Joshua's Blog

So today I taught Rwanda history at the Strandfontein Secondary School! I had 5 different classes, 3 grade 9 classes, 2 grade 10. The first one and the last one didn't really work out for me, but the three classes in between was really great! The kids had never even heard of something called genocide, let alone the history of what happened in Rwanda... my main point of the whole class was to encourage them to dream. See, the story of Rwanda (if you haven't already gathered from my Blog) is a story of hope, of success... the underdog coming out from under! South Africa is going through some really shameful things... the government has been making fools of themselves with some of their more recent statements... the violence, corruption and poverty has been increasing on a SCARY level! But the point is, Rwanda came from such a decrepit state and now is well on it's way of being a major player within world politics. Mainly because somebody decided to take a stand for righteousness... to struggle their way to a point of influence, didn't give up and in the end made a difference! This is the point I focused on... these kids have grown up in poverty and severe gangsterism. When you grow up in an area that shows soft-core porn in the local news paper and gains readers by almost glorifying events such as a 'seven year old girl raped and burned alive!'... you tend to have many of your dreams killed! In all reality, if any, I probably only really spoke through to one or two kids out of the whole lot... but it was actually quite surprising how well many of the kids listened.

As for the last few days... well... I've spent a few days with Errol last week going to the UofC (University of Capetown). I sat in some Africa History classes and statistics (funny thing was the statistics was way more interesting! SUCH a horrible professor! Smart man, but useless when it comes to teaching!) Few nights catching up with good friends I've met over the years and then back with the Williams for Wed. and Thursday. Wed. was a worship night. Thursday was 'fix Llewellyn's car' day! I pretty much spent the whole day rewired his electric windows, put in new switches (which, I can boldly say that Cory would be proud me! I managed to use two kinds of knives, three types of wire and even a jig-saw and still manage to have it look like factory!) and a few general fix-up things... Friday I left for university with Errol again, we went out for some food and then went with the family to his sisters house for dinner (which half of the extended family decided to come as well! Very packed house!).

Home by... too late... ! ... Saturday got ready for 'Boys 2 Men'... a new mentorship program Llewellyn is starting up... basically efforts to raise up fathers for the fatherless... in short... talked a little, played some table tennis and pool and of course ate... good night!

Sunday was a nice day of relaxing and worshipping with the Williams family. Went down to the ocean and walked along the beach... had some ice cream... real nice day!

And now we are at today... got home from the school and found out the wiring for Llewellyn's car was damaged (not the part I did!) but the other sections of wire that went up to the fuse box were damaged and broken... so I decided to totally rewire it all and run a line from the battery into the car with it's own fuse... so spent a few house at that... ate... (The car works by the way!) and now I'm on here...

That's pretty much been this past week... nothing too awe inspiring, but definitely some interesting experiences while learning lots!

Enjoy some music from Cape Town... (when Steven gets a chance to place it on here from the server) this is from an album that a few friends helped produce (I don't know if Dominique sings in this particular one, but it's a song I'm enjoying right now... especially the soul blues at the end of the track!)

Love you all.... back on Thursday, April 17th @ 10:30 (NOT 11:30 as I've told some people)
Joshua