SMT Southern Africa Team – Update #2

Hello again from South Africa! This week was a little bit more relaxed than last week, but we still had a lot of work to do! We ended up going to two different corps this week and we climbed a mountain.

We started off the week on Monday with our earliest morning yet, and we headed over to the YMCA for a youth holiday with all of the local corps. All the different corps competed in soccer, netball, and different card/board games. Allie joined the Claremont soccer team, and killed it! Noah and I (Robin) joined the Mannenburg girls in playing Netball. Jessica helped with playing dominoes, and just general fellowship. Yeong-Haw was our IT person and photographer. Greg helped announce teams, and Trevor helped out where needed. Claremont ended up winning the whole thing. Afterwards everyone headed over to our place for a braii (barbecue), and they made us some amazing food!

Tuesday was our day off so we all got to sleep in and gain back some energy from the previous day. We got picked up at around 10:30, and headed over to Table Mountain. We were under the impression that it would be an easy climb, because Claire (one of Major Rob’s kids, 8 years old) had climbed it before, and she was very excited to climb it again. It was not easy. It took us an average of 3 hours to climb it. Once we got up there though, it was worth it! The view was amazing! We got some snacks and hit up the gift shop. We headed home after that, and Major Rob dropped off some pizza for us.

Wednesday we helped with a home league meeting. Trevor gave a devotional, we played telestrations, and we even performed our timbrel routine! They loved our routine so much that they wanted an encore, but we weren’t able to provide one. It was a good time to mingle with the ladies of the Claremont corps.

On Thursday and Friday we spent our mornings at the Khayelitsha corps where we again helped with kids club, and we ended having about 70 kids on Friday! We were welcomed with open arms by the cadet that runs the corps, and he was very bubbly and happy and just very dedicated to his work. Everyone calls him S.K. because his actual name is very long. It was awesome to see everybody’s different skills being put to use to help spread God’s word and love. After kid’s club, S.K. would treat us with lunch that he made himself, and it was truly amazing. We spent our afternoons at the Claremont corps practicing praise and worship songs, and setting up for the home league rally on Saturday. This was a lot of fun, their meeting was full of singing and dancing, and we performed our timbrel routine again. After the meeting we got to help serve tea and coffee to all of the home league ladies, and we got to see the girls from Mannenburg again.

Finally, on Sunday we went back to the Khayelitsha corps for the morning service. We did less for this one than we did last week, because S.K. was very good at leading the songs himself. We did get to perform the dance with the kids, we did the timbrel routine again, Yeong-Haw gave his testimony, and Allie gave the message. Afterwards, we took a lot of pictures and S.K. made us lunch again. Then we went to the beach for a bit with Major Rob’s family, and finally ended up back at Brittany’s house. Brittany is a member of the Cape Town Citadel corps, and we all had a good time singing and eating until we had to say goodbye. We had to say goodbye to Rob’s wife, Juanita, and his kids, but we’ll be able to Rob again in Namibia.
Well that’s all for now! Goodbye again until next week!