We are blessed by living in Africa, life is not as rushed, things just happen slower in this part of the world. Thus, decent internet access is limited and slow. We don't have landlines where we live and so have to navigate bad wireless connections.
To be honest, it has felt really difficult to sit down and put on "paper" what has been happening. These two things together have lead to limited connection to you.
So what has been happening?
Our team grows
Jen Chi Lee our new team mate arrived safely in SA on Jan 6th. Jen has been adjusting well to the context, culture and language learning. Jen initially lived with us but now has moved into Zandspruit. She is living with a family we have built relationships with and it seems to be going well. It is a gift to have her here and living in the community we work.
Faith Network??
The last time we wrote we shared that our faith network was in the middle of a discernment process. We asked folks to clarify how they were able to commit building a community together. It proved to be a helpful process although it has been sad to see many who don't live in our community decide to relate on the periphery. Unfortunately most are white folks and so the dynamic of the group has changed. With less ability for true friendship and reconciliation. Hopefully we will have other opportunities to relate cross culturally in the future.
The positive is that things have shifted more towards a faith community. Becoming a place where we are learning how to become a true community, to build friendship, to get into each other spaces and homes, to share...rather than just talking about issues.
The group is made up of younger folks who all seem to have a heart to see their communities change. We hope to build a community where these folks with great potential can be developed in their faith, and learn to engage our community together.
It has been good to see some folks realizing the need to take initiative and ownership for helping this space become what we want it to be. Our challenge is to lead by developing folks like Thabo & Anathi to reach out, empowering others.
Pray for us as we figure out how to help initiative and ownership to grow.
Partnership network
We have spent the last 2 years building relationships, learning culture and context, trying to discover what has worked and what has failed in terms of bringing lasting and sustainable transformation in Zandspruit & Cosmo city.
We are now bringing together like minded people, Pastors, NGO leaders and community people, who agree that the way things have been done have not worked and that we need a "new wine skin".
A saviour mentality from outside entities providing services and a dependancy mentality on the inside have lead to dysfunctional relationships. A local Pastor shared how he had recently been involved in an area where an outside church had been working into a poor area for 15 years. Nothing had changed. We don't want to work with good intentions for 15 years and see no change.
We long for a "new wine skin". We want to work with the local community to empower and build relationships of trust.
This week a group of 10 stakeholders are meeting together to decided how we want to go forward together to build something that will last. Something that will help create an environment that enables lasting and sustainable change through relationships built on trust and life giving partnerships. Pray for clear direction and wisdom as we lead in this space.
Family
Surprise, our family is unexpectedly growing! I am 14 weeks pregnant with our little surprise. We are continuing to adjust to the news and the practicalities of having 3 children. The only real thing we know is that this must be God's plan so we should be okay. In other family news, Keira is turning 4 in July and is very excited about being "even bigger". She and Jordan are learning how to play nicely together especially as Jordan has quite the strong personality, with very strong opinions. As a Mom I am stretched, and look forward to the days that I get to spend with other moms in the community talking about pregnancy and life with children, it truly is my highlight.
Our house continues to be a social center where we host many people and more recently we have broken into the "kid circuit". Many children from our street now consider our house the place to play, so once again I go from having 2 children to 6 children in the afternoons. They really are a lot of fun though and I am glad they all play so well together.
Follow us on twitter @badirammogo
With love,
Trevor, Chrissy, Keira, Joradan +1
