Team South Africa will be leaving Dec 31 and returning Jan 20! There are 8 of us (Casey McCartin, Katie Burnett, Sarah Brown, Ryan Brown, Phillip Friehe, Kelsey Ost, Caeley Smith & Aliayh Kirby) going to Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. Katie Burnett went on a SMU trip through Biola to South Africa in summer 2007 and is returning with a team hoping to continue to build relationships with the people there! Our team's purpose is to demonstrate the love of God in South Africa through service alongside the local ministries in sharing the hope of Christ to the orphans and people of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. In a country so affected by apartheid, aids, and poverty, we go with the intent of sharing Christ as a hope in the midst of all this. Our first week we will be at an orphanage putting on a Holiday Bible Club for the children, with our goal and hope of showing mercy and love to these children because we have been given mercy by our heavenly Father. For the rest of the trip we will be working alongside a Christian non-profit organization (Hlanganani Ngothando Organisation- Zulu for "Coming Together with Love") in a rural area. There we will be able to join in serving a variey of people groups including men, women, children, the elderly, sick, prisoners, school children, and mentally and physically disabled children. We will be able to visit the Zulu South Africans in their huts and it is our hope to "shine like stars" in South Africa!
Our theme verse is Philippians 2:14-16 "Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among who you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain."
Please pray for our team to bring glory to God, team unity, safety/protection, the hearts of our team members, that we would be an encouragement to the local long term Christians in South Africa, for the hearts of the people we will come in contact with and build relationships with to see Christ shining out of us, for God's Spirit to fill each of us as we go out and that His Spirit would overflow out of us into the lives of people in South Africa! We go to South Africa with the intent that God's glory would be known and He would be worshiped!
