Work Day 1

 by Cammy Brantzeg

I forgot to ask someone to blog tonight so I decided that I would just write one myself.  

The sun was shining with a few clouds in the sky.  The temperature was in the high 80s today.  

We started off our day joining the Mosaic devotion at the Mosaic community center where all three Mosaic sites and one Mosaic partner organization Zoomed in.  Carien shared a devotion and each site provided an update for what they did the past week and what they were planning on doing the upcoming week.  It was nice to see the employees for all the locations.  I took a moment to thank them for doing what they do everyday for the Mosaic children and mothers.  Our mission trip teams pop in for a week or two each year to help out but they are supporting the mothers and children each and every day.

It was a hot day to be out in the sun building the houses.  Everyone in our group was building this morning except me.  This is the worksite before our group started.  Our group with some local workers will build two modest brick houses for two Mosaic families to move into.

I went to the Mosaic community center to try to work out some of the details for later in the week.  I was also able to stop by and join the Ma's for Wellington prayer group that meets on Monday.  It was so nice to see the ladies!  

We ate our lunch at the Mosaic community center around noon.  Meyer Conradie (co-founder of Mosaic with his wife Louise) joined our group for lunch and shared how Mosaic was started and described Mosaic and their programs to our group.  

After lunch, half of our group went back to the building site to continue to build the houses and half of our group went to visit some of the Ma's for Wellington Tannie (Auntie) Mammas with Cornel.  We visited four ladies and learned more about them and what they do for their families and their community.  We also prayed with them and gave them small gifts to encourage them like the angel ornaments, colored scripture cards and encouragement cards written by friends in the US from St. Daniels UMC.  The ladies appreciated our prayers and the time we spent visiting them.  I forgot to take a picture at one of the houses.  :-)

After visiting, we returned to the building site.  The bricks we are using for this house are bigger than they have been in the past so the walls seem to be going up fast!  

For dinner we ate at the guesthouse and had Stephanie, Cornel and Salome join us to talk about Ma's for Wellington and how it started.  Cornel talked about her prison ministry.  Our group will have the opportunity to join Cornel to visit Drakenstein prison on Thursday.  

I need to sign off.  South Africa has load shedding where the power goes off for 2 - 2 1/2 hours.  It starts at 10 pm tonight until 12:30.  I have 8 minutes to post this blog before that happens.  :-)