Appreciating Africa

We have now come to the end of the second week of Term 4. Things have died down a little since last term, which was quite a hectic one for us. In Term 3, we doubled our course load for the rest of the year as there were so many great subjects that we wanted to study. This meant of course, an exponential increase in the amount of work we had to do (without cutting down on ministry commitments). However, even the other full time students have said that there has been a very obvious increase in the workload in Term 3 and 4.

So, needless to say, Chester and I had been on edge for the last couple of months trying to do everything. The last week of term 3 was very reminiscent of uni life - last minute cramming, lots of coffee, allnighters and adrenalin rushes. By the grace of God, we finished all 7 of the assignments due in the last week and kept our sanity.

Luckily, we had an 'adventure' to look forward to. We decided to join Des and Jen on a safari in the holidays. It was so great having Des and Jen here. For the whole year, we have been trying to build up friendships, but it was nice to have a couple of our closest friends here. We could just chill out and not have the pressure of making conversation, getting to know each other etc. It was just us, cracking the same lame jokes we have been making for the last few years and chatting about anything and everything.

Their visit really breathed alot of new life into us! They also helped me look at our life through new eyes. Since we arrived, I had always had a niggling negative feeling in the back of my mind about Cape Town and safety/security etc, which meant that I could never truly appreciate our new life for what it was. Des and Jen helped me appreciate the real beauty and magnificence of Sth Africa and our life here. They pointed out all the truly positive things here that I had forgotten about or neglected as I was only focused on the negative.

Although Im still wise about walking around by myself, I feel Im much less paranoid and judgmental about things now. I look forward to appreciating more about college life, studying God's word, getting to know people, serving at church etc and cant wait to see what God has in store for us over the next year.