Well my sunburns turned into a tan this week, so I’m pretty pumped (I can be so superficial sometimes)! I’m also relieved that things are slowing down a little bit this second week. The first week was pretty tiring mainly because there are so many things that I had to adjust too. These included: having to share a room with 5 other guys, three of which come from different countries. Not getting as much free time/alone time as I’m used to getting and not being able to run as much as I have in the past have been trying my patience as well. And just getting used to the new schedule with classes and outreach has been really tiring both physically and spiritually. But with all of this, it has definitely forced me to rely on God for everyday strength. Here are some quick hits from the past week:
- The currency here in South Africa is the Rand. One US Dollar equals 7.7 Rand. Anyway, up until yesterday, I looked at the rand like it was monopoly money for some reason. In this States I’m usually very frugal, but I found myself spending money all the time because it didn’t feel like real money. Maybe it’s because the money looks a lot different than ours. But it hit me yesterday that, “Hey! This is actually real money. So I really shouldn’t be buying candy bars and sports drinks multiple times per day.” It’s really lame that it took me 10 days to realize this but I guess it’s better late than never.
- There is a KFC and McDonalds only two blocks away from here that have 2.90 rand cones, which is only 38 cents in US dollars! I am addicted to them. I usually have one per day, but I have had up to three in one day. So if I’m fat when I get back, then you’ll know why.
- On our day off on Monday, some guys and I went to see the movie Safe House. Not only was it a good movie, but it was also filmed in Cape Town which was really cool!
- I’ve been growing my hair out since January 11th and plan on letting it grow until July 11th. This will be the longest my hair has been since elementary school. I’m not really sure why I’m doing this because I love short hair. I grew my hair out for 3 months once in college in hopes that it would bring more female attention, but that is definitely not my motive this time. I guess I would just like to feel what long hair is like, so let’s hope I can actually make it all 6 months!
The lectures and the teaching here has been amazing. Even after a week, it has completely rocked my view of church, salvation, and discipleship. There are so many things I could talk about, but I will just mention three things that have really been on my heart this past week.
- I was really convicted when one of the leaders talked about how we should never argue people into the kingdom of God. Oops. I can think of numerous times when I tried that, and to no surprise, they failed every time.
- Another thing we learned that changed the way I’ve always thought of salvation is that you don’t bring people to faith to disciple them, you disciple them to faith. Basically this is saying that as Christians, we should focus less on converting people to Christ and leaving them out to dry, and more on building relationships and discipling people as they journey towards Christ.
- Lastly, during class today the Lord really convicted me that I don’t hate my sin like I should, and that I don’t realize how much God hates my sin. I can tend to take my sin kind of lightly, and lots of the time I even wish I could still live in my sinful habits. This is something that I want to focus on praying for over the next couple weeks.
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