Arrival

Hello fair sirs and maidens,

I am happy to report that I have arrived safe in South Africa am sitting in our little office writing to you later. Unfortunately I have a number of obstacles to overcome, namely this stupid keyboard which puts a \ in the place where to backspace is and a writer's vanity when it comes to words. These two are combining to make typing very slow and unproductive. Oh and this is the fact that most of my team and in the kitcen making dinner for 10 as we are cooking for our new cell leader, Dean (very South African I know) and two of this friends. Apparently he wanted to bring ten people but Becky, our co ordinator here, thankfully spared us of that load on our first full day.

So yes, I am here. I am safe. And I feel like a Mr.Kipling cake. If you think about that for a moment you will get it. It's very funny.

For those of you that don't know, we are a team of seven and we're staying and working on a project called Gateway. We had the full tour today and it is very very big. There's all sorts of projects such as a sewing project, metalwork project, kid's school, fashion design project, abused women project, feeding project and quite a few more that I can't recall. We've not yet been assigned things to do, we have a week or so of orientation and then we decide with ourselves, the co ordinator, the project managers and hopefully God which we will be best suited to. Luckily for me, the three major areas I feel more excited by are those in most need. So we'll see what happens there.

We are staying in a cell block which to be fair is better than a lot of student accomodation I've been in so it's actually fine. Me and my sole male team member, Jonno, have our own cell. It''s very exciting. Last night we slept very well but that was mostly due to not sleeping on the plane. The whole site feels very uni like to me! There's a lot of popping back to rooms to get things, and a lot of meetings at the moment and meeting new people. And it's all on one site. Very compact. Largely due to the fact that it used to be a political jail. Makes sense.

There is a lot more I could say and a lot more reflective things I am keen to talk about, but I do need to get back soon so help the cooks and such like. So I shall quickly finish with what we've done today:

7am - Up
7.30am - Team breakfast, meeting and prayer
8.30am - Meeting with Becky about our timetable
9am - Meeting with Pastor Sinatra, head of children's school
11am - Tour of Gateway site
1pm - Food shopping
3pm - Meeting with Pastor Jabu, CEO of Gateway
6pm - Dinner with Dean and friends from the church who will be looking after us
(Likely) 9pm - Another horrendously slow but amusing game of Uno with team
10pm - Random chat with Jonno before bed.

I will endeavour to get on here again, maybe even tonight, probably not, to talk in more detail. But you can rest assured that I am safe, happy, and for those you who have seen me in my element, well I'm in it.