Back to reality…..

Its my second day back at work and back to reality, I am finding it hard to snap right back into things…I have this void feeling now and i konw i have truely left more than half my heart back in South Africa. It is good to be home…there is nothing like the comforts of HOME….I am continuing to seek God and his plan and purpose for me…these post college years are probably the most trying ones i have yet to experience. My main foucus is to really know what exactly I was to learn from my experience and how I can channel the things i saw and the lessons i learned over there. As to be expected this was a life changing trip….and now i am trying to adapt and practice all things that I relized i needed to change about my daily life as well as inspire others to “be the change” as well. One of my teamates who went to Africa with me said that if you want transformation for a group of people, a nation, a mentality, etc you must be the first to transform….from there its contagious……Totally…such a great truth….I hope that you will all see the transformation and rennovation that happened in me and be inspired as I was. I am never planning on insisting or cramming anything at you or on you….I just hope that you too will see not only the ways we can help with these third world countries but help the people in our own backyards and our own lifes. I am planning on “unventing” my life in everyway possible so that i can focus on what really important and have the ability to help on a whim whenever needed mentally financially spirtually and emotionally…..SO The weather sucks it totally zapped me I totally wasnt expecting the heat which i should have duh its june…and the smoke my goodness my allergies are going haywire. lol……….its been fun catching up with friends, sharing stories and pictures seeing exciting changes in there life’s and circumstances……I did miss the girl time for sure My cousin is getting married this weekend should be a fun wedding….I am in it which will make this number 14 I believe..(someday I’ll have a movie made about me) ha I love how i am referred to as the “almost 27 dresses girl” ha I love it though there fun and i dont have to make the big commitment just the 200 for the dress and shoes lol plus this one should be fun fun because she’s marrying a Fireman so yes be jealous a wedding full of single firemen  (unless of course they all get called away to the fires dang lol) good times good times…..So life goes on as I knew it…BUSY BUSY BUSY and Busy…but oh so fun so complicated and so intriguing…..I know these next few month especially are going to be used for a lot by God for refining, reflecting, molding and stretching i am buckled up and ready for the ride and excited to see how my trip to Africa will play into my everyday life back here at home!

Back Back to cali cali….

WHOA, what a trip…..

Our flight in South Africa was delyed 2 and half hours which made us miss our connecting flight in D.C. which sucked! we spent about 20 hours on the plane from South Africa to D.C. and it was a packed packed flight…no empty seats so that ment no laying down ha….two sleeping aids and i didnt care i slept almost the entire last 8 hours….once we landed in D.C. at 8:30 am  half of our team got a seat on the 12:35 flight and Myself and four others had to go on the 2:40 flight which didnt put us into SFO until 6:00 or so lol at least we got all our luggage…..i litterally lived june the 19th twice it was wierd…..but cool….now i am home trying to fight to stay awake and adjust to the time change….i was craving mexican food so badly they dont even have tortilla chips in Africa so i ate el rosal yumm…..I have a sense of loss right now i left half my heart in South Africa and i grive so much for those poor children…..and that entire country it is nice to be home see my family and close friends who came to greet me upon arrival….This has been an amazing experience and I can’t wait to share it all with you…..I hope that it has or will impact your life in some way as it did mine…..I love you all and can’t thank you enough for your comments, prayers and all ways of support i could not have done this without you…..If you have a chance come check out video, pictures, stories and  testimonies from all of us who went on the trip this sunday at 7pm…..hope to see ya there

 

With love

Amy

Almost home….

Wow thank you all for such wonderful comments prayers and encouragements. This trip has been the most amazing trying heartbreaking humbling and life changing experience of my life…..I have a sense of bittersweetness as i prepare to come home…it is very hard for me to part with the orphans that i have built such a strong bond with but i know that God will continue to give them Hope and fill them with joy even as i leave and that Prayer even across the globe will still be heard and answered….today we made food parcells for the orphans with contained maze meal, dried beans split peas knorr soups sugar salt tinned fish cooking oil tea bags koolaid and soymeal….each orphan gets one of these parcelles a month and it was fun today to put them together tomorrow we will pass them out to the orpahns before we depart….It sucks we are all so sick today i feel a bit better but my voice is pretty much gone….I am looking forward to seeing you all when i get home thank you for following me on my journey and for all the comments and support….please pray for are health to fully improve because a 24 hour plane ride with a sinus infaction could potentally suck also for smooth and safe travels….i will be getting home on friday and will do my best to contact you all but over the weekend i will be adjusting to the time change and the jet lag everyone is welcome to come on sunday night at 7 pm at Big Valley church in the YAC we will be showing pictures and talking about our trip….Love to all…

Amy

The hardest Day Yet….

Today Gavin preached at the mornig service…so good! The church services here last for like 3 hours and are so so long and today we were all really tired and not feeling well but we pressed through after service we eat a meal with the pastor and his family and took a walk around the township….this was devastating….these homes are made out of corragated aluminum and are about 200 square feet total…the floors are either cement or dirt and the roofs are either thatch are more aluminum….there are only one or two rooms and the entire family is crammed into them….the children are playing outside with no shoes and walking on broken glass and trash everywhere…..the children find the smallest things to keep them entertained and they love high fives and thumbs up ……we visted a women today in her home who was very sick and weak and we prayed over her and visted with her…..at the nigh tservice befroe it started we played with the orphans this one girl who is 12 named prudence is so amazingly talented and beautiful she and i and her brother had really bonded both their parents have died of Aids and they live with there elderly grandparnets….Prudence came over too me wraped her little arms around me and started to sob…she was really sick and wasnt feeling good and wanted her mother….I cried with her and never stoped for about 5 hours…..during the church service i held her in my lap with her 8 year old brother and at my side who started to sob once the fathers day announcment started a lot og the orpahns started to wale all us girls lost it! i had prudence her brother and about 4 other orpahns sobbing on me and all the other girls were comforting the others as well …..this has been the hardest thing i have ever ever experienced i have not stopped crying and i am still crying as i write this…..saying goodbye to them was like someone was being murdered the whaling on both ends………..please pray for us we are so emotionally drained and please pray for these people and these poor children who are having to endure Aids and being orphans and being infacted with HIV as well….thank you for all your support and your prayer we feel them….Love to all…i’ll write more soon!

BTW

Scaredthread.org we are having problems with so that is why there have not been updates….it should be up again soon. Ill be posting as much as possible the pictures should be up on the scaredthread website.

dankie….

Dankie is a afrikaans word we have learned over here and it means Thank you…..its pronounced Donky ……anyways we are having a great time yesterday we finsihed our young adult conference WOW so amazing,….Shawn preached and rocked This campus!  a few of us shared our testimony to a large group of college students. I really connected to a lot of the students and have made some great friends along the way. Last night we experenced something right out of a comdey sitcom….they tried to cram about 20 of us  into a tiny tiny room and meet the leadership of the christian club and eat with them…because they want to give us there best they had polished the room right before we entere dso the fumes were almost more than we could bear and i think it went to our heads because a lot of us could not stop laughing and it was hillarious….the presidkent came in to keep us distracted because the food was so delyed and he basically was begging to go to the USA and talked abuot how he was all for interracial marriage and wasnt understanding that mallory was married seriuosly it was so funny…the food never came after one hour of waiting so we left and as we were driving out the gate the men who had gone to ge tthe food were walking back onto the campus and we could see them throwing there hands up and looking so confused OMG we felt bad but we had to go…there is still so much more to share too but i want to share it in person…. TOday we went to the orphan center that our church sponsors and buillt. Oh my gosh we were greated with a marching band and a lot of festivities…one thing  i do not like is how muc hwere are treated like famous people. It is really sad that they feel they have to entertain us give us there very best etc when we have to only to play with them love them and learn from them…there are alot of things about this culture we are all having a quite difficult time adjusting to but there are many many things we totally love….boy oh boy can they dance…wow i am telling you! some of us have learned certain steps to tribal dances and we have had so much fun …the musical talent over here is unbelieveable as well,…tomorrow we are spending the day at the church Big Valley built and monday we get to go to the Lion park we are stoked! Today was one of the most touching days for a lot of us…we fed the orphans played with them and learned a lot about there stories,…we got to meet the ones we sponsor as well….it was really really tough to see the little cildren with the HIV aids virus and the sores on there bodies…to know the reality of them making it to there 12th birthday is so slim makes my stomach turn into knotts…please pray for us we are all very emotionally drained physically drained and a lot of  our team is having issue with health…..Love to all at home missing you and praying for you….

This Just in from South Africa… :)

Hi all what a blessing it is to get to write again so soon. Mom thank you so much for checking into my account mix up i am doing fine but needless to say i am Mad at them ha …………Today we visited an orphanage and played with the children and sang with them and hugged them, and loved them. Afterwards we went to the store and bought so much food for there orphan center and brought it back to them and it was so amazing. Seriously these children are so cute and love to be love it breaks my heart and i will forever have the images of there faces burned into my mind forever. I can not imagine loosing my parents especially to such a devastating disease. Today i found out tht the government nationally and worldly claims that there are only 25% of the population infected with HIV AIDs but in fact more than 50% is. That is so wierd for me to think that everyonther person i see has AIDs and that more than half the population will be extinct in five years statistically. This country is so sad and so badly needs help…it is hard to stay hopeful for me because it is hard for me to think that anything could ever even get better and how in the world can just a few people save an entire nation from such horrible things….the reality is it can’t and no one can….God covers all of this and he is capable of reviving this place. I am so glad and privileged to be working along side these wonderful people and this wonderful organization of people who work so hard and do so much good everyday all day every year! I have met so many wonderful people over here and really enjoyed being submersed into the culture…Even though these people have very little and live in such horrible conditions they have such a joy Us Americans i truley believe will never experience! Seriously the less you have the more you have and that theme is so strong over here. I actually find myself envying them in someways…i feel such a sense of errie peace over here and know this will not be my last time here…THIS IS AFRICA this is amazing God is here and the simplicity here makes it so easy to find him. The devastation and the HIV aids epidemic is so hard to see and face each day as we visit these orphanages and HIV aids hospices and Schools but i have not been desensitized to this so the degree is much much harder for me than for the locals. I think that is why they are able to find joy in things much eaiser than i sure have…This is the hardest thing i have ever had to experience and face but it has been so good…seriously i am comming home so different i can already feel the renovation and as hard as it has been its the best thing in the world. Again i have so much to tell and so little time to write…. I hope you are all well Hi Mommy i love you thank you for being my mom and supporting me through this and everything and helping me with these stupid quirks with my accounts and such! daddy good to talk to you and hear your voice i love you very much Ty thanks for your encouragment and your wonderful gentle spirt towards me i enjoyed speaking with you yesterday…Deb thanks for the comments i love them and they are so uplifting and encouraging…. Hi sissy hope your well i love you and am proud of you! DAD please tell grandma i love her and give her a hug and reassure her i am ok! And please tell Pa thank you for falling and taking some of the attention of worry off me ha tell him i love him too…. please continue to pray for us it is so Thick over here and each day is so emotionally and physically draining. and keep the comments coming thank you Lawrence and hill for your encouraging words. miss you all oh and check scaredthread.org there are some fun pictures up! much Love.

Amy

greetings from south africa!

Hi all i have really appreciated your comments there so comforting. I miss you all i am a bi homesick today not really sure why but I am. I am having an amazing time i can not even begin to  tell you but  i will do my best to try….The time change has been difficult but so fun because as most of you knw i am nocturnal and i love that  i am staying up late but waking up before the alarm goes off. It ha been so nice to be the first one up take a nice hot shower in the morning brew coffee do devotions and then hang out with the girls as they each awake. God is serisuly doing an amzaing rennovation of my heart over here in just the smallest things. One thing i prayed the hardest for about this trip was to be stretched…the funny thing is that i assumed what he would use to stretch me and tryed to prepare myself accordingly…ha DUH of course he is not going to use these things otherwise it would defeat the purpose right…so things such as loosing my luggage…my ATM account being frozen even though i took all precautionary methods to advoid that and other small things to show me to fully rely on him and just have complete faith that he will provide and he sure has. I have been so blessed amongst all of this….Today was amazing we got up early and went to a public high school where they had what we would call a rally at home there were at leas one hundred kids there and we spoke to them about various things….they were so amazing they treated us like celebrities wanting our autographs and hugs it was wierd….after we went to a small orpahnage and played with the children so hearbreaking but such a wonderful experience….these kids are amazing and just need a lot of love. We have laughed so much this trip and i am excite to see what more is in store…..I could go on for dys but my time is limited love to all

Amy

THIS IS AFRICA!!!!!

well guys were here we made it and WOW have we been tried,stretched and amazed. There is all so much to share with you all. we laned in South Africa and 16 of our bags were missing!!! I can not tell you how trying this has been for me! anyone who knows me knows i am very particular about my things especially and as selfish and westernized this sounds it is really very hard to be so far from home in a third world country without any of your things except the cloths on your back and the few tolietries i carried on! But wow God has given all of us so much patience and has provided so much for us. I felt like the story in the bible where jesus takes the little boys fivefish and five loafs of bread and feeds an entire  village. Two of the girls go tthere bags and we have been surviving by wearing there cloths and we hav really not gone without! We were told today that we should not expect to get our bags back but just about one hour ago johan the man who founded the foundation were working with bribed the airport workers and oh surprise surpirse there were our bags! WHOA what a relief however it was nice to experience this trying time of being completely dependant on God to provide. I have to admit i was scared half to death! but God is good and faithful and I am fine. THe food is Amazing here i am so excited about that. The weathers nice and the people are so warm and welcoming. Yesterday we went on a surfari OMG so so amazing we saw just about every animal imagained and all within 8 feet or so from the car! My cameras dead we dont have access to converters yet but I will have pictures because we will all share thank goodness for great team members. Anyways i miss you all so much….mom thank thank thank you for insisting i take acaange of clothes in my carry on I love these moments that remind me how much i really do need you! Holly my dear friend I hope you had a wonderful birthday I miss you all so so so so so much and love you all more…please please please keep praying for us we are facing so many trials each day…. we are 9 hours ahead of you and i wont be blogging as much as i thought because we are really busy and really tired but ill be on as much as i can also….check www.sacredthread.org Shawn blogs everyday about what we are doing and what we have done he is much more diligant and has easier access to a computer…..thank yo ufo rthe comments it makes me feel much more connected and loved ha…Hope all is well at home can’t wait to share with you all in person!

Leavin on a jet plane

Hi all,

We leave good ol Modesto Today to head to San Francisco for the night to jump on a plane tomorrow morning at 6 am and fly to South Africa! I am all packed, and the anticpation is seriously killing me ha….I can’t not believe just how calm i am God is Good! Please continue to pray for our safety, our health and our patients with eachother. our flight is a total of 22 hours YIKES! I am so excited for this adventure though and feel very blessed that i get to have this experience. I love you all and can not wait to come back and share my adventures and pictures with you all.

Amy