Quick update

A very quick update. We had over 90 young adults pledge to Choose To Wait last night in Rehoboth. We've been meeting with them for two hours each day since we got here. It was an amazing evening. This will make a huge difference to this region.

Yesterday morning and this morning we went to two different towns to hand out shoes, cloths and toys. Yesterday the group wanted to sing us a song after we had finished and I have to say it was one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. The price difference between what we gave and received was not even close. There is so much beauty here.

We met with Joust today. He is the founder of Christ's Hope International. It was a productive meeting and I hope that it helps to continues to build on an already strong relationship.

We leave here tomorrow, no one wants to go. We are going to Okahanja to stay for a day, then we fly out on Friday morning. This trip was way to short, but the amount we did in that short period was amazing.

I hope everyone can forgive so few blog entries on this trip. Our schedule has been 6am-11pm everyday. Any excess time was filled with playing with the children at the Ark.

The most amazing trip ever

Sorry there has not been an update. It has been as busy as you can possibly imagine. I just fixed someone's computer and as payment they allowed me to make one blog entry. The one day I had an opportunity to go to the internet cafe, George asked me to video on the well he ws digging. He hit water and everything looks like it will be a successful community garden.

We have been teaching Choose To Wait three times per day every day. The first two sessions were at different schools and the evening was at a local church. The turn out at the church was overwhelming at first with probably 200 kids. We are now around 100 and it is more managable. I think this cirricullum will make a big difference to these young adults. It is an amazing experience to teach this.

Yesterday was our first day off and we went to the wood carver's market in Okahanja.

On Thursday we had Thanksgiving with the whole group. It was one of the best Thanksgivings ever. Lynne cooked a great meal. The next day was actually Christmas in Namibia. They had a small tree for all the children and wrapped presents for the kids. Mostly the clothes we had brought were given as gifts. Wood was asked to dress up as "Father Christmas" and hand out presents. They gave him a big red suit and the team made a beard out of construction paper.
After handing out presents, he did a quick change and came back to the Chirstmas tree. He called Monica to the front and proposed. She was completely surprised and said YES. We have lots of pictures to share.

Care and Compassion and Pre school are going well too.

That is all we have time for, we'll try and get to the internet cafe next week.

First day of work

We split into three teams for the day. The pre-school team, the care and compassion team and the choose to wait team. The care and compassion team was going to Blok-E. The pre-school team had a lesson planned. The choose to wait team drove to six or seven different schools and met with the principals. All, but one of them would allow us to come onto campus during morning break and pass out flyers. We will be going back to each of the schools every morning and speaking with the kids and asking them to come to our 4pm meeting. It was amazing that all but one of the schools were very receptive and had no concerns with this project. We had Michelle with us. She is the Choose to Wait coordinator for Windhoek and she knew someone from most of the schools even though she had never taught Choose to Wait in Reheboth before. She had worked in one of the schools a number of years before. It was a blessing to have her with us. It is final exam time and this is burden to take any of the student's time right now. The results were outstanding given the circumstances.

Church and Unpacking Donations

Today we awoke early and went to church. The sleeping arrangements were great and everyone said they were well rested. We were asked to stand up at church and introduce ourselves. The service was all in Africaans and we had a couple of two sentence translations. The music was great.

After we returned from Church and began unpacking the donations we had brought with us. It is interesting to look back on the amount of uncertainty we had in getting the donations here in the first place. There was so much stuff, then at the packing meeting it just disappeared into everyone's bag and it seemed that there wasn't enough to fill my third bag. We actually had to get more stuff to fill up the last two bags. Then when we unpacked it was as if it expanded into a huge mass of stuff, cloths, school supplies, cleats, soccer balls, angels jerseys, medical supplies. Huge amounts. In looking back it, the doubt was erased and God compressed all that stuff into the bags.

Each child at the Ark was allowed to choose one pair of shoes. They loved it, but the real question I kept hearing, "When do we get the togs?". (Togs=Cleats) The soccer cleats had be separated into their own box and all the boys were standing around looking at them. I'm not sure when they are going to be handed out, but I moved the box out of the room because it was cruel and unusual punishment to have that box out in the open reminding the boys. They are so excited.

Later in the afternoon, we all played with the kids. Chalk on the cement. Soccer. Hide and seek. Great fun and the kids are wonderful.

Bean needs a job

Bean lost her job this week and is looking for a new one. We need your help. She's a hair stylist and has done office management work as well. When we return home she's hoping to find something part time. Two part time jobs would be best. The most important job would be at at a salon that has a lot of walk in traffic. If you have any part time positions or know someone please contact her at alisa_morrow@hotmail.com. We will be returning on December 3 and any help in getting a her a good job would be a true blessing.

Arrived in Johannesburg

We arrived safely in Johannesburg, South Africa. There is a three hour lay over here and then get our final flight to Windhoek, Namibia. From there we rent a van and drive the van that Kim, Kevin and Lynne arrived a day early to purchase. All the bags made it on board. We probably have 24 bags of donations averaging 50 pounds each. Let's pray they all arrive at the same time in Windhoek.

Arrival

We arrived. Lynn says van was purchase went perfect. It was ready and waiting for Lynn, Kim and Kevin. We arrived the next day and Kevin guided us through customs. For future reference, there is a form we can get from customs ahead of time that will allow us to pass through customs without paying duty. We paid duty on the gifts, but it wasn't a lot. The customs folks were actually disappointed that they had to take the money from us and wished we had gotten all the paperwork done ahead of time. Christ's hope (Walter, Josh from Apex, and John) met us with a truck and an extra van.

The caravan to the Ark was through beautiful countryside. It rained a little at the beginning of the drive and as the sun went down there was a rainbow. Amazing gifts.

Once we arrived the children were gathered and sang us a bunch of songs. We introduced ourselves and then we all came together in an amazing welcome. We went outside and presented the new van to George and Anna-Marie. The kids were running around in celebration. There will be pictures posted soon.

We were planning on church early the next morning and soon went to bed. The accommodations are very nice.

Quality Copy Center In Orange

I had to get a lot of copies of a flyer we will be handing out in Rehoboth to get kids to come to our Choose To Wait program. I fully expected to pay for the flyers. When I went to pick them up, Paula at Quality Copy Center donated all the copies and extra paper we will be using to teach Choose To Wait. I have used Quality Copy Center a number of times to print everything from flyers to product manuals. If you need copies or full printing their service and quality is top notch. Thanks from everyone on our team it is greatly appreciated.

First Flights

Our first team members leave tonight. Kim, Lynne and Kevin will be boarding flights tonight. This is so exciting. They are leaving a day early to make arrangements for the new van we were able to purchase for the Ark. As they stated in an earlier e-mail, let's just pray that everything falls into place. I know there are a lot of issues that could go wrong. From wiring money to local police they just ask that you pray it all goes smoothly. Thanks for all the donations. If you financially helped a member of our team, then you helped purchase the van.

Thoughts from KDub

my dad called me yesterday to pray with me before i left and i'll share a couple of things with you that he shared with me:

psalm 37:5 "Commit your way o the Lord and do good; trust in Him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun."

isaiah 41:17 "The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. But I the Lord will answer them. I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs."

its all HIM friends and there will be much glory to bring to His name - travel safe and i'll see you all on the ground in namibia! you guys are wonderful - great packing last night!!

kw

Commissioning and Packing

A very busy weekend and an amazing send off by ROCKHarbor. We went to 7 services this weekend for our comissioning, then we packed everything up last night. This was the last group meeting. Our next meeting will be at the airport. Emotions are high and from my angle a lot of spiritual warfare is going on to try and pull out all the stops to keep us from this trip. If the amount of uncertainty we are experiencing is any measure of the amount of good we will be doing, this trip is going to be huge. HUGE. When we arrived we had boxes and boxes and boxes of the most amazing things. Over 1500 pairs of shoes and flip flops, 50 soccer balls from the LA Galaxy. As many jerseys from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. At least 100 pairs of used (in good shape) soccer cleats. Bags and bags of clothes. Medical supplies. Diaper. Bibles. School Supplies. We split all of it up between us so as to lessen the likely hood of customs thinking we were selling the items. We were all exhausted as we finished by taking communion, praying and heading home.

Thoughts from Amir

I'm not able to sleep, so I figured if I write out what's keeping me up I'll be able to slip away to dreamland! For the last couple of months we have been getting ready for our trip by doing a variety of team building activities and going through the process of getting to know each other better. I wasn't able to make all of the meetings and I apologize for not holding my end of the bargain. Ok, that’s out and I'm feeling better already....this is a great form of therapy!!
Another thing that is keeping me up is not so much the trip, but the conditions we will face and deal with. I was watching a special on AIDS in Africa earlier today. And as I was watching it, the light bulb came on.....I'll be seeing people, an entire country, afflicted by this disease by the end of the week. I'll be in an area where people are waiting to die. That shook me to my core. We are going to see and experience things on a daily basis that is going to challenge the way we view the world. I know there will be times when it will be difficult for us to keep our composure; we're going to laugh, we're going to cry, and there will be times when we feel completely helpless because we wont be able to help everybody. But one thing I want us all to try and do, is that when we are out in the community (at the home, with the teenagers, out in the shanty towns, etc.) Try and be strong. Put on your best smile and be the beacon of hope and light that people will need to see. We will be strong for them when we are ministering and when we need to let go of all our emotions and process what we're going through we will be there for each other.
I'm not sure if anything I wrote just made sense but I'm looking forward to this trip, spending time with all of you, and making a difference.............................and I'm out

-Amir

Van For The Ark - Update

This is an update from those in our group that are handling the purchase of a new van for The Ark.

car info is pray! pray that there is one available, pray that the police don't put a hold on it, pray that it's within our budget! the money has been wired and hopefully everything will go well, won't know until we're there...

The van will be purchased in Namibia with funds that the group raised over the past few months. Thanks to everyone who donated, this is going to be an amazing gift.

Invisible Children At ROCKHarbor

ROCKHarbor Uganda Team will be screening the documentary Invisible Children tonight at ROCKHarbor. If you have not seen this movie, I highly recommend it, but you should know that it will absolutely break your heart. It is also full of hope. To see kids doing math homework while hiding in a sewer shows that there is always hope. Always. Even in the strangest of places. These kids have to hide every night from a rebel army that kidnaps them, then tortures/brainwashes or kills them to turn some of them into fighters. This has been going on for 25 years and was filmed just as the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. Another movie has been filmed and is currently being edited.

date and time: Friday, November 11, 8-9:30pmlocation: the centre @ 345 fischerAfrican food served at 7pm for $5 followed by the documentary film "Invisible Children."
http://www.rockharbor.org/calendar/event.aspx?id=674
The movie is free, food costs extra, but goes to a good cause.

Commissioning

ROCKHarbor will be commissioning our trip this weekend. Our team will be onstage at the end of each service. Please come to a service and see us off.

Service times are:
Saturday 6pm
Sunday 9am, 11am, 7pm, 9pm

Addresss:
ROCKHARBOR
345 Fischer Avenue
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Website:
http://www.rockharbor.org

Taylor Frick Jewelry

Taylor Frick made custom necklaces for each of the children at the Ark. Each necklace is different and she spent many hours making every one of them. Taylor is a very caring person. She always likes to do thoughtful things for people and share what she has with others. She loves soccer and plays on travelling team while maintaining good grades. She loves reading, the outdoors and hanging out with her family. We know the children in Africa are going to love these necklaces. Her sister Hailey also helped with several of the necklaces. They worked as a team.

Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim

Say what you will about the length of team name, The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, we love them. They donated fifty jerseys to our trip and the kids at The Ark are going to love them. Not ony that, but they were the winners of their division this year!

Africa Pictures at ROCKHarbor

We hung a dozen or so pictures of Namibia in the main lobby at ROCKHarbor. This was for an awareness campaign leading up to our trip. Mike Moore of Wow! Visual Concepts donated all the printing and materials. These are top quality printings from digital pictures. We want to thank Mike for all of his time and support. I know he spent a lot of time on this and the pictures look great.

Thanks to Los Altos Brethren School

The 300 pairs of shoes that were dropped off at my office yesterday were donated by Los Altos Brethren School in Long Beach. The students from kindergarten through sixth grade participated and donated over 300 pairs of shoes. Thanks to Mrs. Johnson for organizing the drive for us.

I made good progress on getting all the supplies to Africa. South African Air has agreed to ship everything on the plane with us. We just have to pack it ahead of time and get it into the cargo system. I'm still working out the details on that and it looks very promising.

More Shoes from St. Mary's and All Angels School

Yesterday I picked up five more boxes of shoes from Ms. Burchall's class at St. Mary's and All Angels School in Aliso Viejo. These look great and there are a lot of soccer cleats in the bags that I looked at.

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This morning I got to my office and the cubical next to mine is filled with eight large black trash bags filled with shoes. I really appreciate all my coworkers bringing in so many shoes. There were many more bags of shoes and cloths beyond this and I really appreciate the outpouring of support.

This is a picture of the shoes before they were put into the bags. There are over 300 pairs. Very cool.









I called the airlines yesterday and have been working on ways to get them to Africa. The shoes are above and beyond the cloths, health/hygene supplies and school materials that we have already raised and we have a lot to pack. This is going to be an incredible trip that is going to start with a Lynne and Kim leaving a few days early to purchase a new car for the Ark. Great things are happening.