Relationships are the key to life. Perhaps you’ve heard me say this before because it’s what I live by. Everything in Africa revolves around relationships and this is why I feel I’m thriving where I’m at. Relationships are so valuable here that one little slip up can easily hurt your witness and your relationship with someone. Just last week while our team was fasting, one of our ministry partners, Leslie, a South African woman had us over at her house and had cookies and juice set out for us. Now, if we were to tell her that we were fasting and, thus, couldn’t eat them, this would have devastated her and hurt her feelings that she went out of her way to provide hospitality for us and we were turning it down. As Americans, we try extra hard to pay attention to our words and actions as to preserve our relationships.
Another relationship a couple girls and I have made came about simply out of going into the Laundromat every week. The laundry lady, Dorothy is a cute old lady who is so sweet and so adorable. She takes us to church with her every week and loves to show us off to all her friends. And of course she’s beaming as she does it.
In my last blog I spoke a lot about the relationships that we’ve been building in St. Francis. We literally meet someone new almost every single day just because people are so friendly and will strike up a conversation with anyone. No doubt it has something to do with us being white, but at least we are meeting new people and they are genuinely opening up to us.I’ve been hugely burdened the last week and a half with the lack of true community that we have among our team. We started off the trip so well. I couldn’t believe that 40 people could be so well connected and loving towards one another. Unfortunately this couldn’t last forever. Lately, our team has had a great sense of disunity, selfish attitudes, not looking out for their fellow teammates, disrespect for leaders, and I could continue on. It really breaks my heart that there are still some people that aren’t willing to live life as a sacrifice and who haven’t chosen to fight for this team.
