The Surreal Deal

I have safely landed in South Africa and arrived at the JAM base in Hout Bay, near Cape Town.  The flight was long and uncomfortable, California could not be farther from South Africa.  The country is beautiful.  The first thing I noticed as my plane was making it's decent into Cape Town was the grand contrast in living styles.  Looking out onto a hill I could see beautiful houses, as I followed the ridgeline my eyes crossed a road and there was a shantytown.  Wealth and poverty mixed together like I've never seen.  Git (Gerhard) wasn't at the airport to pick me up.  I guess he was confused and thought my flight landed at 12 midnight when I landed at 12 noon.  This was cause for an adventure.  I hired out a tourist/taxi driver and with no phone number and the wrong address for JAM we started to try to find the camp.  Got to drive through Cape Town which was beautiful.  It's a city unlike any oher I've been in.  Let me tell you, South African drivers make LA drivers look like the best in the world.  I'm thankful I won't have to drive while I'm here because between the reverse side of the road and the pedestrians running everywhich way it'd be bad.  Anywhoo... Long of the story short we found a phone number and got directions and I made it to JAM's base at 2 pm, walked around, napped, chatted with Git for a while and then left to go on an outreach.

The outreach was awesome.  We ran a soccer seminar for a couple of hours with a team from Brazil.  The Brazilians are traveling around to different communities putting on these mini-soccer camps (which they were excellent at doing).  They partnered with JAM to work in some of the communities where JAM typically does ministry.  JAM functioned more as a facilitator for this outreach which meant my job was helping the Brazilians with English and picking up cones when their was the need for that.  Don't know exactly what's on the plate for toady, some outreach somewhere.  This guy named Derek is here checking out JAM and might be going on full time with them to help disciple the JAM interns.  I might run some errands with him today in town while I wait for the outreach tonight.  Continue to pray for me, It's been an awesome first 24 hours in SA.  I must admit, it's good to get out of LA, and the USA.  Keep it real. Love God and love others.