November 1, 2007

This past week has come to a close like a few things here. We spent our last days in our ministry locations and are spending our last official days a big team of 35. This weekend is the split for those of us going to Swazi and Kenya.

            So we said our goodbyes to our friends in Atteridgeville. All of our street babies, Francina, and Alice. On Tuesday we had a party with the children at Francina's house. We had balloons, chocolate, a bible story, songs, biscuits (cookies), and coke. We had a blast. Katie summed up the gospel for the children and Francina translated. Francina came alive and did an awesome job with the children. She looked at each individual child after the story and asked them if they understood. She asked one child and he said something about satan, and Francina immediately told him no satan doesn't matter, only Jesus. She preached at them for 5 minutes explaining. It was awesome. It was like the Holy Spirit came upon her and she came alive and began to sing songs and dance with them. I have a video of it so I will definitely share that in December. All of us just got a vision that Francina would continue to teach the children the bible. We could see her home being a place of refuge for them. As each of us told her about it she agreed and was excited about it. The next day we sat down with her and talked a lot about the children's stories, and just what goes in her neighbor's lives. It was really sad to hear all of this bad stuff. I was sad to leave on that note of hearing all of this bad stuff, but its real and its life there. Things like how some of the children's fathers beat their mothers and even them. We have even noticed that most of the men when they aren't working then they are drinking, so it's a big problem. One little boy's mom gambles and his father beats her, so this boy, Frans, is very rough and hits us.  It was encouraging to know that Francina knew these things and she cared. She didn't just look at it as if it is life and she can't do anything about it, but that she wants to help even though its hard in her culture, because there are so many unspoken rules. Francina reaffirmed that the children already call her auntie; they never call her by her name, and they do play in her yard all the time. She was excited about the idea of teaching the children the bible. She even mentioned having to ask some of the parents first. So please pray for Francina that the Lord will use her in a mighty way in these children's lives as well as her neighbor's, because the only way these children's home lives are going to change is if their parent's hearts change and have faith in Jesus.