The subtitle of this book was, “A Search for Eden Among Life’s Weeds.”  When we look at ourselves and those around us we can see the beautiful creation of God, but we can also see those weeds coming back again and again.  God saved us once, but is continuing to refine us and to prune us into a beautiful bride for Himself.  That is not always easy or pain free.

What I loved about this book is that it had tons of stories about her life and what she learned from them.  From volunteering at Ground Zero days after 9/11 or passing on stories from her granny, she shows the different things that God has made her life beautiful.  We each need to share stories of what God has done and is doing in our lives.  The Bible contains amazing God inspired stories, but God continues to use each one of us to tell His story today.

This was a great book, but here are some of my favorites:

MY 3 BEST OF THE BEST BOOK LIST:

1.  Crazy Love by Francis Chan

2.  Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne

3.  Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/worldview/blogs/21386-would-you-do-anything-for-god

It is now the morning of January 1^st, 2010 her in South Africa and the U.S. is partly into the new year as well (one hour to go for the west coasters). 2010 is a very big year for South Africa. The world will be watching as the World Cup comes here in June.  (That’s soccer for those of you who don’t know) I’m bummed to leave before it starts, but I know 2010 will be an exciting year filled with adventure for me as well.

2009 ended great.   I was done teaching at the creche about a month ago and have since been working in the Children’s Home.  I leave in precisely 3 weeks and 6 days, but who’s counting   Being back in the Children’s Home and working full-time has been a great experience.   I am getting great training to be a dad one day. Each day I bathe, dress, and change nappies (diapers) of the kids, well only the ones that need it.  I cook dinner for 12 and even sometimes do the dishes by hand.  Then there’s the fun part of discipline. I get to be the dad figure, because I am the only guy volunteer in the home right now.  It has been great though. 

Christmas was lots of fun as all 4 of us volunteers all worked the whole day in the home.  We took turns disciplining and doing whatever else was needed. It was a long, but fun day.  I just shaved a beard I had been growing for 2 months. When you are 9,000 miles away from your girlfriend, these are the kind of things you do.  There’s one kid who always is scared of something. When I put him to bed, he always says, “I’m scared for the thunder” or scared of something else. One night he said, “I’m scared for the beard.” I think that was the clue to shave. 

I never thought I was the tattoo getting type. Why would you want something on your body forever?  I gave in and joined the inked craze. Last week I got a tattoo on my arm that says, “”SEEK JUSTICE, LOVE MERCY, WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD.”  It’s Micah 6:8, my life verse and my marching orders for life.  I also have an outline of Africa in the middle of the words, so to always have Africa and the people here on my mind…and arm. 

This has been a great year here in Africa, I have 4 more weeks to end well here before I leave.  I will definitely miss all the people I’ve met here and the kids who I’ve come to love.  I came here, because I only had heard of statistics of the kids in need. These numbers have faces.  I have come to love kids who have HIV, who are orphaned, who live in poverty, and this is just the beginning in my journey with them.  Even though I might not be here after this month, doesn’t mean I will stop fighting for them. 

If you are the praying type, please pray for a job and a place to stay in Chicago.

 I will be spending 3 weeks or so in CA before heading to Chicago.  Hope to run into you.

Taylor

Along with my two friends Marc and Tony, I cycled 220 kilometers total and traveled on train probably 5 times that.  It was a great time for us to spend our school holiday just to get away, have an adventure, grow closer to God and each other.  We cycled from the South African border to Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique.  We got to spend a few days relaxing, experiencing the culture, and getting to meet a bunch of amazing people.  Also the whole weekend we were stared at. You see Marc is 6’4”, Tony is 6’6”, and I am 6’7”.  Plus our new friend Stella took us where not a whole lot of other white people were. It was hilarious as people wanted to shake our hands and Marc even had a request to have a picture taken with him. I guess they thought we were famous. 

I especially loved the times on the road.  It was so cool to see kids come out from their huts in the middle of nowhere to come wave at us.  I had some great times just thinking about the future, praising God for His creation, and singing at the top of my lungs.  I definitely had a  ” I can’t believe I get to live this life” moment a few times during our trip.  I’m very glad to have a few weeks of school holiday left, before I head back to school. 

The people here don’t know what a hoedown is…it’s pretty funny.

So the big news of my life is that I went all the way to Africa to get an American girlfriend. She was part of that group from the states who came here to help build a new classroom for the school. I also joined them on their next stop in Empangeni. Her name is Karen. She’s back in Chicago, but we got to spend a few days together in various locations before she went back. We’re doing the whole long-distance thing for now, but we’ll see what God has in store. She wants me to tell you that she is super cool and that none of us expected this to happen, but it’s definitely a gift from God.

The week following my birthday, I went with a few members of my church to a healing/revival conference in Durban. This was hectic, but it was an incredible week. The days were packed from 8:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day with a two-hour break for lunch and dinner. Randy Clark was the main speaker, who was one of the leaders of the Toronto Blessing. One of the highlights was hearing from Suprisa Sithole, who shared a few stories of how God used him to raise several people from the dead! Crazy stuff. It was cool, because it just wasn’t a learning time, but there was also a time of impartation for healing. On the last day Randy asked if there were people who had never prayed for someone who was healed. Out of the 300+ people in the conference there were 10 who raised their hands. I was one of them. He then asked us to come up front so he could pray for us. It was a special time, where I feel God did something great in me. Now I’m so amped to pray for the sick and have incredible faith to see God’s amazing healing power at work. Now I just got to go pray for the dead to be raised. Why have you never seen someone raised from the dead? Have you ever prayed for a dead person? I haven’t, but hopefully will have enough faith to do so one day.

It’s been quite the challenge teaching these kids, but awesome at the same time. I get to share Bible stories, but really miss preaching and ministering from the word. The Home Based Care ladies of Botshabelo have a training/equipping time every Wednesday morning. Adrian, the guy who usually leads it, has been on holiday for 3 weeks, so he asked me to step in for him. I’ve already got to share twice, and actually should be preparing for my sermon tomorrow, but instead I thought I’d write you fine people. I’ve also had the opportunity to disciple a guy in my life group these last few weeks. I feel called to pastor a church in the near future, and it’s cool to see God already beginning to shape this pastoral side of me, even when I didn’t expect it.

In 4 days, I will have been here 6 months! Please pray for the second half of my work here with Botshabelo and direction for the future, especially for Karen and my relationship. Thanks to all who support me, both financially and prayerfully. You guys are amazing!

God bless,

 Taylor

Since I had the next week off, they invited me to join them on the second part of their trip to a city called Empangeni. It is located about an 1 1/2 hours away from Durban, about a 7 hour drive from where I am now. I scrambled at the last minute to find a plane ticket, but managed to get one the day before we left. Empangeni is a beautiful city, very close to the Indian Ocean on the southern east coast of South Africa. We spent the week building the foundation and concrete slab for a new orphanage. The first day I was in charge of carrying the 50 kg (110 lb.) bags of cement to each of the 3 cement mixers. My arms were mush afterwards. The day we poured the concrete slab, I was working one of the cement mixers. It was very challenging to get the right amount of sand, stone, and cement. I did feel very manly though on both occasions. My favorite day was actually getting away with the guys. Some of the elders (pastors) of the church and the guys from our group went out for coffee, which turned into lunch as well. I was just so blessed being in the company of so many amazing men of God. I was just a sponge soaking up their Godly wisdom and had a lot of fun too. We were able to visit a few orphanages and other ministries that the church was involved in. One of the days we spent in a game park. This is the 2nd one I’ve been to since being here. It is so amazing to see giraffe, zebras, rhino, and hippo in the wild. I was dissappointed not to see any elephant or lion at either game park, but I guess you can’t really complain about that. We spent the rest of the week hanging out with other amazing people in the church and other members of Team America. It was actually the first team sent from “The Centurion Project”, a NGO started by the group leader Terry Krueger, who now is an elder (pastor) at Southlands Church in Brea, CA. He is a South African guy, who looks Mexican, was born in Zambia, and now lives in Cali. He planted Thandaza, the church we visited, 15 years ago.

In between these two weeks, I had the chance to attend the Dreaming Weekend for Botshabelo, the NGO I am volunteering for. This was for the board members and staff members to get away and dream for the future of Botshabelo. This was a great honor to join them, because I was the only volunteer invited to come. We did a dreaming time of where Botshabelo would be in 6 years. I got to act as the very 1st baby ever to be in our Babies Home, who in 2015 would be 15 years old. It was really fun. We actually just got the 100th baby to come into our Babies Home. There was a picture in the local paper of #1 holding #100. The first baby is now 9 years old and was adopted by one of the ladies who works for Botshabelo.

Everyone would get a kick to talk to me in person. The American group told me I have a slight South African accent. There are a few phrases that I now say naturally, but some I say on purpose to fit in. The most noticable is the inflection in my voice when I ask a question. I catch myself doing it all the time and have to laugh. I tend to end a lot of statements with the word “hey”, as in this is a cool email hey. When someone says something kind of astonishing, I say “sho”. Those are out of habit, but I purposefully get myself to say that things are “lekker”, which is Afrikaans for “sweet” and has made it’s way into English slang. I also am trying to get myself to say “is it?” to respond to statements made by other people. It seems normal when someone says something like, “my cat’s name is Sprinkles”. But when you say, “I had a crazy experience at the store today” and they reply “is it?” I think it’s pretty funny. It’s very South African and I’m trying to have it become part of my vocabulary. I also say “shame” and “bru” among others.

Please continue to pray for me in my class. Discipline is still incredibly hard. I am an untrained teacher trying to do my best, but still struggle in how to teach these kids and keep them disciplined, so I can teach them. Please also pray for me in my next stage after I’m done here at Botshabelo. I am 5 months into a 20 month visa, but am unsure of what God has for me after my 1 year commitment here.

It was also awesome to see the U.S. soccer team almost win the Confederation Cup here in South Africa. Definitely bummed to have missed seeing my Lakers win it all, but they’ve done it before and they’ll do it again.

Love and miss everyone.

Taylor