SMT Southern Africa – Update #4

Hello for the first time from Namibia! Monday was our last day in South Africa, and it was a day off, so we slept in, and then headed to the mall for some last minute souvenirs, and groceries. We headed over to Vukani’s house after that to spend time with a lot of the people we met in Cape Town, and they made us a dinner of our favorite foods that we have had so far! We watched some movies until about 2:00 A.M., and headed off to Namibia at 3:00 A.M. It took us a total of 21 hours to get to our new location, but that includes stops for food. Wednesday was a recovery day for us, so we slept a lot, and watched Mama Mia!
Thursday was also a day off, and they put together an awesome dinner for us to celebrate our Independence Day. We went to a farm that was run by retired officers, and we got to see ostriches, cows, meerkat, and springbok.
On Friday we started our day by going to a museum where learned a lot about the history of Namibia, and we also went to one of the local markets. Once we got back we helped with their junior soldiers, and a youth meeting. For junior soldiers, I took the pictures so Yeong-Haw could teach the Bible story, Greg and Allie taught some songs, Noah lead a game, and Jessica did a craft. After junior soldiers we had the youth meeting, which was boys and girls ages 13 to about 20. We started playing the circle game to get to know each other. Trevor lead some minute to win it games, we did some choruses, and Allie shared her devotional.
Saturday Jess and I lead Junior Miss, while Greg helped in junior band. About halfway through these, the rest of the team members led a home league meeting. I’m not positive about what happened in the other groups, but we were able to teach the girls the dance, we played some games, and had a really nice discussion. After all of that was over, we met with some of the youth, and talked about some ways to expand the Salvation Army here in Namibia.
Finally, on Sunday we started with a Bible study before the meeting, and then the meeting started with them showing us how they normally do praise and worship. We got introduced, and we performed the dance with the Junior Miss. There was a lot of music throughout the service, which was awesome. We performed our timbrel routine again, but this time they had their brass band play Starlake, so we weren’t just playing to a recording. Jess led a song, Allie played piano a lot, Trevor read the Bible verse, and Greg lead the testimony time. Major Vukani gave the message, and the whole meeting ended being around 3 hours. The whole congregation had a potluck type thing, and then we all went our separate ways. We played some cards, ate some dinner, planned for the next day, and then went to bed.
That is it for now. Goodbye until next week!
–Robin and the Southern Africa Team