I Am Back!

Hey everbody!
Sorry it has been so long since I've last posted an entry. While in South Africa I didn't have the opportunity to post anything. But I am now able to give you an overview of what I've been up to on the Outreach phase of my DTS!
Since the beginning of April I have travelled to Durban, Cape Town and Worcester (all in South Africa) as well as Newcastle (England).
In Durban I was living at a farm with a family of fourteen (there was also fourteen of us on my team) it was a little crazy but a lot of fun. The family we were staying with had nine kids who were adopted (some were orphans from HIV or others didn’t have good home lives). We were at the farm for three weeks and helped out with building many things on their property. We also were a part of a ministry called Thembisa which is a group of grannies who look after children orphaned by HIV and Aids. Each granny usually had about ten children who they were looking after. My team helped with food distribution to the grannies and held church services with them. For this ministry we were in a township in which 90% of white South Africans had never stepped foot in, just being there with the people made a huge difference and brought about many questions.
After that my team moved to Worcester for three weeks. We lived with people who are a part of an organization called Kibbutz El-Shamma. Their property was right next to a community of people who were really affected by gangsters, drugs, alcohol and many other things. We worked with the Kibbutz and spent a lot of time with the children in the community. For two weeks I worked in the primary school with grade six and seven children . There was a group of four of us from my team who volunteered to work in the school but at first we thought that we’d just be helping out the teachers with their classes but then the first day one teacher was sick so we ended up substitute teaching. And for the rest of our time there we were the teachers and were just given various classes to work with! Some classes had 53 kids so it got a little crazy at points. But it was really amazing because we were able to lesson plan and spend the two weeks talking to the students about their identity and how that can be effected by challenges in life. We were also able to talk openly about God and pray in class which was crazy! So that was really amazing being able to invest in their lives.
We then unfortunately had to leave SA and after sixty hours of traveling (I was absolutely exhausted) we arrived in Newcastle. (We basically used every form of transportation to get there: van, airplane, walking, bus, train, the Underground, taxi, car.) We’ve been working with Tyneside Vineyard church here and just coming alongside them in a lot of things they are already doing. We’ve done plenty of different things such as: handed out coffee and chocolate to students during their exams, handing out flyers to different houses about the church, giving out free chocolate to people, handing out water bottles at clubs on Friday nights, praying for people on the streets, working with a ministry who provides clothing and food to homeless people, doing kids work with the church and many other things! It was extremely busy but really fun at the same time.
My team then went back to the YWAM base in Harpenden. There we met up with the other half of our DTS and had some debrief time together. We then graduated on June 22 and my Discipleship Training School is complete. Overall it has been life changing, challenging and very rewarding! I want to thank you all again for your support in prayers, this would not have been possible without them. I look forward to coming home soon and seeing friends and family again.
God Bless,
Laura