At the beginning of the week I listened to the vintage21 sermon from a few weeks ago, because I am trying to keep up with the series we have right now because I am really passionate about the church and what it really means to be a child of God and member of the church. That is just what Pastor Tyler preached about in the sermon from January 17th. I continue to think about my community in Raleigh and it is strange not to be there in a time where my church family in Raleigh is talking about being a body. I tried to think about the universal church as a place I can find comfort while I am here, but still want to be connected to my local church. I must continue to pray about what a local church will look like here for me. I hope to visit the local Presbyterian church, but also some other services where many students from Stellenbosch are going. It is always exciting when I get to see young people passionate about God and serving him through actions. Maybe tomorrow in the service learning orientation I can begin to meet with and talk to people about what their faith looks like in relation to service learning. It is just so connected to all I have thought about for my time here in South Africa and even for the things I involved myself with at home. While the church is working together as a whole body in Raleigh, I think if we worked together universally we could make huge changes in beautiful and unimaginable ways. I have already seen love and compassion with new friends in South Africa. They comforted me with love this past week when I was upset about Smokey. They consider the hearts of all people from our own country and from the people we are meeting here from all over the world. I hope we can continue to encourage one another along and be a family building up love for each other and the lives of the people here in South Africa.
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. –Hebrews 10: 24
Switching gears to the events of the week, I must talk about the skits that the first year students (Freshmen) had to perform on Thursday. Each first year dorm has to create a skit and they normally incorporate dances, which they obviously practiced more than the rest of the script as we know from over hearing practices all week leading up to Thursday. To any of my Meredith friends this would sound a LOT like Cornhuskin, and that it was. I felt like I was home for a bit. It was great to see guys doing these skits too though, because just like some Cornhuskin dances these were clever and fun, but also well choreographed and practiced. There was even a parade Saturday, but because we were with Arcadia we missed it.
Friday Lenny picked us up for an Arcadia trip, which would give us the chance to meet the rest of the Arcadia students from University of Western Cape and Cape Town University for the first time. There are 31 of us in total, but because I am so close to my “Stellies” already we sort of ended up clinging together a lot on the trip. I did meet some other cool students and we hope to spend some weekends in Cape Town. We were taken to a place called High Africa, which was an adventure center with a river. We did a low ropes course (Saturday was the high ropes course and swimming) and after dinner found out they did in fact have a bar if people wanted to drink. Although we originally planned to take a break for a night, we shared some drinks and talked with new friends and then a whole lot with the staff at the camp about South Africa and all sorts of things. After everyone went to sleep of COURSE myself, Maria, and Justin were the 3 people still up with the guys that work there (note that we had to be up at 8am and its like 2am at this point). We got to sit under the stars by a river in the middle of mountains in South Africa. The stars were more beautiful than stars I have seen anywhere. We could see the Milky Way clouds and Mars. I was blown away. How can you not believe in an awesome God with something that beautiful?! Perfect moment of joy—check. Few have already come, and many more remain.
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