Bus-ee-ness and World Cup Games

It has been so incredibly busy the last few weeks and even though I have a job in the morning and a local coffee shop called Homeground Coffee Roasters and also that the National Arts Festival is going I hope to slow down a little.
I went to a total of 3 World Cup games. The first one I went to watch was South Korea vs. Greece, the second was Germany vs. Serbia, and the last one was England vs. Slovenia. Although the hype and excitement was huge at each game it was also interesting to see how each team celebrated in there own way.
The 1st game was a lot of vuvuzelas, which if you don't know is a South African plastic horn that is played at soccer games here and makes a huge amount of noise, and Koreans were dancing everywhere. The 2nd game was much more calmer. The Germans preferred to shout and make waves around the stadium. The last game was kinda a combination of the first two. A lot of vuvuzelas, but the British sure do love their anthem, "God save the Queen"!

A little about my job. It's a small little shop with a menu of 8 drinks and a few other coffee items. They used to have more drinks, but it was to much; they used to have a larger sized drinks but it was also too much; they also used to have tables where they could sit down and enjoy their coffee, but it was a hassle. Basically this coffee shop likes to keep things simple and straight-forward :) I've really enjoyed working there though. The 2 owners and the regular customers are so much fun to interact with! I've also been able to meet a lot of the actors and directors that are involved with the Arts Festival.

Funny Story: The National Arts Festival also has a huge hippie fest, which is great! We even walked by a stall today that was selling marijuana bongs today. Anyways, we were leaving the tents for the day and this girl asks us if we have a lighter? Well Sarah randomly had a lighter and gives it to the girl. We look at her while she was lighting it and it was weed! Lol...we were all so shocked we didn't know what to say!

Bible Camps

So the last week and a half we have had a mission team come from Tennessee to work with young boys in soccer clinics during the World Cup. While they're doing that my mom, Sarah, other volunteers and I have been working with the younger kids in a Bible Club. It has been very exhausting, but well worth it to see all these kids get so excited about us being here with them and learning about God. Today was our last day of Bible Club, but last night we had a debriefing/reflection time. I went into this club thinking that I'll change the kids lives and maybe my own, but last night really got me thinking. I starting looking back at how passionate these kids are about God. They get so excited about singing praises to God! They sing and dance and just have huge smile on their faces the whole time! Today was a horrible day too. They high today was 5C (40F) and it was very windy and raining yet we had 16 faithful kids walk through the wind and rain to come and get excited about Bible Club! Then I thought about me and my walk with God. I realized that my faith is not as strong as what these children have. In the Bible it says that we must have faith like a child. I want to have fire in my eyes the same way these kids do! The last week and a half changed me more than I thought!
What got me the most was as we were giving them all a piece of candy and saying goodbye one of the little boys came up to me and ask, "Can we come back next week?" That just broke my heart! He had had such a great time and didn't realize that this was for a short time.

Addo Elephant Park

So I'm finally getting around to writing about our trip to the Elephant Park! This week has been so busy because of some soccer camps we're doing...but that's for another blog :)
So we got to Addo Thursday in time for lunch and has some amazing Fish 'n Chips for lunch. We settled into our tents (they were awesome!) The tents that we stayed in overlooked this waterhole that was on the other side of the fence...they wild side! While we were unpacking we looked over the fence and saw a buffalo! It was just grazing...and this isn't an American buffalo...this is an African buffalo (see first picture).
We went out animal searching for the afternoon, which was really fun! We saw several different animals including a meerkat (Timon) and her little babies and warthogs (Pumba) and her little babies. We saw several jackals as well...this one was turning over rocks looking for bugs!
That night we had a braai (South African barbecue) with springbok, eland and kudu steaks and also springbok boerewors! They were so good!
We went out again the next day to see some more animals, which we did! We were told that there was a lion at this certain waterhole, but by the time we got there there wasn't anything. We stopped by this one enclosure where you could get out of your vehicles and sit hidden away at this waterhole for animals...but there wasn't anything out there. It was an unusually warm day and so when we came around to that part of the park it was probably too warm for the animals.
Sadly we had to leave that day as well. But we saw plenty of animals for the short amount of time we were there!