Finished in Africa

Lets start with what we did, and then will be my thoughts about what
we did...
so each day in the morning we would go to a prision, do a two hour
program, then spend maybe an hour talking to people before going to
get lunch, do some shopping, maybe something in the afternoon, prob a
team meeting at some point, and dinner, maybe something in the evening.
So prision visting wise...
we went each friday to the single cells block of pollsmoor, and did a
"devotion" there, with people from that block, but also from nearby
blocks of 18-21 year olds, with a mix of sentaced and unsentaced
people. basicaly a two hour program of worship, teaching, drama, and
time when the prisioners would share things. we also told
testomonies, played games, alex did some magic tricks etc.
On the first saturday we went to drakenstein, were the guys put on a
program, in which we did nothing, except say hello. much as devotion,
but there there was a band which did fantastic worship. We also went
there on the last tuesday and did a devotion for people there.
The second saturday we went to devona, a youth detention centre, much
like prision, but easyir to escape from, and they are nicer to you.
more younger people there, and people with fairly short sentance's.
we did a devotion there.
On mondays we went to B4, a section of pollsmoor for sentaced
16-19/20 years olds where we did another devotion. but this is also
the place we went every other day, and lead a program. The other days
were similar, with worship, teaching, drama, etc. but only for a
hour, and then the second hour was with smaller groups, discusing
everything more closely and generaly getting to know people more
closely. there are about 80 peps in that section, and we worked with
largely the same group of about 50, small groups were about 15.
What else?pollsmoor is about 20 mins from adrians place, a big
overcrowed prision of about 7000 prisioners. there are 3 main
sections, the juvinial section, mens, and womens. we only visited the
juvinal sections.
Drakenstain is out in the county, about an hour away, about 2000 in
total, about 600 in the juvinal section, we had a group of about 50
there.

I feel i have gained alot more than i gave, i saw things and
experience things i have never come into contact with before. the
whole three weeks there were new places, new people.
I think i have said this whereever i have been away from home on
missions, but something really special is to worship and meet with
God in different ways and in different situations. Its great to be
10000km away for home and still find the same amazing God, doing the
same things and different things. To see the work of god in indivuals
so far away, give some idea of how imense god is, he has plans for
everyone, and for my three weeks just to go and be a tiny part of
that for all the people i met there.
One of my favourite time's in prision was at the end of our programs,
hanging around and talking to people, finding out about them and
there stories and also to talk about what there heard that day and
trying to get people to do something about what they were hearing.
Like one guy, jason, who kept saying he wanted to change, he wanted
to give is life to god, but he was still involved in gang stuff,
getting in fights etc. and in fact he missed one day 'cause he was in
a fight the night before.
It was also strange to talk to people in prision, they are there for
many things, and they have all done worse things that they werent
caught for, but they are just normal people, we can chat, and play
football, in one prision there was a fantastic band, they play pool,
and we can worship god together. Something really went wrong that
they got involved in gangs and stuff and are now in prision.
Another thing we saw was how much work there is to do in the prision,
and outside, and how few are the workers. And how people like Adrian
and Sybil go everyday and yet they still say the results are few, and
there is so much they cant do, there just isnt enough people.
Something i heard about whilst i was there, which is really cool was
when some christian prisioners went to another section and told about
God, and 17 gangsters repented. They are now trying to work with them
and stuff. but i though how great that prisioners could evanglese
each other, within the prision. when that happens more i think
amazing things could happen.
Anther interesting thing was to be in South Africa, and see for my
self the country we used to hear about and learn about in history at
school, about the apartid. Its was weird, 'cause its "finished", and
you no longer hear about South Africa on the news you assue
everything is fine and sorted, but really there is still a huge
sepertation between the race's, and there is alot of fear etc. you
can also see the big problems that have been caused and new problems
as the goverment trys to even things out. The country has many
problems, one reason why so many youths are in the prision, and you
can see its gonna take along time to recover.