3-17-08
2:30pm African time
Update by Megan Eastland

Today is a gorgeous day and marked the start of J. Bay Indaba! As I write this, the sound of a group of South African camp workers worshiping is filtering out of the camp offices while the Westside team is meeting with their groups for the first time at our camp. It is a beautiful sight! The drivers left very early this morning to pick up the kids while the rest of the team prepped for their arrival. We set up bedding and towels in each room, assembled gift bags to give the kids, got crafts ready, and prayerfully awaited their arrival. About 11 am they arrived, and naturally, 20 kids who were supposed to show up didn’t, but we had 20 new ones instead! The American teenagers stepped up incredibly as they played “Kaylyn says” and “Father Abraham” with the line of waiting kids. Traci, Becky and Schaun magnificently shifted and fit everyone in rooms. (I think I did hear though that some of the kids might be sharing beds, but I don’t know if that’s a joke or not. Ha!) One must love South Africa– no matter how well you plan, it will never go that way, and it always ends up better than we could have imagined!

The team is doing wonderfully. After each kid signed in, some of the registration team members then took the kids to their assigned cabin leader. Then they were greeted with a cheer, a smile, a hug, a new shirt and a gift bag and were told, “You are with me! I’m so excited to meet you!” The Africa children seemed so excited! They immediately were fed a huge lunch of spaghetti and salad. We then went into our meeting space, did a welcome, went over rules and a schedule, did some crazy worship with motions and Schuan gave a short talk on how valuable these children are in God’s eyes. When Schaun went over the schedule and told them we would eat again this evening, many of them laughed with amazement. We are so excited for these few days with the kids!

After this they will have free time on the beach playing games, dinner, another evening devotional, and some beach ball and perhaps a dance off tonight before bed!

I know that all of the Westside team members have been reallly affected by our experiences so far and I wanted to speak a bit about that as well. The idea of the soup kitchens has really touched some of our members. I spoke with Schaun this afternoon, and he said that it takes a mere $17.50 a month to feed 50 children every day! Every day. That’s about 35 cents a day per kid. I think that I heard that the average soup kitchen costs about $100 per month. I heard Darrell and Jennifer Agee talking about how if each of the five couples in their LifeGroup kicked in $20 a month, their LifeGroup could start an entire soup kitchen! What an incredible testimony for them to be able to see the faces that the soup kitchen feeds, and the communities that are changed by such a small amount of money!

We can’t wait to see what the next few days bring!

Pictures - Click to enlarge:

Motherwell Cemetery. See Update #2 for the story about the team’s experience visiting this overwhelming and unforgettable place.

Teams with their leaders on the first day of J. Bay Indaba. They are seen working in their very own devotional and breakout booklets provided by Westside.