Just like a wavin flag...

The World Cup is over and so is our time in this beautiful country. Since we wrote you last, we spent two weeks in Cape Town with the Justice Acts people. They are fantastic. It was so amazing to be a part of what they are doing. We also spent some of our time watching the World Cup games at the FIFA Fan Fest in Cape Town and just soaking up the Jabulani/Ayoba atmosphere. After the soccer, we drove out through the Cape Winelands and eventually the entire Garden Route back to J'Bay. Today we got a chance to drive around a game reserve, tomorrow we're all packed up and Monday we're on a plane back stateside.

Thank you all so much for following along this journey with us. We look forward to catching up with you and sharing all of the crazy/amazing/funny stories that have been left out of this blog. We will have my cell phone (653-1659) when we get back so please give us a call so we can get together and/or come to Stroudwater Christian Church (our church, which meets at Cinemagic in Westbrook) next Sunday the 25th to hear us share about our travels and also hear Dave Wiggins speak. Dave has been one of the most influential people in my life and is currently a father, a husband and a stand up comedian in Auckland, New Zealand.

Hope to see you soon.

Jabulani Africa

Its been a while since our last post and a lot has happened. Most of what has happened as been different inductive studies of the Bible, so we can leave all of that out for now (although we're excited to share what we have learned with you when we return). The past few weeks have been busier and busier in an increasingly exciting way. A few weeks ago we went in to Cape Town to pick up our FIFA World Cup tickets. We hiked Lion's Head, a mountain in Cape Town, and got our first taste of the World Cup vibe at the V&A Waterfront. Last week we went to two games, England vs. Algeria and Portugal vs. Korea DPR at Green Point Stadium in Cape Town. It was fantastic, so cool to be at a proper soccer match. We had two extra tickets to the games. We brought one friend from J'Bay and gave the other tickets to different people. One guy was a huge England fan, we met him first in J'Bay briefly, then in Dubai, and then again in Cape Town, so we figured it was meant to be. For the Portugal match, one of our friends didn't show up, so I walked up to a random, middle-aged man standing alone, asked him if he believed in God, and gave him the ticket for free. It was great, we spent the rest of the day with him watching the different games and talking about life. The atmosphere here around the World Cup is amazing, I wish you all could feel it, maybe our new videos and pictures will give you a glimpse.

So our time here in Worcester, South Africa has come to a close. This past week we finished our Bible Core Course. It was a great course, I would recommend it to anyone who would like to be challenged in their faith in a positive way. Tomorrow we head out for Muizenberg, Cape Town. We have rented a room in the apartment of a YWAM staff guy who works with the base in Muizenberg. We will be there for 17 days as part of a World Cup Outreach that is orchestrated by YWAM.

Our main focus during these next weeks will be with a ministry called Justice Acts, it is an anti-human trafficking organization that started in YWAM. If you are interested in what is going in South Africa at the moment and what we will be helping with for the next two weeks, please watch Justice Acts' short documentary video called Selling South Africa's Innocence. We will be volunteering with Justice Acts awareness/prevention campaigns, prostitution ministries and anywhere they might need help.

When we are not with Justice Acts, we will be working with Cape Town Baptist Church. They are hosting a variety of soccer and township outreaches. They are also one of the central churches involved with Justice Acts. They are located down town and are also running a coffee shop during the World Cup and screening all of the games for people on the street to come in and get a free hot drink, watch the games, and talk. Its quite cold here, not as cold as Maine, but here they don't have central heating. Some people have space heaters but for the most part its just as cold inside as outside. We will also try to be at FIFA Fan Fest, downtown Cape Town, for as many games as possible. Fan Fest is a free outdoor venue for fans to watch the games on multiple giant screens. We'll be there tomorrow for the USA vs. Ghana match, what goes around comes back around Ghana...

Thanks so much for sticking with us through this past year. We really appreciate everyone who has been keeping up with us and especially those of you who have been praying for us. Please continue to pray for us. We are heading back out for outreach, only two weeks, but we will certainly need your prayers, especially in relation to the Justice Acts work. There are so many of you that we miss so much. Over the past month I've been thinking about all of the people in my life and realizing that I must be one of the richest people in the world...

BCC and Cape Town

We're going into Week 9 of the BCC. Two weeks ago, we went on an outing to Cape Town (new pictures are up), followed by a jam-packed weekend with 25 hours of lectures on Revelation between Friday and Sunday. Next week, we'll begin studying the Old Testament with Deuteronomy and 1+2 Kings.

We celebrated our first anniversary with morning lectures on Revelation and an evening out in Worcester. The next day we were back to Cape Town for YWAM's 50th Anniversary Celebration. We heard from the founders, Loren and Darlene Cunningham and got the chance to catch up with all our friends from Jeffrey's Bay. We also were able to connect with Justice Acts, the anti human trafficking organization we were hoping to work with during the World Cup. It looks like we will be able to work with them during the few weeks we're in Cape Town in June-July. We'll post the details of what we're doing when we have a better idea. In the meantime, ESPN is doing a spotlight on Human Trafficking which will air June 5. It will feature Justice Acts and may give some background on the organization.

We're 51 days away from Maine. We are so excited to be home again with you all. Check out the new pictures.

The BCC

We're in Week Five of the BCC and it's going great so far. We've been keeping pretty busy with school work and the time has been flying by.

The BCC (Biblical Core Course) is a shorter version of the School of Biblical Studies offered through YWAM. In three months, we'll read through the Bible from beginning to end (out loud) and do an in-depth study of fifteen books using an inductive method designed by the school. Much of the idea behind the inductive study is to approach the text without preconceived ideas about its meaning and seek to understand it in context.

The school runs from Monday-Saturday. Every Saturday, we read a few books out loud in reading groups. The following week, one of those books will become the subject of our inductive study. The method is pretty comphrehensive, including color-coding, writing titles for each paragraph and creating charts that provide both a big picture synopsis and an in-depth analysis of each book. The school also hosts a speaker each week to teach on the book, providing historical information, scholarly references and personal perspectives and theories. All of our assignments are due Saturday afternoon, leaving Sunday our only free day (but it's completely free).

We have also been doing some of our readings off base, which has given us a good opportunity to get out of the classroom and see more of Worcester. In the first week of the school, we went to the Botanical Gardens and yesterday we went to Goudini Spa, a hot springs resort, for the night. Our school leader has been posting pictures of us on Facebook - so you can find some there to see exactly what we've been up to! We'll post some of our own pictures soon.

Our school ends on June 24th and then we're off to the World Cup. We're still in the process of working out ministry, but we've been offered a place to stay at the YWAM base in Cape Town.

We'll post updates as our plans solidify - can't wait to see you all in July!

-bkwam

Not home, but sweet, but still not home

We are here at the YWAM Worcester Base just an hour outside of Cape Town. Check out our base tour video. Also check out our pictures, we've added some.

The majority of people on this base are Brazilians, so lots of soccer, and then South Koreans who are participating in the YWAM English Language School.

A week from today we start the BCC (Biblical Core Course). This is an abbreviated version of the 9 month SBS (School of Biblical Studies). The BCC is a 12 week course designed to empower missionaries in a short period of time. In the BCC we will read every book of the Bible in block text (meaning we have to go through and white out all of the paragraph titles) aloud, and each book in one sitting. Kati and I have started this portion early because we are leaving early to participate in the World Cup Outreach (we finished Isaiah in 3 hours and 4 minutes, a new record). The main focus of the BCC is to teach a new method of Bible study. The first week of the course is dedicated to teaching the method and the next 11 weeks is applying the method to different books of the Bible, which means we will spend one week each studying 11 books.

The next two months will be rather uneventful as we study 6 days a week. We will leave Worcester on June 8th to participate in the World Cup Outreach. We haven't figured out exactly how we will participate, but it will probably be with a focus on soccer ministry or anti human trafficking ministry, we'll keep you posted and pass on the information about the situation here leading up to the World Cup Outreach.

We miss you all heaps and can't wait to be back stateside. We are very excited for this BCC and the World Cup Outreach and even more excited to see you all again. We will keep you updated as the school progresses. We have much better internet access here, so email and hit us with some knowledge on yourselves.

peace and love, but mostly love
><>kbk

Graduation and our next step

This is us: before and after. We finally graduated on Wednesday night and have spent the last few days relaxing. J'Bay is gorgeous this time of year and the ocean is finally warmer than the Atlantic in Maine.

We wanted to update everyone on our next move. As many of you know, our plan was to do two schools here: the Discipleship Training School and the Biblical Core Course. Now that the DTS is over, we're onto the BCC, which will be the more academic and less ministry-focused portion of our time here. Beginning in the lecture phase, we discussed enrolling in the BCC at a different base. We've spent some time praying about it and now feel this is the best decision. Our plan is to go to YWAM Worcester, the hub of YWAM South Africa. Moving will give us the opportunity to see more of South Africa and more of YWAM, which we're excited to do. We'll also be much closer to Cape Town, which is our final destination for the World Cup games and outreach.

Our plan is to leave on Tuesday or Wednesday for Worcester. We will spend the next few weeks on a break as the school doesn't begin until April 2.

Thanks for all the continued prayers - we'll be sure to send another update when we've settled in at Worcester.

All's Well That Ends Well

So our time in the Philippines has come to a close. We were in San Pascual for the 5 weeks and it was amazing. We both really enjoyed the culture - especially the missionary family that is pioneering the YWAM base in the province of Batangas.

After our mini-vacation, we continued with the same ministry as before - "friendship evangelism" in Santa Clara, campus ministry and kids programs in Balayong. The final part of our schedule was a three-day trip to Libjo, in a Badjao community. The Badjaos are a Filipino minority, originally from Mindanao. Well-known as "sea-dwellers," the Badjaos are deep-rooted in Islam and have a long history of displacement (it is actually uncertain where this minority originated). Here, they are known as the modern-day "gypsies" of the Philippines -with no real place to call home, they are either on the streets or living in shacks along the sea.

We actually only spent one night with our team for the Badjao trip. The youth from one of the local churches invited us to attend a Valentine's Day fundraiser dinner, so we left the Badjao community for that and the following day we spoke at the Love, Courtship and Marriage seminar in Batangas City. We shared our testimonies and participated in a panel Q&A with one other couple on love (we know a little), courtship (we don't really know what that is), and marriage (the other couple was 44 years more seasoned than us in that department). It was a great experience though - and we were so happy to get the chance to work with young people. We also really connected with the youth at CCFI, the church that held the Valentine's Day dinner - and were able to spend the next day at church with them while the rest of our team was in the Badjao community.

We returned to South Africa on Thursday, February 18 and spent our last week in a small community called Loerie. We were really blessed there with organized ministry and great hosts - it was the perfect way to end our outreach. We spent the entire week holding mini Young Life-style clubs each night for the senior youth and ended with a program on Friday night that was open to the whole community. Also, in South Africa, Christian teaching is embraced by schools so we went into the school twice to perform dramas in their morning assembly and speak in the classrooms. The community seemed really excited to have us there and sad to see us go and we left feeling like we had really made an impact on some of the young people. Brian and one guy, Theo, really hit it off. They spent a lot of time together outside organized ministry talking about what it is to follow God and set an example. As one of the older guys in the community, Theo has such potential to set the pace for the rest of the youth in the future.

We arrived in Jeffrey's Bay last night around 11. We have a couple days to debrief with the other two teams and then we graduate on Wednesday. We're glad to be back and ready for round 2 - the BCC. It's hard to believe we're only at half-way point! We're also looking into outreach for the World Cup. We are trying to get in with Justice Acts, an organization doing anti-human trafficking work, to do work while we are in town for the games. Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we try to sort out the details for the second half of our time here, Biblical Core Course and World Cup Outreach. Hopefully we will be able to give you more frequent and detailed updates now that our bouncing around is done. We will let you know more about the BCC and the Justice Acts work as we make arrangements with those organizations. We're really excited to see what God has for us over these next few months and even more excited to be back home with you all in July!

Mahal Kita...

It's hard to believe we've already been here for three weeks and our time is almost over. The majority of our ministry has been the same week to week. Many of the people here hold on to religion (mainly Catholicism) as a piece of their identity without really knowing what they believe in or why they believe it. Between this blind faith and the close-mindedness to other denominations, there is a lot of division over religion. We've spent a lot of time working with people who already hold some type of faith, discussing the need for unity between churches and the pursuit of the truth of God over being "religious." We've worked with college students in a campus ministry affiliated with InterVarsity, spoken in churches from week to week and done various open-air ministry. A couple weeks ago, we organized a training workshop for young people from local Batangas churches and they joined us the following week in an open-air program in a small farming community. Last week, Brian preached a 45 minute sermon on loving God is about action. We also spent a few days on a small vacation at a beach house in Lubo. It was gorgeous, relaxing and a good way to spend time together as a team.

It's been such an adventure so far - and we've probably grown more as a couple and as individuals than we have done anything huge to change the world (as is typical YWAM DTS fashion, or so I'm learning). Since we got here, we've been looking for ways we could give to the base. We have really caught a hold of their vision, love what they're doing and believe in their success. When we arrived, we learned the base director used to be a graphic designer who had always been Mac-loyal until his powerbook was stolen last year. It seemed obvious that I was to leave my laptop here when we return to South Africa. He was working on an old PC with an old version of PhotoShop and Illustrator and my macbook has CS2 and Dreamweaver - programs I can barely use myself. I told Brian I felt like I should give my laptop away and we agreed we would do it when we left. But then the base PC broke down. I passed up a chance to impulsively give it up when I found out, but halfheartedly said to God that maybe the PC would break again and, if so, I would give it to Erik immediately. The next morning, the computer was broken. I knew that I was supposed to give him my computer right away, so Brian and I left for the mall to get a flash drive for all of our files.

I (Brian now) had been talking about wanting to buy a guitar - whether for myself or the base - since we arrived. Buying a flash drive big enough for all of our files was going to cost almost as much as a guitar, so I gave up the idea. We went to the mall and bought a 32 gig flash drive (amazing how big they are now right?) and then go watch the move Sherlock Holmes because movie tickets here are less than 3 USD. We met some of our friends outside the theater and right before we went into the movie our friend from Switzerland gave me a brand new guitar. He said that he felt he was supposed to do it, so he did.

When we got home, I (Kati again) took Erik and Josie aside and told them that I felt like God wanted them to have my laptop. Erik later told us that ever since his Powerbook was stolen, he had been holding out for another Mac - despite having so little money in a country where Apple products are so expensive. A man who really believes that God cares about each one of our specific needs, he told us that he had prayed for a "white Macbook with the new magnetic latch." Even that morning, his wife said it was time to buy a new computer  - they couldn't put all their trust in the old base PC when Erik was supposed to be designing literature for YWAM's 50th anniversary and the base's yearly financial report was due to YWAM International soon. Erik said no, God's going to give me a Mac, and that night, he did - the exact computer he had prayed for with all of the Adobe products he uses for graphic design and software to maintain his own website.

We have been so excited to be part of the little - but so big - things that God is doing. Brian loves his new guitar and has even been teaching me how to play. Check out our new pictures in the Philippines album to the left.

Thank you all for supporting us and being interested in the things God has set up for us to do. We love you all and miss you heaps. 

Magandang Gabi from Batangas

(That means "good evening" in Tagalog) We’re in the Philippines! We flew into Manila on January 14th and are staying on a newly pioneered YWAM base outside Batangas City. Right away, we were thrown into the Filipino culture, hopping Jeepney’s and eating the Filipino delicacy, Balut, which is a hard boiled duck egg containing an 18-day old fetus (check out the pictures).

Since it was once colonized by Spain, the Philippines are rich in Spanish and Oriental culture and traditions. The primary language in Batangas is Tagalog, which sounds like other Asian languages, but uses several Spanish words. The people here are warm, hospitable and affectionate (they thew me an amazing birthday party). Everyone here wants to know where you are going and where you are from - and strangers are always stopping us on the street to ask us. Anytime they come across an American, they call him “Joe.”

The base is lead by Erik Gumarang and his wife Josie. Erik is a former graphic designer for a big advertising agency in Manila that does work for Honda Civic and also for YWAM – his wife worked for the base that was one of his clients, and years after they were married, he felt God telling him to leave his job for missions. He pioneered the base in Batangas in 2007 and they have been working ever since to build ministry in the area and bring in students and staff.

We’ve really developed a heart for the people - despite only being here a little over the week - and we love the ministry so far. We’ve been doing sport ministry, open-air evangelism and youth and college ministry. We also took one morning to climb a mountain in Alitagtag and prayed over the city from the top. We will give more info about the ministry another time as it will be mostly the same type of work throughout the month.

We love and miss you all - Feel free to drop us a line on any of our emails as we are much better connected here in the Philippines and will have regular access to e-mail!

We also finally put up some pictures of Jo'Burg - pictures from the AIDS village and the other ministry we did can be found here.

Johannesburg and beyond...

Hey all,
The past week we have been in this nations largest city. We were hosted by an organization called "Making a Difference". Kati and I stayed with a Zulu woman and her grandchild and the rest of our team was split up between other houses. This week has been a little frustrating because our hosts had not arranged very much for us to do. We did get a chance to participate in some great ministries and had some time to debrief as a team before our long trip to Asia. We helped out with a children's feeding program in a Zulu township. It can be really hard to see small children living in such devastating poverty. We served them an afternoon meal and distributed Christmas presents to the children while we spent time with them. We also had the opportunity to visit a place called Sparrow Ministries Aids Village. It is literally a medical village built for aids patients and their children. They take in aids patients who are on their death beds, only a CD4 count of 200 or less are admitted, and nurse them back to physical health and back in to society. Most of the ministry's efforts are spent on aids orphans. They house over 285 orphans, most of whom are HIV positive. These children are cared for on the campus and schooled until the age of 18, then Sparrow finds them work opportunity and a place to stay in the community. We will post some pictures of our time there sometime soon. Kati and I spent our day off that week at the Official Apartheid Museum in Jo'burg. If you haven't taken time to learn about the Apartheid I would recommend reading about it on the internet, I realized how little I knew about the country I was living in while walking through that museum.

Kati and I arrived safely in Manila, Philippines on Thursday evening after an entire 24 hour day of travel. We are now sitting at an internet cafe in Batangas, Philippines. We will write another update in the next week or two about our work here in the Philippines.

We love you all, como esta ka?

Christmas in Mossel Bay

We arrived in Mossel Bay a few days before Christmas, and stayed for two weeks in Brandwag, a hillside community located a few kilometers outside the city. We stayed with the in-laws of our school leader, who opened their home to the nine of us to use as a hub for ministry and a place to stay for the holidays. “Auntie Julie” was a great host, feeding us more than we could eat and, like any good mother would, going through our rooms to collect and clean our dirty laundry.

Since most of the churches here are closed during the Christmas season, we didn’t really have a solid partner for ministry. One local church allowed us to use their sound equipment and helped us lead a few open-air programs, but most of our ministry was in visiting homes in the community and running children’s programs. We also spent time in a nearby community called Sonskyn doing similar ministry.

More than 80 kids attended the Christmas program, where Father Christmas himself showed up all the way from Switzerland to hand out goodie bags filled with South African candies and “cool drink.” We spent Christmas Day together as a team, opening small gifts we bought for one another and enjoying traditional South African fare.

Because of the drought, fires are sweeping over the Eastern Cape. We witnessed a brush fire that started in the hills and literally came within inches of Sonskyn, charring the edges of homes along the back perimeter. We recently heard of more fires in other coastal towns, like Plettenburg Bay, that are actually reaching communities and destroying homes. 

We left Mossel Bay on Tuesday morning, and after fifteen hours of driving and one blown tire, we arrived in Johannesburg. we’ll be staying  here until Wednesday when we leave for the Philippines. We have new pictures up and a Christmas video - check them out.