St. Peter's United Methodist Church

Monday, April 9, 2007 10:39 AM

It's Monday, April 9th at 4:18PM here in Rondebosch East, Cape Town, South Africa and a scorching 90 degrees!!! Things have been going well here! This past week was my last week volunteering at Woodside Special Care Centre because I am finally switching projects! I don't know exactly where I am going or what I will be doing, but it has something to do with children affected by AIDS, so I am thrilled about that! My last week was actually great at my project. I finally was receiving some sort of response from the children. Thursday we had a social where the children get to all meet together and dance and have snacks and play outside. It was a great time and the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves, which is always nice to see. It was difficult to say my goodbyes because the staff had been so friendly and the children were finally responding to me!! The one girl, Bianca, was in tears because she thought she would never see me again, but I promised her I would be back sometime! That only means that I HAVE to come back to South Africa:) Not a problem here!! Anyway, Im excited to be moving on, but i really enjoyed my time with the children and saw a great improvement in the individuals I worked with one on one. The 16 month old began to hold his head up and straighten his arms, which is a huge step for him!! And the three year old started to grip her spoon and play games with me!!! It was a very rewarding thing to see such improvements from these kids! I actually feel like I made a difference there!! Which I was unsure of after the first 3 weeks!

Tomorrow I move to my new host family with a friend of mine, Malu, from Denmark! We are both very excited to be working with small children affected by AIDS. We both have a strong passion for children and are planning on getting very attached and it being very difficult to leave! But we know it will be very worthwhile! I'll keep you updated on the new project as soon as I know more about it and experience the first week!

This past weekend was another great weekend. Thursday night two of my friends stayed at my host family with me and we cooked a great meal and relaxed for the evening. We then went into town early on Friday and checked out the Methodist Church in downtown Cape Town. I ended up staying for the Good Friday service and talking with the pastor. He is a great guy and is very excited about working with St. Peter's in the future. I got all their information and can't wait to get home and start some sort of relationship with that church. They need our help!! They do wonderful things there for the community, but are running out of funds, so hopefully I can get something started with them soon! On Saturday three of my friends and I went on a day trip abseiling (rapelling) and kloofing (rock jumping), which was amazing!! We started out with a 45 minute rock climb, which was intense!! We then got to a beautiful pool surrounded by rocks where my friend and I jumped off of a 10m high rock into a pool of water!! It was scary, but amazing to free fall into the pool! We also did some other smaller jumps! It was great! We then hiked for another 45 minutes (also intense) to the top of a waterfall where we rapelled down. I went first and got stuck in a cave of water, eventually pulling myself out and rapelling down the rest of the waterfall! It was amazing!!! We then hiked another 30 minutes to the second set of pools where there was a 24m jump, but there was no way I was doing that!!! So we just did smaller jumps and swam in the waterfalls!! It was beautiful! We then hiked another 45 minutes (even more intense) back to camp where we had some dinner and headed back to Cape Town! We were soooo tired and sore after hiking more than 15 miles and abseiling and kloofing off of many rocks, but it was well worth it!! Sunday two friends of mine and I attended Easter service at the Central Methodist Mission in downtown Cape Town where I spent Good Friday! The service was great and very uplifting!!! Afterwards we had some lunch and returned to our host families! Another great weekend here in South Africa!!

I hope all is well at home and am looking forward to emailing you with good news about my project and host family!!! Thank you everyone for your responses, it makes things so much easier here knowing you are thinking of me at home!!! THANKS SO MUCH!! Next weekend we have our Cape Peninsula tour where we see the African penquins and the Cape of Good Hope, so that should be great!!! Miss you all sooo much!!! Love, Libby:)

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