Christmas time at Lily. The summer sun beating down on us takes away from that "Christmasy" feel, I must say. Christmas came and went in a flash and I felt like I completely missed the "Christmas boat". That may be ok, because I don't mean that I missed the true meaning of Christmas, but I missed all that nostalgic, annoying atmosphere that makes you feel all warm and nice, but really is fake, and then when the holiday is over you emotionally crash. But I did get a lot of fellowship with Jesus and some deep themes of Jesus' coming.
Jesus left his RICH, PERFECT, PAINLESS place in heaven to come and be with us and save us messy people. He came to a no-name place and slept in a animal feeding trough. And then suffered his life so we could be healed, whole, and spiritually alive. So, I do the same (in my none-savior sort of way of course!). I left a lot of comfort and came here to a no-name place with great brokenness and struggle. And man, its hard. But God told me to come. I can understand Jesus a TOUCH more.

This Christmas time, many kids went to be with distant relatives they have (family that cannot care for them full time) and so it was a quieter time at Lily. Those who have no family at all stayed and it was great to spend more quality time with them. I enjoyed it so much.

For the first time, the older kids have started to really be on fire for reaching out to their community. They've never really thought past themselves before, but now they are starting to think about the broken people who live in Mophela. Just before Christmas, Lily organized a peace walk to protest physical and sexual abuse that is so rampant here. One of the older kids wanted to hand out food to his poor friends, so we went food shopping and delivered it all to them to their overjoyed surprise. Others are saving their little bit of pocket money to give to help their friends.

But the best thing was that a teenager organized an outreach to a nearby children's village that is far less well-off. He got all the older kids to participate and so they all organized lunch, games, and encouraging words from God. It was so great that they were all ministering to their own! One children's village to another. They knew first hand the struggles of being an orphan and so really were able to encourage. They learned SOOO much from organizing and serving those kids. They saw how much they did have at Lily as well. There is a huge momentum shift here. It has been so great to see them understand the gospel just a touch more.

Christmas day was a wonderful day for me. All the volunteers were together and had some of the older kids over for brunch and a gift exchange. It felt like a real family. Then I baked 6 cakes for our huge evening dinner feast (150 people!). We worshiped God together and it felt like a taste of heaven in a poor place.

This weekend has been my first getaway from the orphanage. A family who has a cottage on the beachfront graciously let me use it for free to get some rest and relaxation. But it has been a great time by myself to reflect on the first 4 months of my job.
Two boys who I really have struggled to connect with brought be to the cottage and I felt for the first time that they really respected me. It was a great feeling.
There is this deep love for these kids, that has always been in my heart, but now it beats more than ever and I find myself really unable to go back to life without them. How can I just end this time after a year and not be in their lives?

One of the huge obstacles for the kids, especially the teenagers, is education. They schools they have are TERRIBLE. I have teenagers coming to me, saying please take us out of school! I cannot work there! I want to learn! Home school us if you have to!! The hard part is to see teenagers who really care and work really hard fail their classes, even when we have done as much tutoring as we can.
As you can see, here are a few photos of the local school and some kids in the courtyard.

This is Thathu, the youth pastor, here at our orphanage and he is GREAT! He is such a jokester and connects with the teenagers so much. He has such a great balance between being a "clown" and yet being very serious when needed. The kids have matured so much from him. It been a pleasure to work with him.

Now a days the kids are so burdened by the brokenness of their surrounding community that I am helping them organize some community outreach projects. That is AWESOME!!!!

Thanksgiving 2011.

Thursday November 24th, was incredibly un-thanksgiving-like. My day consisted of planning meetings and then doing my first of a series of career seminars for the teenagers. It was an incredibly stressful and crazy day of rushing here and there, getting things organized, talking to this person and that person, making sure things got to where they needed to be, etc. At the end of the day my friend, Dan (the other American here), and I sat together, completely exhausted and said to each other, "I can't believe its Thanksgiving. All the Americans are sitting on their lush sofas watching football and eating tons of food right now." We looked at each other for a moment to try to read whether we were sad to miss out. "Nah, its better here!!!" we both smiled. But actually, on Saturday, we ended up hosting a VERY LARGE Thanksgiving dinner for 25 people (3 of which were American), showing the other nationalities what it was all about! It really felt like I got in my holiday after all.

One of the Friday rituals is to go do our food shopping and have breakfast together and this photo shows some of the volunteers with me as we finish up a nice breakfast at a place that is supposed to be Hawaiian, called Kawaii. The Zulu people working there say in a monotone, boring voice, "Aloha" to greet costumers. Its SO ridiculous.
I just have loved to get to know the volunteers. They are all so special and supportive and have become my family. The sad part of it is that they leave so soon, most of them leaving before Christmas. But they have truly been such a team and support for me in my work.

One of the struggles that I have been experiencing is the need to prioritize my relationships with the oldest kids. But many of the kids I was closest to were not the oldest ones. So feeling a bit of the tugs and pulls from all over as to whom I should spend my time with. I don't want to feel the separation from the ones I have loved so much, yet I can't always spend time with them now. So its been a struggle to deal with that. I have kids ask often to do things with me, but my schedule is overwhelming sometimes and I just can't. And I feel sad. There is absolutely too much to do here and I have to really be careful not to spread myself out too thin with all the kids that I could invest in. It truly cannot be about need or else we would all drop dead. I am so glad Jesus takes our work and multiplies it and works things out for his good ways.
But this weekend was special because I was able to spend some time
with some of the middle kids that I spent so much time with on my last trips. These guys kept me in tears (of laughter) in my other trips here and this time around I have really missed my time with them. I had some of the boys at my place, too, for some homemade fries and cake. We did facial scrubs as well! They are totally into that, its so funny!
A couple of them are friends who live in the nearby township where life is much more difficult. I actually have been to their homes and it is a simple and difficult life. It is so nice that the friends can come sometimes and have a place to hang that is safe from street life that is so destructive.