Alexis Foster - Serving the Kingdom Through Missions

Beat the Drum went well!

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Last week Beat the Drum went really well. I'm thankful because I didn't really know what to expect, my kids are pretty young; they range from age 9 to 14. After going through the program again, I was reminded how powerful the movie is and I could definitely see that it spoke to a lot of my kids. Compared to teaching random kids from Somerset East, I found it a bit harder to teach these kids that I've come to know and love. Although I don't know everything, I do know a little. I do know that for some of these kids, without a miracle, their parents will die soon of AIDS. Even though they would never admit it or feel comfortable talking about it, I can see the hurt in their eyes when we talk about the disease. As for some of the others, they are too young to understand how much HIV/AIDS really does affect their community and family. I hate to be pessimistic but I'm sure that these kids have family members with HIV that they don't even know are sick. I know some of the older kids can use what we taught them and apply it to their lives, as for the younger kids, I just pray that when the reality of HIV/AIDS hits them, they will remember the truth and the hope that we tried to speak over them. Thanks for your prayers.

Beat The Drum at Ithemba

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Hey all, I just wanted to give a short update on what's coming up in ministry. I'm really excited for this next week at Ithemba because... we are doing BEAT THE DRUM with my kids!:) It's the same aids awareness program that we did on our outreach to Somerset East in October. On Monday we are showing the kids the movie and then the rest of the week we'll be discussing it and everything about HIV/aids. Megan and I are going to have to change up the ciriculum a bit so that it's more at our kids level. This week could either be a waste of time or a really big turning point in the lives of the students. Please pray that the Lord uses this week of Beat The Drum to really encourage the kids to pursue a life of righteousness. I'm really excited to see what's going to happen.

I'm also really excited for this week because a bunch of my friends from the Kingdom of Swaziland are coming! Mary is going to be joining us for house visits on tuesday, it's going to be so good to do ministry with her agian. Anyways, the main thing on my plate this week is Beat The Drum, so please join me in prayer. Thanks!

Why Morality?

Sat, 7 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It's not that we have been discussing it a lot as a group, but I've really been thinking of morality lately. Why do we believe what is right is good and what is wrong is bad? Who decides what's right and what's wrong? Sure the Bible is our guideline, but the Bible doesn't answer all my questions. The Word says "don't get drunk". Okay...fine, so is it wrong for me to go out with my friends and drink a bit? When it comes to physical relationships, how far is too far? It's not like I'm beating myself up or losing my mind about these sorts of questions, I've moved on. I want to know... why be moral? Why DO good? So I can BE good? Who cares about being a GOOD person? This life is fleeting.

I've been reading a few books lately and the authors have shed some light on the reason for morality.

...The truth is, we all want morality. We know morals will make us better people, and we even feel a kind of nobility when we subscribe to and defend a code...Lately, however I have been thinking of morality in less conceptual terms, less as a system of rules and regulations and more as a concept very beautiful and alive...The reason I have been feeling this way is not because morality gives us boundaries or because it helps us live clean lives, though morality does these things, but rather because, in some mysterious way, morality pleases God...The motive is love, love of God...

-Donald Miller, Searching For God Knows What

...When we are faced with alternatives and a choice of ways confronts us, the question is not: Is this good or evil? Is this helpful or hurtful? No, the question we must ask ourselves is: Is it of this world, or of God? For since there is only this one conflict in the universe, then whenever two conflicting courses lie open to us, the choice at issue is never a lesser one than: God...or Satan?...

-Watchman Nee, Love not the World

Love. Love. Love. It seems like it's the answer to all my questions. Who is God? Love. What should I do with my life? Love. Why be moral? Love. Millar suggests that morality shouldn't be a "system of rules and regulations" but rather a way to show the Lord our love for Him and Nee encourages me to choose the course that proves my love for the Lord rather than the one that satisfies my sinful desires.

I'm pretty satisfied with my answer, Love. Now to apply this to specifics...?

i <3 akward situations.

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Every week we have a "word" that we focus on. This week was LISTEN. During discipleship we discussed and practiced listening prayer. On monday we prayed and asked the Lord to give us a word for everyone on the team and then on wenesday we shared. It was was eaiser than I thought, because I initally though it would suck, but the Lord gave me a word for everyone! The hardest part was believing that it really was God speaking to me. What an amazing concept, actually hearing for the Lord. For years I've claimed to have a relationship with the Lord, but doesn't a relationship go two ways?

Last week, before Ithemba Ellen, Sam, and I (my parteners in akward situations) went to an Ethiopian Apostolic Church in a tin shack. Theodora had invited us to her church, and after seeing the tin shack I agreed right away. Who wouldn't want to go to church in a tin shack? The service was all in Xhosa, and it seemed pretty legit except for the part where they started dancing around the pastor. At the end of the serivce they called me up to share a word. I shared a verse from Revelations and just encouraged them that God loved their church, their church is the bride of Christ. I could definitaly see that these people were seeking the Lord, but I just felt like the message of salvation wasn't understood or being taught. Since then I've been praying that the Lord would save the church goers.

Thanks for your prayers.

Alexis

Princess

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Death brings up a lot of questions. Did I even love her? Did I love her for her strength, her courage, her story? Where is the justice when a husband is left behind with 3 young children to raise himself? Do I blame him for her death? Or am I thankful that he was faithful to her in the last days, caring for her on her death bed? The thing that disturbed me most about Princess' death was that I REALLY believed God was going to heal her. I feel like I can't even greive for her, her death is such a reminder of the terrible injustice that rules this place. If I allow myself the appropriate amount of anger for this injustice, I would explode. Our theme word for last week was TRUST. Can God trust me to continue loving and pursuing people even when it feels like darkness is winning?

i <3 jbay

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

So it's been a some what normal week in Jbay. House visits in the morning are always fun, interesting, and never long enough. Since I got back, I've been visiting another friend that Sam introduced me to. She lives in a tiny one room shack about a block away from Ithemba with her husband and two little girls. After meeting this beautiful young lady, I will never be the same. Never in my LIFE have I seen someone so skinny, exept in picutres from the Holocoust. Skin and bones. Aids. And yet SHE is an encouragment to ME everytime I visit her. Her favourite song is "Jesus Loves Me" and whenever we ask if theres anything we can do, she just asks us to pray. Yesterday when her and I were reading the Bible and praying, she told me she believed God could heal her. I don't know how strong my faith would be if I had been so sick for over 10 years. On a side note, something very interesting happened when I was with my dear, beautiful, young friend yesterday, two random white ladies from the clinic walked into her shack. This is very surprising because 1) i didn't know anyone else visited her, 2) they were white and 3) one of the ladies named Becky was from Edmonton. Small world.

The world of Ithemba's after school program is crazy. I love those kids. We've finally started classes, and I'm having a fun time trying to figure out how to teach my students english when some of them don't know their alphabet, and a couple can barely speak it. The kids in my class range from grade 3 to grade 7, but I've also decided to help some of the other girls from Zim. They are in high school, just got to Jeffreys a few weeks ago and don't have any money to go to school. They are way to advanced to do school work at Ithemba, but I think they come just for something to do. I found a couple of old bio text books in the office at Ithemba and I'm giving them some stuff to work on that could possibly be a little bit challenging. Who knew I'd ever need to use what I learned in Bio 30?

Each day I fall more in love with Jeffreys, and the people here. God is good. Thank you so much for making it possible for me to be here!

My friend, Moses, from Zambia has been peering over my shoulder as I write this and wants me to greet all my fellow North Americans.

Ministry

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We've been in ministry for a week now and I'm really excited for this semester. Every afternoon I'm working at Ithemba (my church), there is an afterschool program/ childcare for kids from ages 2 -13. We're there from 1-5 every afternoon and we hang out, play games, have activities, and then we split off into classes. I'm going to be working with the older kids for class time and we do a bible study with them and then actually teach them school stuff. Who knew I'd be teaching math and english? It's kinda weird that I'm going to be doing some teaching but I'm pretty excited for it, I already know a bunch of the kids and I love them. The afterschool program doesn't actually start untill next Wenesday but we've been there all week planning, cleaning, playing and dancing with the kids that are already there.

The mornings are going to be looking a bit different this semester. Instead of having disciplship every morning, we only have 2 hours of disciplship 2 mornings a week and then I also do house visiting 2 mornings a week. I'm a little worried that I won't have enough time to see all the people that I visited last sememster since I only have 2 mornings a week to do house visiting but I'm going to try to see them during my "free" time.

So thats what monday to thursdays look like: disciplship/ house visiting in the morning and then Ithemba in the afternoon, and then we have fridays off. Saturdays we do "family ministry" in the morning, which is our whole team doing something together and then we do intentional ministry in the afternoon, which means we can just do whatever ministry we want. That's a little bit of how the semester is going to look like... I'm excited.

In Jbay for round 2.

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Happy New Years! I hope everyone had a good christmas. Mine was quite busy. I spent a night in Calgary, a week in Minnesota, a night in Sask, three days at home, six days on the road and four days in the air. Needless to say, the thought of ever traveling again kinda nausiates me. BUT it was SO good to see everyone again, definately worth it. So thank you to my parents and everyone else who helped get me home for Christmas.

It feels good to be back in Jeffreys, I didn't realize how much I missed my team, even though I'm not quite used to the fact that the team here in Jbay has shrunk from 36 to 13. In the Joburg airport I got to see some of my team mates that are going to Swazi which was kinda bittersweet because I was SO excited to see them again but I had to run to catch my next flight. Over the break I started to realize how much I'm going to miss my ministry team, I'm the only one left in Jbay. Lisa is in PE (which isn't too far so I'm happy), but Blair and Mary are in the Kingdom of Swasziland:( I loved doing ministry with them, we were all so different but we worked well together. I'm a little sad because I loved ministry last semester and I know that this semester is going to look a lot different. You can pray that I'll be able to keep up with the relationships that I have already started and that I'll be happy whereever I end up working. Normal ministry doesn't start untill monday so I have the rest of the week to get rid of this jet leg and catch up with friends. You'll be updated little bit more about what ministry is going to look like this semester as soon as I figure it out myself. Hope your all having fun back at school/work. :) Alexis.

God is good.

Sat, 6 Dec 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey all. i haven't blogged in a while, because i hate blogging when i don't have anything encouraging to write. It's not that God isn't working, because He is, it's just really hard to explain sometimes. Pretty much, I'm messed up right now. The last couple of weeks some of us have been studying a book by Donald Millar called Searching For God Knows What. He tells of a time whenhe was really unsatisfied with Christianity because his religion just didn't answer the hard questions of life.After thinking about it for a while, Don decideds to tell God that He didn't exist. While reading this I decided to take everything I know about God and question it, even down to his existance. What is just head knowledge and what do I actually believe in my heart to be true? After breaking everything down,I was left with two things that I could not deny; God existsand God loves. Even though in the last couple of months almost everything I've known about God has been striped from me, I feel like the little that I know in my heart is real and sincere.

Last week I was really broken. I was missing home and I just kept realizing how much life sucks. One of the ladies we visit, Regina, got beat up by a drunk fisherman during broad daylight. The fishermen are getting really violent, they've been on strike since I've gotten here and all they do is drink and fight, even though I have no idea where they get the money to drink. Another of my friends is married to one of the striking fishermen and I know that he takes her money, probably spends it all on booze because she is constantly stressing about that fact that she has no money to feed the kids. When Regina was telling us about how she got beat up, she burst out into tears and began to tell us about how she has HIV and TB and she was SO worried about people finding out. She was a wreck, she wasn't eating or sleeping and she couldn't stop crying, and she had sent her kids to her moms place for the night because she couldn't handle life. That night while feeding the streets kids, we had to deal with racist old men, a 10-year-old kid crying because one of the older kids stole his glue, and a drunk fisherman who got beaten up by other drunk fishermen because he had tried to get a different job. There is just SO much pain and suffering everywhere I go.

I walk into any given grocery store or gas station and on the front of every newspaper reads, 'Zimbabwe cries for help', or I see pictures or people eating bugs. Almost all my good friends from Ithemba and many from LXP are from Zim, and they've been talking about how bad it's getting there, but only this last week did it really hit me how desperate the situation is. About 600 have already died from cholera and almost 13 000 are infected, these people are dying from drinking dirty water. They don't have any jobs, so they have no money, so they can't by bottled water or food but even if they did have money, there is no bottled water or food to be bought. The Pick-n-Pays are empty. A couple of my friends went home to Zim for Christmas, and they packed the back of their truck with food to feed their families. Their government is a mess, and innocent people are dying because of it. I feel so helpless and useless.

The most amazing thing to see is these men from Zim worship. Their passion is so inspiring. Knowing what they must be thinking and seeing them worship is so incredible. If they can worship God, I can worship God. If they can say 'God is good', I can say 'God is good'.

I'm staying!

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So we figured out all the outreach teams for next semester. There is a group of us who are staying In Jefreys Bay, some are going to PE (Port Elisabeth) and some are going to Swaziland. I'm staying here! I'm really excited; I love this place so much. Before we got to Jefreys I really wanted to go to Swaziland just to get out of South Africa, because SA is so westernized, but I really fell in love with the people here. I have already made amazing relationships with some of the people here and I couldn't stand leaving them already, God still has a lot left for me to do here. As most of the team is getting ready to pack up and leave Jefreys (there's only 16 days of ministry left), I've been praying about what my ministry should look like next semester. Ithemba has a huge youth group; most whom wouldn't consider themselves believers and I really feel like God is going to put some girls in my life that He wants me to disciple. I'm pretty excited about that.

I have a sweet story about one lady that we met during the first or second week of Ministry, Theodora. She was one of the ladies in September that randomly walked up to me and asked me to pray for her to get a job and then we ended up praying together for her to receive salvation. So we've been consistently visiting her since then, praying with her for a job, talking about what she is reading in her Bible, and just hanging out, playing UNO. I've really been praying for her because I can see God is so clearly doing something in her life and she has been stepping out in faith and trusting that God is going to provide for her. Just the other day, she got a job! This may not sound so amazing in Alberta, or in North America, but it's really hard to find jobs here and she got a good one! She's a waitress at one of the restaurants in town. I was so excited when she told me, I nearly pounced on her. The Lord answers prayers!

Other than doing ministry every afternoon, I've been going out on Tuesday and Thursday nights to feed the street kids, just hang out with them, get to know them and show some love. It used to be every time we passed them on the street; they would ask us for food and money. It really bothered us because we can't give them money all the time, or go buy them food all the time, but we really wanted to help them. There is a lot of politics with the street kids that we don't really understand, so we were trying to figure out how we could best help them. Going out to find them and feeding them on Tuesdays and Thursdays is the best thing we came up with. Now when we see them on the streets we can call them by name and talk to them. Some of these kids (ages about 8-18) have crazy stories about how they ended up on the streets, and some of them just ran away from home because they wanted to be able to smoke and drink whenever. Hopefully God is using us in there lives for more than a peanut butter sandwich.

There's a bit on Alexis' life in JBay.

Yebo.

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone! The last couple of weeks since Somerset have been really busy, but I finally feel like I'm in the swing of things. We are actually following a set schedule for the most part. We have breakfast at 8am and on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays we have group discipleship from 9-12 and on Tuesday and Thursday we have small groups from 10-12. The group discipleship has a classroom setting a right now we're talking about the fundamentals of Christianity and we are each individually working on a statement of faith about God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, The Bible, The church, and who we are as individual Christians. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be to write out my single page statement of faith. For example, Who is God? I've found it pretty easy to figure out what God does, but WHO is He and how do I write that in 2 or 3 sentences? During small group on Tuesdays and Thursdays we just talk about anything and everything. Sometimes we discuss what was said in group discipleship the day before, or we discuss some of the books that we are required to read, or we just talk about things that are happening in ministry. After lunch we have ministry form 1-5. My group and I pretty much have a set group of people that we visit all the time, although we did meet a new friend named Davison who is coming to Ithemba (my church) with us on Sunday. One of our friends, Regina had a house fire about a month ago and over the last few weeks we have been scrapping off burnt paint, priming, painting some of her walls, and hanging out with her kids. We've also been building relationships with one family who was good friends with the AIM team last year, I love them so much. It's been really fun getting to know everyone and I'm praying that our interaction with them and conversations with them are actually hitting home, it's hard to tell sometimes if anything is happening. But God's been teaching me that it's His job to change the heart, not mine, which is actually quite a load off the shoulders.

The pastor of Ithemba, George and his wife Michelle's run a program here in JBay that we often work with called LXP (Leadership Experience) and this week their house got broken into and Michelle's laptop was stolen. On that computer was all of LXPs curriculum, all the information for next years applicants, and a lot of personal things such as all of their wedding pictures from last year. So pretty much, we're praying for a miracle and somehow Michelle gets her computer back. Feel free to join us. Thanks again for all your prayers. Alexis.

I'm back!

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So last week was amazing. Before I left for Somerset East, I couldn't really tell you a lot about it because I really had no idea what we were going to be doing there. What we did was show a movie called Beat the Drum which is a fictional movie but it is to teach people about HIV and clear up some of the lies and myths going around about HIV. Some people believe that condoms spread HIV, or that if you rape a virgin that you'll get rid of aids, and all these myths just spread HIV even more. So we would show the movie to high school students and then eveyday we would come back and teach a class. Our message was that abstinence is the best way to protect yourself from HIV and that if you have Jesus in your life, you can put your faith in Him and He will give you the strength to abstain from sex untill your married. A lot of kids made the decision to abstain untill marriage, but whats even more exciting is that a lot of kids accepted Jesus. Throughout the week I made a lot of friends at the high school I went to and it was so exciting to see a bunch of them come to the Lord. On the last day we took anyone that wanted to get tested to the youth hall and HUNDREDS of scared high school students got tested. Praise the Lord that only one of my friends had HIV. I pray for him everyday. On the last day, right before we went to get tested, I had the amazing opportunity to lead two girls to the Lord. They came to me because they wanted to pray to chose abstinence, but before we prayed I quickly explained the gospel to them and 2 out of 3 girls decided that they wanted Jesus as their saviour. The other girl was already a christian. I was so pumped. God did such amazing things in Somerset East this last week, I just pray that the people who made descions this week would be able to find support and keep true to their promises. Thanks for all your prayers and support at home.

Leaving for Summer Set...

Thu, 9 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So tomorrow morning at 8am we are taking a little road trip to a tiny town about 3 hours away called Summer Set East and helping there for about 8 days doing a program called Beat the Drum. It's an AIDS awareness program. We'll be answering questions and showing a movie to kids in the schools, men in the jails, farmers and other random people from town. Our goal is to reach every single person in that small town. There are 120 of us volunteers and we are all staying in random peoples homes. So I'll be with one other person who I may or may not know staying with a family who has opened up their home to us. For a week. It'll be interesting. Apparently there is a lot of racism in Summer Set East so another one of our goals is to ease the different cultures into conversing with each other. Above all we really just want to show these people the love of Jesus.

Some of you knew that I already had enough money in my AIM account so you gave me money to put in my personal account so I could use it whenever a need come up. Just to let you know that so far R1000.00 (depending on the day about $120.00) went to beat the drum and R500.00 (about $60) went to one of our ministries called Seventh Heaven, they just adopted a new baby. So thank you.

October 6

Mon, 6 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone. This last week was intense but pretty good. For most of the week we had ministry all day instead of just in the afternoons. We met a lot of new people and went back to visit some families that we had met before. I believe it was last tuesday that we were walking home from ministry when we were stopped by two ladies named Mavis. One of the Mavis' told us she wanted to become a child of God. So we we explained to her what that met and she just said, "Yes. I know. This is why I say 'I want to be a child of God'". So we continued to explain more about surrendering completly to Jesus and she just said, "Yes. I know. I want no more drink. This is why I say 'I want to be a child of God". So we finially just prayed with her and helped her become a child of God right there on the street. We found out where she lived so we could go visit her and then we said our good-byes and headed for home. About 2.3 seconds later a christian lady named Reena stopped us and asked us to pray for kid who has HIV. We talked with her for a while, prayed and got her address so we could go visit her later and before we had said good-bye another lady named Theodora tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to pray that she would get a job. While I was talking to Theodora the rest of the group was talking to another man who wanted prayer for his sick child. So many people ask for prayer for a job, so I didn't just want to say a 2 minute prayer for Theodora and send her on her way so I asked her if she knew who I was praying to. She said she didn't know who Jesus was so i took the opportunity to quickly explain the gospel to her. We prayed together to recieve Jesus and for a job and I got her address and promised to come visit. That was intense half an hour. It is said that every "christian" in South Africa is saved seven times. Maybe it was the 3rd or 4th time these women had prayed for salvation, but regardless, we were pumped. Since then we've met with Theodora twice and today we gave her a Xhosa Bible, I think we've established a pretty good relationship with her. We still plan to meet up with the other ladies some time soon.

Some time last week a random drunk lady named Priscila invited us into her shack. She tried to tell us something really important because she was crying, but we couldn't understand her Xhosa mixed with broken English. The only thing we really got out of the conversation is that her husband beats her when he's drunk, we don't know if they still live together or not. We ended up staying with her for a while, trying to comfort her and invited her to church. Yesterday we picked her up for church and she came with us to Ithemba, she was really quiet and we didn't get a chance to see what she thought of it. We plan to visit her sometime this week.

Lane and Brittany took the lady with HIV that I told you about in the last blog to HIV counciling the other day, other than that I haven't heard how she is doing.

Being in the township everyday is always interesting. Some days it's pretty depressing because there is SO little hope but whenever I start to think that my precence is useless God sends someone to encourage me. He's been teaching me a lot about faith and love these last couple of weeks and I'm sure that He has a lot more to show me. Thank you all for your prayers.

A little ATL

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I thought I'd write a quick blog since I have a couple of minutes. This weekend/ week is a bit crazy because we have 400 extra high school students at the base for a leadership four day retreat so our schedule is all changed around. Today, instead of doing ministry in the afternoon, we did it all day. In the morning my usual group and I went and picked up our friend Sweetness and took her to the Shell Festival which is just a flea market that is in JBay for the weekend. Sweetness and I got matching scarves. In the afternoon we split up at took some new people along with us. Mary, Lane, Bee, and I and we went to Ocean View which is the part of the township with little government housing and mostly just shacks. We ended up talking to a few ladies that were sitting outside their house with their kids and I recognized one of the ladies from church the day before. She invited us into her home and didn't waste any time. She told us that she went to get tested today and found out that she is positive, she has HIV. Then she went on to tell us that she is two months pregnant and she hasn't told her boyfriend yet and doesn't plan on telling her friends. People don't talk about having HIV. Everyone has it. No one talks about it. If word gets out that she has HIV she'll probably lose a lot of friends. The craziest thing though was that yesterday was her first time going to church in years and the pastor talked about how as Christians we go through so much crap and it's hard to believe that God still loves us, it's hard to believe that He is faithful. The main point of the message was to hold on even when we feel like God is so far away. She hears that message and the next day she finds out that she has HIV, and we randomly show up at her door and pray with her. God is crazy.

That is only what happened in our group. God did amazing things today. Sorry this is so short and choppy, I just had a few minutes. God Bless.

T.I.A.

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey!

Wow. So much has happened, and I've learned so much in the last week and a half. This is my first day off and it's been pretty busy. Last weekend we had to leave the base because another group was coming in for the weekend so we ended up going way out on a mountain into the African bush. We roughed it. It was freezing, we didn't shower, we cooked all our meals over an open fire, and we crawled in the dirt. But over all, it was a lot of fun, not to mention BEAUTIFUL. I have so much respect for the people who live up there year round and it made me appreciate our base here in Jeffreys Bay so much more.

On Sunday night we told the leaders what our top ministries were, they had a meeting and tried to put everyone where they wanted to be. On Monday morning we found out what ministry would be apart of and that afternoon we started. I am apart of the house visiting group with Mary, Blair and La. Pretty much we walk around the "community" (which is where all the government homes and shacks are) and look for people to be friends with. Our goal is to build relationships with these people and show them the love of Christ. We have no schedule and we're not told what to do, we just have to go out and meet people. This makes our job hard but at the same time easy. I have a love/ hate relationship with my ministry. At some points I'll be thinking to myself "I have no idea what I am doing, I feel like an idiot and I hate this." And then God will allow us to share the gospel with a random person and it's all worth it. I truly believe this is exactly where God wants me. We've met a lot of people this week. We've visited a young lady with HIV aids named Sweetness (we can't pronounce her Xhosa name) and she just sits at home all day, and doesn't do anything so she loves it when we come visit. We also met Rafeekee (spelling?) and his family who is praying for a new job because the fishermen have been on strike for a while and it doesn't look like it's going to get any better. Yesterday Mary and I made a Muslim friend from Somalia named Mohamed in his "grocery store" which is a one room tin shack and we had a great conversation. He was explaining Islam to us and we explained Christianity to him, he had a lot of questions for us and we did the best to explain the trinity and a loving God. He is so funny; Mohamed told me he wants to marry one of us girls before we go home so that he can get a passport. Anyways, that's a little bit about some of the people I've bet in ministry so far.

This weekend is the first time that we get to go to church, and there are a bunch of different churches to pick from so you guys can pray that I'll be in the church that God wants me in. Thanks for you prayers.

I'm Here!

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone!

Today is offically my second day in Africa and I am loving it so far! Thank you to everyone who gave so generously

and allowed me to be on this trip. I am so blessed to be here. Training camp was interesting. I really didn't know what to expect, but it was definatly a good time to get to know my team and prepare myself for Africa. Its amazing how quickly I fell in love with the people on my team, they are so much fun and we have awesome times of worship together. In the morning during training camp we had different sessions teaching us and preparing us for the different ministries that we are going to be involved in and then in the afternoon we had team building exersises which were definatly weird, but they really pulled us together. By the time training camp was over, i was very ready to leave the tents, cold showers, humidity, fire ants, and red clay of Georgia. It was weird hearing everyone say, "I can't wait to leave America and get to Africa so I can sleep in a bed and take a shower." The plane ride over took 2 days but it went

really smoothly for me, and was actually pretty fun. My birthday was amazing. Not too many people can say they flew

to Africa on the 18th birthday. Everyone sang to me and bought me food all day. We had some good times in the airport, we spent lots of time planning bungie jumping, cliff diving and surfing adventures. So since we got here late on

the 16th until now, we've just been getting used to everything, trying to understand the way things are around here and settling in. I let you know as soon as I know what ministry I'm going to be involved in.

I have one specific prayer request. Our cook, Melissa who is my fellow Canadian from Sask, lost her passport somewhere and got deported back to Canada. She couldn't even leave the airport, she just had to sit and

wait for the next plane that was going back, so it would be really great if you could all pray that she comes up

with the money to fly back and that she would be able to get a new visa and passport quickly. Thanks for all your prayers!

Alexis

My Bio

Tue, 5 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

My name is Alexis and I'm just about 18. I've spent most of my life growing up in Sherwood Park, Alberta and I am finally done high school. I am an Oilers fan and a Saskatchewan Rough Riders fan. I love lots of different music and have been involved in a few different worship bands. I keep myself pretty busy playing volleyball, piano and working at Swiss Chalet. Despite the fact that I'm usually too busy to see them a lot, I love my family and friends. Probably one of my favourite things to do is take random trips with my sister to see far off friends and family. All our adventures and stories were worth the gas money and plane tickets. My grandparents were missionaries and all my life I've heard my dad tell his stories about growing up in West Africa, and now I'm excited to experience life outside of North America. God has given me a heart for missions and also for helping and encouraging other people. I pray that God will use me effectively where ever He takes me.