From Kayamandi to Hermanaus

It's Sunday, June 19. Father's Day. (They celebrate Father's Day in S. A. too!) We arrived here last night, and settled into Mosaic Farm with great ease. We left Kayamandi, thankful (for our time there), but uncomfortable (I think we've left part of ourselves in Kayamandi). God is good and rich and powerful. Abundant in mercy. Full of life. He doesn't explain Himself, nor does He offer easy solutions to why we have multitudes of material blessings, but our friends in Kayamandi don't know where their next meal will come from. Hmmm.... We saw more of God with each moment in Kayamandi, but yet He became more of a mystery. Crazy how He becomes more and more elusive the closer we get to Him...

I am so thankful for this time here. I've been gone two weeks. One moment, it feels like we've been gone a very long time, the next, it feels like we've just been gone a day. You can just pray that God would hold the clocks of my mind, and that I would pay attention to His directing and ignore dates on a calendar. I don't want to miss what He's telling me or trying to show me...

Kayamandi -- a township of 21,000+ people. A lot of shacks -- lots of dirt, mud, dust. Children everywhere. Laundry hanging everywhere. Dogs everywhere. Smiles everywhere. Go figure.

I stepped over the jawbone of a dog each day as I walked from the Ikaya Lethemba office to Strongyard Hall -- the gym we worked to repair and restore each day we were in Kayamandi. The bone once was part of the dog. I want to know what happened to the dog. My first thought was that it probably was hit by a car, killed by another dog, and just rotted there in the street. What was that like, to live with the stench of rotting flesh? Then I had a thought that the dog could very well have been someone's meal, and the bones were just thrown out and left in the gutter for me to walk over each day... Either thought stupifies me and leaves me numb.

I can't walk over the lives of the people of Kayamandi. Their eyes are clear, bright, open, welcome. Their hearts are happy. Their clothes are dirty, and their stomachs are hungry. They don't whine, complain, gripe, or grumble. They have every right to, but they don't. I'll think about that for a long time...

Keep praying for us.... Adella