Beat the Drum

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I
know it has been awhile since I have written a blog and for that I am extremely
sorry! I wish I could write more but because of busyness and limited internet
access I am not able to.

My
team and I were out of town all last week (Oct 10-18). We were in Somerset
East, which is about 3 hours Northwest of Jeffreys Bay. We were involved in a
biblically based HIV/AIDS awareness program called Beat the Drum. There is a
move called Beat the Drum about a young boy, Musa, who lives in a small village.
At the beginning of the movie Musa’s father dies from a “curse” that is on Musa
family which is actually AIDS. Everyone in the village shuns Musa and his
family because they think his family is cursed. In actuality, the people of the
village are just ignorant because they have never been taught about HIV/AIDS.
So to make a long story short Musa goes to Johannesburg to search for his uncle and in doing so finds an
awareness of HIV/AIDS. Musa and a friend he meets in Johannesburg take courage and start telling people the truth
about HIV/AIDS.  

If
you don’t already know, HIV/AIDS is extremely prevalent in South Africa. We had about 120 Beat the Drum volunteers and
amongst those volunteers we were split into five different school teams.
Aeroville (which was my team), Cookhouse (has the highest HIV/AIDS count in South Africa), Gill, Pearston, Johnson, and there was also a
community team who spoke to prisons and farmers. Our focus was to bust the
myths about AIDS such as: you will be cured in you sleep with a virgin, condoms
give you AIDS, if I have sex while holding hands I am still a virgin, if I deny
I have HIV/AIDS it will go away, and if I have sex with a fat person I will not
get HIV/AIDS because their fat absorbs the AIDS. Now all these myths seem
relatively dumb to you and I, but these people have never been educated about
HIV/AIDS and these are things they actually believe.

So
here we go, I will tell you what we thought God’s plan for the week was going
to be and then I’ll tell you how stinkin clever God is and what actually
happened. The plan was to show the movie to the grade 8 and 9 at AerovilleHigh School on Monday and come back Tuesday to start teaching from the Beat the
Drum curriculum. The curriculum shows us what to teach from day to day and in our
school team we split into smaller teams of 3 people and each 3 person team was
given either a grade 8 or grade 9 class to teach.

We
showed the movie to grads 8 and 9 on Monday and everything ran smoothly, praise
Jesus! Afterwards we did a lot of praying and preparing in order to teach the
curriculum on the next day, but when we arrived at the school on Tuesday there
were no students at the school. Apparently Aeroville has a new principal and
the teachers don’t like him so they decided to go on a small strike and send
all the students home. At this point I was a bit discouraged but knew that God
was in control. We found out that about 400 of the students live in a hostile
on campus so we had 40 minutes to go over and meet some of the students. I was
ready to get into some deep conversations with these students, but God had
other plans for the day. I ended up just playing games with some girls the
whole time. It was really fun and just gave us a chance to get to know them a
little and allow them to be comfortable around us and trust us more. We left
the school and I was still a bit discouraged. Honestly I was not trusting God
completely. I felt like we didn’t have much time with these students and I was
worrying but God is capable of immeasurably more than I can ask or imagine. He
is capable of using 5 minutes or 50 minutes. God rocks!   

The
next day the students were still on strike, so we went back to the hostile to
talk with them. I and two of my teammates walked up to a group of students and
started talking with them. I started talking with an extremely interesting girl
names Babalwa. She is in grade 11 and is really talkative and just a sweet
girl. She stood out to me amongst all the other students for some reason. She
was telling me how she didn’t understand why 18 year old girls were sleeping
with men old enough to be her grandpa. We started talking about Christianity
and she told me her parents were Christians but she wasn’t. She said she needed
to be a teenager first and Christianity is for when she gets older. I talked
with her some more and then in was time to leave. We invited all the students
to the youth rally we were having at the youth center the next night.

The
next night at the youth rally (Wednesday night) I was looking for Babalwa and I
couldn’t find her. I ended up meeting
some other students that night and sitting with them. I was an extremely
powerful night and God did incredible things in the hearts of those students.
They were given an opportunity to accept Jesus and challenged to abstain from
sex until marriage. We went back to Aeroville Thursday and we actually got to
teach in the classroom. We had 45 minutes and it took us 15 minutes to find our
classroom. Once we found our classroom only 3 students had actually seen the
movie. We talked to them about values and just some general stuff from the
movie that they could understand without having seen the movie. They also had a
chance to write letters to us about something in their lives that they need
advice on or have never told anyone. The bell rang and all the students left. I
left the room a little discouraged. A few of my teammates and I decided to go
over to the hostile to visit the students we met earlier in the week. I saw
Babalwa and was anxious to ask her if she was at the youth rally. She said she
would meet me at the hostile in a few minutes. So I went on over and started
playing a game called Oh Lele with some girls. The game just finished as
Babalwa walked up so I went up to her and asked her if she was at the youth
rally. She said yes and she said she accepted Jesus into her heart at the youth
rally!!!!! I was so excited! I gave her a huge hug! She said the youth rally
was extremely powerful and when she and her friends got back to the hostile
afterwards they were praying and reading the bible together. I asked her if she
had a bible of her own and she didn’t so I told her I would buy her one! So I
did and I gave it to her the next day! She was so excited to receive it! Please
pray that Babalwa continues to fall more and more in love with God every day!
God gave me a huge heart for her since the first day I met her and I know He
has incredible plans for her life!

So
now it is Thursday afternoon, and we decided for our second and last day of
teaching on Friday we would split the guys and the girls up. I’ve been reading
a book called Messy Spirituality (which I totally recommend reading btw) and
there is one part where the author tells the story of the Samaritan woman and
Jesus at the well and I’ve never heard the story told in such a way. Here is a
lady who has made all kinds of bad choices. Everyone thinks she is
unsalvageable, unteachable, and unredeemable, but Jesus comes and tells her
everything she has every done. He tells her who she really is when she doesn’t
even know who she is. He redeems her! So I had been thinking all week how
perfect that story would be to tell to a group of teenage girls who really have
no clue why they are on earth or what they are doing here. So I presented the
idea to my teaching partner and she was down with it.

Friday
comes and we go to teach the girls we had the day before, but once again, God
had a totally different plan for us. I ended up teaching with three other girls
I wasn’t prepared to teach and we were in a classroom with about 30 girls whom
we didn’t know if we had the day before or not. We had about three minutes to
put our plans together. I told them I had to tell the Samaritan woman at the
well story from John 4 and they were fine with that. So we went in the
classroom to find out from the teacher that we only had 35 minutes when we
thought we were going to have an hour. We started teaching and trying to have
discussions with them about things such as dreams, love, and lust. They seemed
to be listening but they didn’t participate much in the discussions. All of a
sudden the bell rang and they we all about to leave. I asked them if they would
be interested in staying and listening to a story and they all said yes. So I
told them to picture themselves as the woman at the well and I started reading
the story out of Messy Spirituality. I finished and told the girls that if any
of them wanted Jesus to do this for them He would and I told them they could
stay after and talk with any of us if they wanted to. They all left the
classroom but not a minute later five girls walked back in. One girl said, “My
friends want to accept Jesus!” So two of my teammates and myself led four girls
to Christ on Friday! God is so big! He can do immeasurably more than we can
ever ask or imagine!