helllo south africa.

I am in south Africa. I feel like I am home, cheesy, I know, but in some ways true. South Africa has shaped who I am in so many ways. Looking back at my last trips here, I am reminded of the ways in which South Africa has challenged me and shaped me into the person I am today. I am still getting used to the idea that this will be my home for the next seven months. It is both scary and exciting. My prayer for this semester is humility. It is interesting doing a study abroad program to a place you have been before. The people, the city, and the cultural differences are familiar to me. I have experienced it before, but the program itself is something so different. My prayer is that I will be able to truly approach this entire semester as a learner. I am trying to learn what it looks like to live in South Africa as a student, not necessarily here just for missions. It is this weird process of learning how to reconcile that I am here for both missions and school. My prayer is that I am able to truly learn what it means to live a missional lifestyle. That is my hope. To learn what it means to live missionally, to love continually. I want to soak it all in. I have so much to learn from my peers. I can’t wait to begin to hear their hearts and the journey that brought them to South Africa. This semester is going to be different than any other trip I have been on to Africa before. Before we left the states, our program coordinator challenged us to think in a new way, he told us to begin to realize that everyone matters. I loved that. That is something that I have been trying to focus on, that I have been trying to constantly replay in my head. I am but a vessel for Christ.

We spent our first day out in the city of Johannesburg today. We got the opportunity to travel around Soweto, one of the fundamental cities in the breakup of apartheid. We walked the streets where the Soweto shootings occurred, and saw the place where Hector Peterson was shot. We drove past Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela’s former homes. It is just so surreal to think that it has only been 15 years since apartheid. I am so excited to learn from the South Africans I encounter. I am so fascinated by the culture and also by the reconciliation that has already begun here. In some ways I feel like south Africa has come much farther than America in the struggle against racism. Here in South Africa people are proud of their race, and embrace the differences, but also come to each other as humble learners, willing to talk about the differences and move forward together. It is incredible.

We start classes on Monday, which is going to be great. We are taught by South African professors. I am taking history and culture of South Africa, 8 units of Zulu, intercultural communication, and global engagement. We do our first six weeks in Pietermariztburg (PMB), taking classes and we work at a service sight for a month. After that we head to Capetown of the last month. From there most of the students will fly back to APU, then I will fly back to PMB and continue working at a ministry, Walk in the Light, until mid August.

missing all of you.