Christmas and New Year. For Christmas, the team decided to travel down to Santa Lucia, South Africa and stay there in a international backpackers lodge for about a week. So after waiting 3-4 hours to get a kumbi ride for the 3 hour journey, we got there and hit the beach. The waves were some of the best I’ve seen and of course body surfed, and it was really cool to be in the Indian Ocean. We got stung by some jelly fish, I got one tangled up in my legs and Jess got hit hard, leaving her scars! The week was fun, cruising around the beach town and meeting some really cool people from all over the world who were staying at the backpackers’ lodge, like Nikki our German friend who we got to minister to, and Mom I met a few people from Friesland, Holland. Nikki believed that there is a higher power but didn’t believe in the bible or I guess Jesus. It was cool to tell him about the freedom of Jesus and how it’s not about do’s and don’ts. God is so visibly working in his life, like the past two years he had decided not to drink any alcohol and coming from Germany keep in mind, also, he moved to Cape Town to do government social work (like the Peace Corp) where he is teaching in a school in a township. Pray for him and that the Son will draw him to the Father. Then me and Jon danced with some Zulu dancers and Jess and I hand fed mangos to the monkeys. After we got back, our very good friends, the team in South Africa was passing by where we are living and they stayed for the night. We went out to dinner and then hung out all night, just like back in Mexico. It was really good to hang out with some Americans for a change. I’d never thought I’d say that.
NEW YEARS! Which I got to celebrate it 7 hours before everyone back home… We had a freaking bash! Since where we live are the center of the community, basically everyone in Nsoko showed up. We had tons of meat on the braai (that’s a grill in Africa, Pastor Gift dubbed me Bryan the Braai Master), the African techno music was going hard, and so were our dance moves. We had some drinks and fireworks, and danced till 4 in the morning, well that was when I went to bed and they all stayed up until sunrise. All the guys from the soccer team I’ve been practicing with and ministering to were all there and it was great to be in a different atmosphere with them where we could just be crazy and have fun and we could see another side of each other, not how when we are around each other they are runnin all up and down my back on the football pitch. Me and some of the boys, most of them on the youth soccer team here, snuck away from the party and ran around playing with fireworks for hours, blowin up stuff and throwing fire crackers at each other. It was another good atmosphere with the boys, like it started with me giving the fire crackers (crickets) to the boys throughout the night until I ran out and no more left, then it came back around because I didn’t have any fire crackers and they were giving them back to me for me to use to play with them. Just like they would do for a friend! This was huge to me because, they boys were so anxious to get their hands on a fire cracker when I first pulled those mamba jambas out, they don’t have the luxury of buying a pack of firecrackers on an occasion, so when they were giving them back to me and yelling, “Bryan, Bryan, Buhya!” (come here) because they wanted me to blow stuff up with them, it meant so much because I wasn’t a white boy who they could get whatever they wanted from me if they asked, I was their buddy. After all the fireworks and were scattered in the red dirt and dancing was “like so last year…” we just sat around and hung out and they taught me more siSwati words which I don’t really remember now… but Happy New Year. Fifa World Cup 2010
