During my time in South Africa I wanted to test out how easy it would be to buy something online and have it shipped to me here. It didn’t take too long to come up with the item I wanted to purchase. Right before I left the states I remember watching Jamie Foxx win an Oscar for his performance in the movie Ray. I enjoyied the movie in the theater and since most of the people at Thrive haven’t see it, I found my test product. I chose Amazon.com as my retailer since I figured they would be the most reliable for shipping overseas. The price of the DVD “Ray” from Amazon was $22. Next, the unknown… shipping. I had three different prices to choose from: the first was for 20-30 day shipping at $8, the next was 10-20 days at $12 and finally “express” 3-10 days at $28. I decided to go with 10-20 days because I wanted it to get here before I left. So I placed my order and then simply had to wait… and wait… and wait for my DVD to arrive.

We now fast forward 16 days and my DVD arrived at the local post office. Yea, $34 isn’t the cheapest, but it is actually cheaper then buying it from a local store, not that there is even a store within 2 hours that sells DVD’s. You might be wondering why the title says $40, where is the other $6? The answer is called “Import Duty”. That’s right, it cost an additional $6 just to bring it into the country. Thanks, South Africa.

Even though I paid $40 for a $22 DVD I would still call the test a success only because it worked. Unfortunatly, for me the internet over here is not really a place where you could buy cheap movies online.

We are safely back in Harrismith today after our 2 weeks trip to Cape Town, just off the west coast of South Africa. For a good portion of the time we worked at Living Hope, a ministry that offers hospice care for people suffering from HIV/AIDS. It was great to see another ministry in action here in South Africa. I love that fact that we all serve the same God, yet He gives each of a specific passion for areas we can serve the Kingdom. For Thrive Africa, it’s raising up Godly leaders while for Living Hope it’s caring for the sick, but it is all rooted in a passion to share Christ’s love.

The main reason for this trip was to server, so during our time at Living Hope we’ve been able to build cabinets, do some general IT work, help with filing and setting up new administration processes. Another thing I will take away from this trip is that all ministries have challenges, but it was interesting to see a different set of challenges here than we have at Thrive.

The Thrive Africa ministry will be we leave for Cape Town (west coast) tonight. Niel, myself and 3 interns are going by land (15 hour drive straight through) while Alece and Rebecca will be going by sky. So please be praying for all of us, but mostly for us in the car. It’s crazy that in the span of a week I’ll have been to both sides of South Africa.

We’ll be there for two weeks serving along side two local ministries. One is called Living Hope, which is a hospice clinic for people who are suffering from HIV/AIDS. The other is a local church that is putting on a youth conference. I’m excited to see other ministries in action in South Africa. Please pray as there will be many opportunities for us to share the love of Christ to these people.

Yes, for most of the time we’ll be working (serving), but as a treat we’ll get to see penguins in the wild, unfortunatly no Shamu.

The past weekend the staff at Thrive Africa was treated to a relaxing trip to the town of Balito located on the western tip of South Africa. We stayed right on the beach and had a pretty amazing view of the Indian Ocean (see below). So how was the beach? Well, there were tons of rocks to climb on, which is always fun. As for the swimming, with all the rocks we could only swim in a confined area desingnated by the lifeguard. Think of the wave machine at a water park and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what it was like. FYI, the Indian Ocean is about the same temperature as the beaches in Florida.

No thanks, I’m from Florida
Loving in Florida all my life I have been sunburned more times than I can remember. So as the sun block was passed around of course being a guy I passed. I’ve always hated putting that nasty stuff on my body. Well, I can now say I’ve been sunburned in South Africa and let me tell you it isn’t the same. First, it didn’t even feel that hot. Second, I was out there for a maximum of two hours. Needles to say, I caught up on some TV the next day…and the day after.

We were also treated to a production called “African Footprints”. Think of mix between Stomp and the Lion King. It started off a bit awkward when a half naked man started dance right next to me, but eventually he went away. Another great thing we did was go to the movies. You must first understand that I love going to the movies and the closest movie theater to me is normally about 2 hours away, so it was a treat when we went. We saw the movie “Hitch” by the way.

Through seeing a new ocean, getting a bad sunburn, watching a movie on the big screen and also watching a nearly naked man dancing next to me it was a great weekend of fun times and relaxation in a beautiful place.

With the combination of bad internet, being very busy and the fact that I don’t really enjoy writing too much I haven’t done a very good job updating my blog for the past two weeks. I promise to try and do a better job from now on. The staff is taking a trip to the coast this weekend, so I should atleast have some good pictures to add to the site.

The Toyota Pardo, the Nissan Patrol and the Ford Laser are just a few of the vehicles I never knew existed until I came to South Africa. Another interesting discovery is that you’d think in a country that has such poverty you could get a good deal on a car. Well, you’d be completely wrong. Vehicles here are about two times more expensive than they are in America. One of the staff here bought a 1998 RAV 4 for the bargain price of $15,000, and that’s after he talked them down.

Other great deals from the Auto Trader here in South Africa.

1994 Toyota Land Cruiser - $30,000
1999 Jeep Wrangler - $29,000
1997 Jeep Cherokee Sport - $21,000
1996 Honda Prelude - $17,000
1992 Toyota Corolla - $4,350