Soutpan and AIDS in South Africa

Students here return to the University today (July 10) and classes begin tomorrow. Today we are taking a ½ day of prayer before we head back to the campus this afternoon to connect with students. The last two weeks while they were on break were still busy for us. We helped with their JWC (a conference put on by Campus Outreach where about 500 students from 4 colleges attended), we did a little safari, we had 5 days of teaching and training, and this past weekend we traveled to a township to work. For those who do not know what a township is let me explain. During apartheid, blacks were forced to live in the least inhabitable areas of the country. They made little to no money, so people had to make do with little. Since apartheid ended 13 years ago, most of the people in the townships have not been able to pull themselves out of poverty. So most of the country is still in great poverty. South Africa is weird in this sense. On one level it is the most advanced country in Africa and very first world, but there is this oppressed people who still live in third world conditions in these townships. The township we traveled to was a 40 min drive from our house. It is called Soutpan. We met the pastor of a church there named Frans. Frans told us that Suotpan was mostly filled with illegal aliens who have fled wars in Mozambique and Zimbabwe, but there were some South Africans living there as well. There were probably around 400 people in this township and it is one of the smallest. Most townships have 7-8 thousand people living in them. We made bricks for Frans and the church so that they can build onto the church in the coming weeks. We started to work at 11am and worked until 6pm. We made 500 bricks by mixing concrete, sand, and water by hand and then pouring the mix into brick molds. I am going to brag on our team a little here. Frans said he had never seen this many bricks made in one day. Needless to say we were exhausted. That night we slept in the township in the parsonage next to the church. It was a three room little house, which has two more rooms that most houses in the township. We slept okay except for the constant blaring of music throughout the night and roosters making a ridiculous amount of noise. It was a great experience to sleep in third world conditions. It is one that I am still trying to process and apply to my life. Sunday morning, there was a lot of singing around 7:30am. We went outside to see what it was and it was coming from the church. Some of us walked over to see that it was a funeral. I and two other of our students attended the funeral. People sang for 30 minutes, different songs praising God. They sang, Malibongwe, Lerato La Jesu, and others. Then a man stood up a spoke for a few minutes. Then they sang more. Then the pastor arrived and preached to the crowd. He said that he was going to speak in English through an interpreter for our sake. He spoke about the need to live and work for heaven and not earth because you can’t take anything with you. It was bold and challenging, but good for us and others to hear. Later we found out that they lady who died was 30 and had a 12 year old son, who the pastor Frans is trying to adopt. Frans and his wife live in an orphanage and have 8 kids. Seven of those kids they have adopted. Frans also told us that she had died of AIDS. By the way 1out of 5 black South Africans are infected with HIV. And that number is getting worse every year. The average life expectancy in the black population is 35. By 2010, 50% of the black population is expected to have HIV. It is the number one problem facing the country, but the government doesn’t see it as that big of a problem. So there is little education about it and since people live in this extreme poverty it will continue to be epidemic. Frans is trying to teach people in his church about HIV and AIDS so that they can teach others in the township. He said to us that there is a cure for AIDS. It is abstinence and living according to the standards of the bible, and that is what he teaches to people. Church on Sunday was amazing. It was great to worship and sing songs in other languages with a people that are so different from us. Even though we are different people we are one in Christ. We were personally blessed so much by this church. We gave Frans a good bit of Rand to use how he thought best. And after the service everyone was hugging us and telling us how much they appreciated our work and that we would sleep there. No white people have ever slept there. This was such an honor to them. After church we had to do a rolling start with our Kombie because it would not start…again. But we got it started and returned home that afternoon.

What we are learning in South Africa

I feel that I have written lots of entries on here about fun things we have done, but not that many about more series things that God is doing among our team. I think that we are learning much about God, his nature, and our nature. I will use our theme for the summer to elaborate more. Our theme is WORTHY. We chose this as a theme because we are studying the book of Philippians this summer. In the first chapter Paul writes, “Only let your manner of life be WORTHY of the gospel of Christ so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.” We are called to live lives worthy of the gospel and in other places in scripture worthy of Christ. But in order to understand what it means to live a worthy life, we must first understand Christ’s worth. Revelation 5:12-13says, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying, ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’” All of creation says Christ alone is WORTHY! But often times we don’t live this way. We live practically like we ourselves are more worthy than Jesus. So we have been learning a lot about the worthiness of Christ and at the same time our smallness before him. We started with trying to align our values. We tend to let some of our values become more worthy to us than Jesus. It is easy to allow discipline, having fun, friends, and even family become more worthy to us than Christ. From here it seemed that God has really been opening our eyes to how selfish and spoiled we are, especially as Americans. Most people in Africa are content with much less things than we have as Americans. We are realizing how we think the world should revolve around our own desires. What we are really doing is making ourselves out to be more worthy than Jesus. We become the center of our own world instead of Christ. We become bigger and Christ becomes smaller. This is contrary to the teachings of scripture but we are easily influenced by American culture to this end. Philippians 2 has been very convicting with regards to this. Paul says in chapter 2, “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others as more significant [WORTHY] than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” These verses have challenged us to be more humble and look to the interests of the others more than our own. From here it seems that God has continued to break down our pride especially in chapter 3. In this chapter we have been challenged not to put confidence in things we do, even spiritual things, to find our spiritual worthy. The reality is when we became Christians, God imputed or credited to our account the worthiness or righteousness of Christ. But in practice it is easy to believe that we have to be performing perfectly to be found spiritually worthy. For example, it is very easy to use success in ministry to justify myself as being spiritually worthy before God. But as I do this I put my confidence or boast in ministry success instead of boasting in knowing Christ. The result of this is spiritual arrogance and self-sufficiency, which is the opposite of Christian humility and hinders my relationship with Christ. Honestly I think sometimes God is not that concerned about how successful I am in ministry, but that I am faithful and enjoy partnering with him in ministry. Then when ministry is hard I can still be faithful and endure because my boast is not in the success but in enjoying the partnership with Christ as I share my faith and develop Christians in their faith. So we are learning to boast and glory in Christ and not in our own successes. Read Philippians 3:2-10 to get a better understanding of what we are learning here. We want to put no confidence in the flesh for our spiritual worth…this means don’t find our spiritual worth from what we do for God. Instead find our spiritual worth from Jesus, who is more WORHTY than anything else, because God has credited that worth to us. So when God sees us now as Christians, he sees the worthiness/righteousness of his son. So we, with Paul, want to “consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus [our] Lord.” It is about knowing Christ, relationally…just as we know another person. This is our goal to know him and be found in him. That our spiritual worth would be from Christ and not from our selves. I hope this makes sense, it is difficult to explain what God is teaching 18 people over the last 4 weeks in type. But if anyone wants to comment or ask me clarifying questions please email me. Kevin.Arrowood@Gmail.com I would love to explain more. All in all, God is doing much among our team. Our students have grown so much in one month through interactions with each other, our staff, talks, discipleship, time on the campus, and the experience of culture in Africa.

Christmas in July

After a month of waiting, my bag of clothes finally arrived- or, we tracked it down and chased after it until we found it. Either way, I have my own clothes again. It felt like Christmas when Kevin and I found it at the airport in Joburg. I kept thinking, "I never thought I would see any of this again. I'm so grateful!!" I just thought I'd let you in on a few things God has taught me through all of this. One, I care far too much about material things. I have been convicted about not "storing up treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but store up treasures in heaven..." (Mt 5) I have realized that I do not deserve or need many of the things that I have. I have no right to clothes that match, or cute outfits, etc. Those are simply an added gift from the Lord. God has been gracious to give me this perspective as I am around people every day who are unemployed, and do not even have a home or food, let alone nice clothes to wear. It is only by his grace (unmerited favor) that I have clothes and other things in abundance. And the third thing is from Matthew 6:28-30, that God is trustworthy and faithful, and he calls us not to worry about our needs. He clothes the lillies of the field, how will he not also then provide for me. The lesson am continually reminded of is one that a mom friend of mine always tells her kids- to have an "attitude of gratitude." I am to be thankful for what I have, not desiring the things that I do not have. Christ has certainly given me much gratitude over the MANY things that he has given me, not just clothes, but people, food, health, and mostly, my salvation! I hope that Lord encourages you through my own lessons.... Cat

Uli's house

July 1st I (Kevin) went with two guys John and Scott to visit our friend Uli at his parent’s house. Uli is a sophomore in Taaibos, one of the Res halls where we are ministering at the University. Uli became a Christian during his freshman year and is really hungry to grow. Every time I am around him I can see in his life how much he loves God and desires to serve him. We drove two hours to his family’s farm in Mpumalanga. We had a delicious lunch, boerwoerse, lamb chops, vegetables, and this really soft bread. His family was great and offered to help us with different things throughout our summer, like getting us tickets to a rugby game. After lunch we walked around his farm. They have mostly cattle and sheep, but they also have Bresbok and Wildebeast. They hunt the Bresbok and Wildebeast with Bow and Arrow and use the meat to make Biltong. We spent several hours with him and had great conversation about life and about the Lord. It was personally encouraging and challenging to us. On the way home we had a challenging conversation about the different ways God is calling us up to deeper spiritual leadership. This conversation was worth the entire time for me personally. It was exciting to be able to connect with two of the guys on my team at a deep personal level and challenge them up to take more leadership and responsibility.

Safari fun

Last weekend we had an off week with no teaching or ministry planned and we were in Africa…so we thought “we should do a little safari.” It was awesome. We drove two hours to the Pilanesburg game reserve. The first day was an adventure only to be found in African proportions. We arrived at the game park and drove around for about 4 hours. We saw lots of stuff the first day. We saw huge bull elephant, tons of impala, zebra, and wart hogs. Probably the coolest thing was seeing a journey of giraffe walk right by our cars. Just 10-15 meters from us. (Sorry I have begun to think in meters instead of feet here recently). We left the game reserve just before dusk and planned on driving to our guesthouse where we were to spend the night. On the way stopped at a Petrol Port to fill up the cars. All the Petrol Ports are full service in South Africa, so we pulled up and instructed the guy to fill them up. We also were a little low in oil in one car and asked them to fill it up as well. To put oil in these cars you have to open the boot (trunk) because the engine is in the back. To keep the boot open he propped it open with a stick. When he tried to close the boot he forgot to take the stick out and he shattered the entire back windscreen on the car. So here we are in the middle of No where Africa and the windscreen on one of our Kombie’s is gone. So we quickly taped a trash bag over it and were given a check from the manager to get it replaced. After this we headed to our guesthouse for the night. By this time it is 6pm and we are getting hungry. It takes us 30 min to find the little dirt road to our guesthouse after we probably passed it 4-5 times. But when we arrived at the house, it was sweet. A French couple Francoise and Alain run the house. We settled in and met their two dogs. A Boerbull and the other dog was a mix between a Boerbull and a Rhodesian Ridgback, they were awesome. By this time it was 7pm and we were starving. We asked Alain what were the closest restaurants open at this time of night. He said only two because we were literally in the middle of no where, at least a 40 min drive to the closest town with normal restaurants. Both restaurants he mentioned were Lodges, almost like country clubs and each place cost R120 per person for dinner. This was going to be the nicest meal we have had in South Africa. It was amazing. Well, it should be for R120 a person ($18). After we ate to the full we left for a short night sleep because we had to wake up at 5:30 am to leave for a guided game drive in the park. We got to the park the next morning at a little after 6 and left for a game drive at 6:30. The game drive was incredible. Our guide Pieter was the man. We ended seeing a white rhino 30 meters away. A black rhino, which he said he only sees a black rhino 2-3 times a month. We saw a journey of giraffe 10 meters from our Bakkie (truck). We then ran into a herd of elephants, 15-20, and they were 5 meters from us. Infact, one mom charged at us because we got too close to her baby…that was a little scary at first, but pretty fun afterwards to recount. From here Pieter said someone had found a pride of lions so we rushed to the sighting point. Once we got there we saw 6 females and one huge male lion. It was incredible. After this we began to head back to the game lodge for brunch. But when we got there one of our Kombies would not start. We tried a rolling start, but it did not jump it off. So the lodge called his mechanic over to help us. After 20 minutes of fiddling with it, he said it was the starter wires and he had it fixed. We were on our way home. On the way home we stopped at a lion farm where we could hold lion cubs, pretty cool. After two hours on the road we made it back to Pretoria and pulled in to our house in Pretoria. Later that night we left to get dinner at Roman’s pizza, and our Kombie would not start again. We opened the boot and looked into the engine and saw that we had a broken belt…what a day for car trouble. In 24 hours we had a broken window, a broken belt, and a bad starter.