Striving to make a change

It is early in the morning here and there is a flurry of activity around me. In fact, I am feeling a bit guilty that I am sitting here on my computer eating breakfast as everyone is running around preparing for the day. Today is Urban Market day at Urban Life Church. They set up a market that has vendors selling crafts, food, clothes, etc. and apparently the turn out has been about 2000 people. The hope of the church is that it will encourage people to come to the property and hopefully become more comfortable with this setting and maybe attend a service. Also, it provides an opportunity for more people to become aware of Botshabelo, the NGO that the church runs which is what I am working through.

Whenever I come here it becomes so apparent how involved the church is in this community. They are constantly making changes to try to improve the lives of those that are deeply hurting here. This includes several things from the market, the babies home, home-based care, working in near by day cares, to trips into other African countries.
Sidenote: I will get to go to Zimbabwe with a group from the church leaving this Friday. We will depart Friday for the 12ish hour drive to Zim (as its known here) and once there visit an old age home, and deliver food to many people. If you do not know about what is happening in Zim -please learn about it. It is a horrible crises with the entire country starving and dying because of a cruel dictatorship. I recently read that about 1/3 of the population has fled to other countries-many to SA. The church has done multiple trips like this to bring food to people and I am very excited to get to be a part of this. Many of you may be wondering about the safety, but I hear that it is fine for us. In fact, SA is probably much less safe so I do request your prayers for both our safety and that we will be a blessing to the people there, but know that it is not something you should overly worry about my safety-(This was especially for my mother :->).

Anyway, it is exciting to see God's people making a difference in the lives of others and I am sure to see many more examples of this as I am here. It can become easy to be pessimistic about this country and the amount of poverty, disease, and crime, but there is tremendous good here as well. God will not desert his creation and will bring all things to his Glory.