All the Cool Kids...

are hanging out in South Africa!

Well, as the seasons change and you all wait with anticipation for the approaching summer, we sit anxiously awaiting the harsh southern winter. Yes that is right, we are on opposite seasons down here...July is the dead of winter!! Being so far south in the southern hemisphere we can look forward to Antarctic gales and tempests!!:( We have been watching the beauty of fall come over the land for a few weeks. The leaves have changed, the air has grown crisp, the cobras have gone into hibernation and the 100 degree weather has gone. Today, Mother Nature showed a sampling of her fierce southern winter side with some of the nastiest weather I can remember. The wind is howling, threatening to rip off anything that is not appropriately attached. The rain is falling horizontally giving even the Jackals of the field nowhere to hide from its wet grasp. I half expect any one of the Bridges Academy kids to get blown away anytime they run outside to their room to get something. As I sit in the comfort of the cement and mortar, architecturally sound office looking out the window admiring the beauty of Mother Nature's unrestrained ability to unleash her winter onslaught of wind and rain I cannot help but think of our friends in the townships.

With homes made of sheet metal and cardboard and roofs gingerly laid on top of the box house and held down by brick or tires or whatever else they can find how are they staying warm and dry? They aren't. If the wind has not blown their place down or apart, then the horizontal rain is coming in through the gap between roof and wall soaking the place like a fire sprinkler. If your house makes it past either of these then the rain draining down the hillside or off the streets is running under the walls of your house filling your floor with mud or water or worse.

How in the 21st century is this still possible? Not only that, but how is it still possible for such a large population of the world's human inhabitants? We have to do something. Take Burma for example. A cyclone has just recently hit there killing over 22,000 people with 41,000 more people missing!!! Katrina killed about 1,800 just to give you some perspective. The living conditions of many of the world's population are atrocious. I find that in everything we do here in South Africa my dependence on God becomes stronger and stronger. I ask a lot of whys and I want immediate answers but its not that easy. God usually answers with another question. I know I will be battling with questions like this for a long time coming. I do believe God is working in the people here though and that is very encouraging.

As you enter into the long, warm days of summer (except those of you in Portland...that is a few months more) I challenge you to think about, pray about and converse about the disadvantaged populations of the world who at that present moment may be melting in their home because of a lack of electricity and A/C or are soaking wet and freezing to death because of a lack of proper housing materials. The issues are much deeper than this but you have to start thinking about these things somewhere and once you open the flood gates you will not be able to close them again.

Handsome Boy

I think memory is a strange thing. I think it’s strange how we don’t have much of a choice what is going to stick in our minds. I’m thinking about this more lately when I can’t remember things I would like to. Did I just sound like an old woman saying she had a “senior moment”? Damn. But really, there are things that stick in our minds eye and hold the picture of a memory that no photograph can capture. This is the kind of memory I love. It’s not the kind of involuntary memory of classmates’ names from elementary school that I wasn’t even friends with, it’s not the memory that houses the lyrics to the opening song for Full House or the Paul Abdul song I liked in 5th grade. It’s not the kind of memory that I feel like is taking up valuable space.

This memory is a picture of something I won’t ever forget and reminds me of a feeling from that place. I had one the other day as I was driving down our long dirt driveway. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a boy riding his bike in the reflection. He was chasing me on an old looking black bike and he had a beautiful, young face and red, yellow and black beads hanging around his neck and a royal blue stripped shirt that he wears 2 to 3 days a week. His name is Sibusiso and I don’t have any special connection with him, it was more like a moment where I knew I was in Africa and really felt it as I bumped along the red dirt driveway leaving the farm. And I smiled the kind of smile to myself that is in a category all it’s own. It is way different than a camera smile and it’s nothing like the smile I do when I’m trying to make someone feel like they said something clever. It’s a smile just for me, no one is going to see it, I only get to feel it.

So I hope this new memory pushed something out that I don’t care about. And I’m sure that in years to come when I’m somewhere else in life and thinking back to this time and loving this time in my heart, I’ll see Sibusiso chasing me in my dust, determined to keep up even though he would have dirty boogers later and burning eyes. These memories are the best because you don’t know when they will happen and you can’t force it, they just come to you with all the benefits of a good dream and none of the involuntary forgetting.

Picassa updated!!

I made a layout change on the blog. Our profiles and photo link now appear above the blog archive so they are easier to find. We will be putting up a new post soon. There has been much that has happened in the past few weeks. Our apologies on not posting in awhile. Our photos on Picassa are updated though. Check 'em out. Cheers!!

Picassa updated!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that our picassa webpage of pictures has been updated. Check it out from the link on the left!!!

Just thought I would put this incredible picture on our blog. We went with the Bridges of Hope Academy kids to the beach and a water park called "Supertubes" last week. For many it was their first time in the ocean and for all of them it was their first time down a water slide. Keep in mind that all of them grew up less than 15 minutes from the beach. You can sit in every one of their houses and smell the salty air...if you can pick it out of all the other gnarly smells of the townships. After teaching most of the kids how to body surf in some of the most Great White populated waters on the planet I figured I would take a few turns down the slides with the kids. What a hoot!!!! If you have not been to a water park recently, go now!!! They are a blast!! This one only had two slides and I still lost my mind on them. So all of you who make what seems to be weekly trips to Las Vegas...you have got to stop at one of the many water parks in the area and go crazy for a couple of hours. Watch out for slides I call Wedgie Express!!

Swan Lake Hysteria

Last night I went on a fieldtrip with the 11th graders at the Academy to see Swan Lake on ice. If you are picturing me sitting around something like an Olympic size rink with characters moving around like Disney on Ice scratch that from your mind. We were headed for the performing arts center in Cape Town. I dressed up a bit because word on the street was that the girls were going all out in getting ready.

When I came up to the school to leave, what I experienced was like nothing I have seen. It was like the excitement of Prom, Homecoming, first day of school, first date, winter formal and your wedding day all rolled into one and multiplied by 3. Picture lines and crowds of kids formed for the girls who are going to walk out dressed up the way you might make a tunnel for your teammates to run through. Then, as each new girl exits the dorm room the screams roar and there is clapping and jumping up and down. It is Swan Lake hysteria. All I can do is laugh uncontrollably because I don’t know what other response to give to such a charged moment.

The girls that aren’t going are fake crying and going up to one another fake consoling one another with, “your day will come”. They are giving hugs to each other and begging for pictures to be taken alone and with poses in front of random cars. And each time a new girl walks down the stairs the crowd starts up again with a strange cross between heckling and kind of like yelling, “damn girl, you look good!” I was equating it in my mind to young girls as crazed fans over a boy band. But even the 14 year old boys morphed into crazed fans of their classmates dressed up for an outing into Cape Town. These kids were giving Raider fans a run for their money in their devotion to cheering their beautifully groomed classmates on.