things that I think about and
thought I would share:

**This visit has been very restful which has been a huge blessing.  I feel like I have been able to have days of rest and still be able to visit with family and dear friends.  Coming back to the USA is always a two -fold purpose to see friends and family but also to let people know about the ministry you have been doing.  Having to do both of these things can sometime wear you out because you want to see
EVERYBODY.  Most of you all know I am such a people person and love spending time with people.  God just has been so good in that this visit back to the USA I felt like there was enough time to really spend time with people and share about what ministry was going on at Living Hope as well as
having some rest time.

My precious dear friend Jaina who gives the best hugs!!

My small group of ladies that have kept me going for over ten years! I love you Melissa, Cindy and Rachel! I would not be here without you girls!

**There is no way to describe how wonderful HUGS are!  I can’t count just how many hugs I have received in being in the USA and how they truly have filled my spirit.  From the minute I got off the plane and met friends in Atlanta to my first Sunday back at Brentwood Baptist Church till my last minutes in the USA I felt love and was completely filled to be able to come back to ministry in South Africa.  I was able to spend some great quality time with friends (who I consider my extended family) and they really filled me up and just warmed my heart and loved on me!

Two babies who were born this year while I was in South Africa! Meet Maggie Jewell and Zeke.....so cute!!

**I had the chance to meet three new babies(Zeke, Maggie Jewell, and Ava) that some of my close girlfriends have had this past year.  This was a great time for me but also a very sad time….because I looked at these children and realized that I would not be a part of these children’s every day life.  However, I was so blessed to see some of the children that have been a part of my life remembering me and asking questions like…..”DD How do you like Africa?” (THANKS WHITNEY!)  That is priceless!

Having the chance to spend time with children while I was in the USA was such a treat….I have quite a few of non-biologically related nieces and nephews that hold a piece of my heart.  I also had the chance to see some children that I taught in Sunday School and on Wednesday Nights and I am just amazed at how grown up they are and growning so much in their faith!  There was a sadness when I thought about these children and what they have meant to me and then realizing that I am not a part of their daily lives and the only time I get to see them is through a computer or once a year when I come and visit!  It was not long after I thought about it that it wasn’t as sad as it was exciting to help these children to see and learn about different parts of the world and what happens when God calls you to do something.  This also got me thinking about the children that I have the chance to be part of their lives in South Africa and Iam so grateful to God for the children I get to teach at church here in South Africa as well as children from Living Hope and not to mention some pretty amazing missionary children that I love to pieces!!!!.

This year is filled with lots of excitement and new ministry opportunities.  I have been spending this week getting back into the routine of things and catching up on info that has come out since I have been gone.

It has been a while again since I have written a post.  This week as for all of us has been so busy.  Celebrating Thanksgiving even in a foreign country is an experience and of course makes you super THANKFUL for planning ahead and having the decoration touches of America!  Then the busyness continued with celebrating yet another birthday in beautiful Cape Town.  This year I am really in a reflection time of seeing how blessed I am to have people around me who I call family!

Yesterday while driving over the mountain, God reminded me how important it is to have people around you.  As I drove there was a walking marathon going on and there were teams of walkers battling the wind to walk down the mountain!  I saw people holding hands encouraging the people they were walking with, I saw people with bands around their waist to help carry their team mates along, and I saw two men basically carrying another member of their team as they walked.  All of these pictures reminded me how blessed and thankful I am to have people in my life who do all of that for me!!  I know that God is my provider and I daily have to put my faith and trust in Him……and He also puts these other people in my life to be there to walk the mountain with me!

I guess now that I am a year older I am getting into some heavy thinking!  HA HA  I wanted to share a couple of pictures of this special weekend!!

Baking brownies with some pretty awesome kids to help celebrate my birthday!

So great to celebrate our Rosebank Bible Class graduation on my birthday night! So proud of the Life Skill Educators!

Nothing more special than a girl's night out to celebrate your birthday! Thank you beautiful ladies for making me feel so special, blessed, and loved!!

I can’t believe it has been so long since I have written anything but as you all know life gets so busy but is definitely never dull!  This week I had the privilege of experiencing three new things.  These are definitely God showing me that He is equipping me for every area of ministry.

• Last Saturday I was asked to speak at King of Kings for their Missions Breakfast.  It was such a amazing experience.  The topic was on children and reaching children for Christ.  God definitely prepared the message and it was a sweet blessing.  As I began the power went out so that was interesting but no fear my teacher voice kicked in and I just talked louder.  Luckily that only lasted a couple of minutes and then the power came back on and I continued on.  I was challenged in preparing to speak and felt stretched!
  

  Sharing about how important children are!

• This week I got the official word that I am an accredited Assessor!  What this means is that for classes/courses that Living Hope wants to get certified  I can help with that at the same time save Living Hope a whole lot of RAND.  On Thursday, I started as the assessor for the Worker Readiness Course that Living Way is conducting…..the class of 14 has given me the title of “PRINCIPAL”.  I shared with them this is quite funny because when I was teaching school I always worried when the principal came into the room and now to them I am that person.  

• Today I just finished doing a Children’s ministry training workshop with four different churches that are on the other side of Cape Town.  It was a wonderful morning; they were so kind and just so excited to be there.  We had a great couple of hours as we talked through some things and I shared about the experience of doing children’s clubs at Living Hope. I am looking forward to seeing how God is going to use this.
  

  Amazing children's ministry leaders! We had a great time together.

The reason I share these three new titles/opportunitiues is to say that I would in my own life seen doing these things but I am learning and seeing how each day God is equipping me for the new things He is calling me to!

Last week I went to an event that I had no idea what to expect!  The point of the day was to encourage people who work in Christian Non-Profit Organizations.  The day’s theme was all about a river and how a river had three different part and different courses.  For me the whole day the nugget that God kept echoing in my mind was He is the source of everything!!  HE IS THE SOURCE OF EVERYTHING!  A river has to start at a source and so as the day went on this was just filling me as I was trying to process what I needed to do with the nuggets He was giving to me. 

For me….. as any of us there are always days where I just feel like I am empty and I have nothing to give and then on a day like this things change.  I was reminded that in God’s perfect timing and how He shares truth that we need to hear exactly when we need to hear it! 

• Each of us need to stay close to the source which is Jesus Christ
• It doesn’t matter what we look like, the river takes on very different looks and the source of the river doesn’t alway look like you think it should but it provides EVERYTHING that is needed!
• I need to remember to pray for this amazing city I live in that God would rain down the waters and they would be the waters that would flow so everyone would hear and receive the news of who Jesus is!
• God speaks to each of us in many different ways
• Once you are close to the source you are able to spill over to others and not worry that your river is going to dry up!  

All of this to say everything is about staying close to Christ and the closer I am and we are the easier it is to share with others because we are filled up so we can overflow and be a blessing to others! 

Two days later I shared what I learned with the Life Skill Educators in a morning devotion and that morning I also felt to share about each of us together make a river that is bringing the news and hope of Jesus Christ to the children and teens that we work with daily! be a river, we need to walk the journey together because when we do that is when we have those awesome rapids and those exciting times come!!   I saw the picture that each of us on our own can’t  God just really gave me an amazing visual that I hope blesses you like it did me!! 

Old meets New!

Genesis 12:1-3 “The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.  I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Lately I have just had this incredible feeling of being blessed.  Then last week at church these verses were read and the sermon had a theme of being blessed as he finished up a preaching series based on the life of Abraham.  One of the biggest quotes that stuck with me was how we are blessed to be a blessing.  As I looked around this amazing city, I thought about how I have this incredible opportunity to live here and be a part of something I would have never seen for my life and of course now I could not imagine doing anything different.

During the past two week I have been thinking about these verses in Genesis and the thought struck me about how Abraham left everything as God called him.  This made me think about the past three years of my life and how I had to leave the life I knew and start a whole new life in South Africa.  I had to leave friends, family, and a wonderful church home.  Now as I look at my life in South Africa I have friends, family, and a church home here now as well.  We have had a lot of people at the Team House over the past couple of weeks and they have made me see the connections that I have been able to make here and how I can truly say I have friends/family all around the world.  I also have been making new friends and also God has really been speaking into my life through these people.  I think we all go through times when we need encouragement and God has used so many people to speak into my life……for that I am truly thankful!

I wanted to share some pictures about my old friends and family and my new friends and family!

Kerri and I have known each other since 2005 when she came on a trip here with Brentwood Baptist. We have been friends ever since!

New friends! This is a team from Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Alabama and they just welcomed me in with open arms.

Reunion...This team from Arkansas came last year and visited again this year and it was so geat to see them again. I even have a nice new Arkansas t-shirt to remind me of these precious people!

My precious little brother! Ryan arrived three months after I did in 2008 and we worked together for 9 months. He quickly became family to me. Now two years later he brought a short term team here and it was so great to have him back! We had time just to chat and visit and of course pick on each other. Funny time that two years ago he moved me into the Team House and last week Ryan and the team helped move me upstairs to my new room!

The time has finally come to an end!  The Life Skill Educators have just finished three weeks of non-stop holiday club (VBS).  It has been such an experience to watch the LSEs over the past three weeks as they led each and every day ALL day!  I have enjoyed spending time at each location and working alongside the LSEs and the visiting teams that have been here helping out. 

To prepare for these three weeks of holiday club the LSEs were the one’s who wrote the curriculum and so it has been good to see them growing in their knowledge of working with children, teens, and curriculum.  I have many fond memories of the past three weeks.  I have enjoyed visiting clubs, helping out, and being able to post photos and comments of what the day was like so others can see the awesome stuff going on in each community.  Also my heart just gets so excited in hearing that during the holiday clubs children and teens have come to learn who Jesus is and quite a few have made the decison to ask Jesus into their lives.  PRAISE GOD!!

Lemon Soccer

One day while I was at a children’s club, I came across one little boy who was not with the other kids in fact he was just kicking around two lemons…….yup LEMONS.  So what else to do but kick around the lemons with him and we had a couple minutes of a soccer game and it was fun just to connect.  I then talked to him and took him in with the other kids as they were getting ready to start a craft.  He is a child that usually comes to club but for some reason that morning wasn’t there but then after our Lemon Soccer game he joined the rest of the kids.  Isn’t it funny how lemons can start a conversation and lead a child to come to club!!

I can’t wait to see how God is going to use these past three weeks and the hard work that the Life Skill Educators did witht the children and teens!!

Holiday Clubs this week have turned into Sports.  Each branch is teaching soccer and netball drills to the kids while sharing about the life of Joseph.  The children are learning that even though they will face difficulties that God loves them, has a plan for their lives, and is there for them through everything!   As most people know, I am not a sports person.  Yes I am a fan of watching some sports but I am also ok to watch anything else on TV.  Since moving to South Africa I have become a big fan of rugby but soccer and netball are still a little foreign to me.  I know that we just had the Soccer World Cup and I can’t tell you how many soccer games I watched but I still don’t understand the game. 

This week I have just decided to embrace whatever comes my way and when I show up at clubs to help with whatever is needed.   Today that job consisted of the following…… gathering some supplies and then helping girls to stay in a certain area while netball games were going on. 

To some people I know this may not sound that exciting, but when I was watching the children’s faces today as they were doing soccer and netball drills I realized why I help!!  Their faces were so full of joy and excitement that it made my morning!

I had to get some netballs ready for today so my early morning was spent hunting down balls and pumping them up! To get into the spirit I even wore my track suit pants!

The Gatesby

The Life Skill Educators loved it and I enjoyed the fact that mom got to meet them all and oh yes I had to take some group photos of this occasion.  Another memory I will keep is the fact that I had mom sit in on Holiday Club training with the Life Skill Educators so she could see what happens day to day. 

Being able to personally take mom to every children’s club and show her what the Life Skill Educators do and how they have grown over the past three years was such a neat experience.  I enjoyed mom being here and sharing life with her and I know it will be something that we will both treasure for the rest of our lives. 

The Red Hill Team

The Masi Team

The Ocean View Team

The Capricorn/Overcome Heights Team

My Everyday Co-Workers

WOW it is weird to think that my mom is here in South Africa.  She has been here for a week and it just feels surreal!  The one awesome thing about her being here is she gets to see my world.  Already she has had the chance to get to know some of my friends, do a little bit of sightseeing, and of course get a tour of Living Hope and the ministry that we do.  One of mom’s favorite things so far has been having the chance to eat tons of seafood.  She also is not a big fan of riding on the other side of the road and driving over the mountain to go anywhere.  I believe she has worn a hole in her knees from holding on so tight. 

Today started out a little stressful for me with my first day of seminary class but how awesome as soon as I got into class I was told we were getting out a little early.  One of the reasons I had been a little stressed was I wanted mom to see the afternoon children’s clubs and of course I wanted her to get to see ALL of them.  Well, I am in class Monday-Wednesday this week and Thursday it is a public holiday so that took care of this week……and then all we would have is Monday of next week.  Well, God is good because I was able to get home from class today and we could go to Red Hill for her first afternoon children’s club. 

I am looking forward to the rest of this week and getting to spend some more time with mom!  We are making some amazing memories and here are a couple of highlights.

Having lunch with the Team House staff!

Mom enjoying all the wonderful seafood of South Africa!

Mom and I on safari enjoying some apple juice and checking out the animals!

A Women's Event at my church so mom got to meet a lot of new friends!

Mom listening to Mzo tell the Bible story as the kids are learning about RESPECT this week.

I can’t believe it has been three years.  I know it is a cliché to say but time really does go by so fast!  I had a friend ask me a question and I thought it was so good I would blog about it….she asked me, “What have been some of the highlights over the past three years? “  I had to stop for a second and really spend a couple of minutes thinking because I feel like now ministry has basically just turned into life.  There have been a couple of things that have stood out and I thought I would share them now in reflecting back on THREE YEARS. 

1. Seeing the growth in the Life Skill Educators and how the afternoon children’s clubs have strengthened as well as the Holiday Club programmes.  I am so proud of the amazing job they are doing and love seeing them grow!!
2. Getting to be a part of a ministry that is every growing and changing and showing me apart from God I can’t do anything but with Him guiding me, anything is possible!
3. Having the opportunity to do a little bit of travelling on this continent and see Kenya and Zambia.  I pray that God would give me other opportunities as well.  It is amazing to see the vast difference in each of these countries.  The one thing with each of them is how beautiful they all are…though South Africa does have my HEART!
4. Moving to the Team House and getting to be a part of the amazing work they do in hosting teams.  I am so blessed to be able to live here and help the staff out!  Also the view is not too bad either! (Ocean and Mountains)
5. Since I have been in South Africa, God has been moving in the life of my mother and she has become a Christ follower.  AMAZING!  THANK YOU LORD

So that is a quick top 5 things that come to my mind.  In the past almost year one of the things that has begun to be something that I have seen that is so important is the idea of COMMUNITY.  I feel blessed to have that in two ways.  I feel like I have my Living Hope family of Life Skill Educators and people I see associated with Living Hope that have become family.  Also I have more family of other long term missionaries/volunteers that are here as well. 

 Here is some of my family!  These are the people I do life with.  I am blessed that some of them are from the same home town (even though we didn’t know each other until arriving in South Africa).  I am excited to say I am a Auntie here to some of the most precious African as well as American children. 

Tim, Natasha, Amy, and me! Part of my South Africa family.

Thank you Lord for the Lankfords. It is so great to be Auntie Danielle (or DD) to the family.

Last I have finally found a church that I am having the opportunity to serve in children’s ministry and see what the Lord is going to do next.  It has been an amazing five months of finding a church and getting plugged in and serving. 

THREE YEARS of living life in Africa…..I am reminded of a saying from someone as I think about my time here.  “I need Africa more than Africa needs me!!”