Living Unafraid - Ephesians 2:10

We're halfway through and I can't believe it!  Thanks for your continuous love and support for my team and I.  It has definitely been an adventure and we are continuing to see God do so many things here in South Africa.

God has been doing so many things on campus through the lives of myself and my team.  The guys are able to spend each day in the gym and also playing sports outside with students.  This has become a great way for them to connect with Wits students and to get good conversations with them outside of working out.  All of the girls have had a great opportunity to get into the dorms and to meet plenty of students and to build deep friendships with them.  God is continuing to give us sweet friendships and is using them all for his glory.

Next weekend, we have a retreat called Joint Winter Conference (JWC).  This is a 3 day long retreat where students from 4 different campuses come and spend a weekend hearing God's word, enjoying fellowship, and doing fun activities like talent shows and bridge jumping (which I will definitely be doing).  We will have 4 different rallys which there will be speakers giving talks on God's word and sharing what it looks like to walk with God and the sweet news of Jesus Christ.  Karlie and I have 4 girls from Sunnyside going with us as of right now.  Please pray that girls will continue to want to sign up and that God will soften the hearts of girls to desire to spend a weekend of their lives that can potentially transform and change their eternity.  We will have a lot of down time there where we can spend time with these girls and have deep spiritual conversations with them, so please pray God gives us conversation opportunities and that we soak them up. 

Each week, Karlie and I have had the chance to do bible studies in Sunnyside and we have had good turnouts each time.  We have one tonight and one next Tuesday night.  Please pray for these that God will continue to work in these girls lives and that they will desire to know more about Jesus and that they will see that He is the only one who can fully satisfy. We have had great conversations so far and are continuing to pray that God will use our lives on campus and in Sunnyside specifically.
                               
                                 (Below is Yezee with the bible that Karlie and I bought her)

As a team, we have 2 weeks left on campus, which gives us 9 days including today to invest in men and womens lives and to share the most important news they will ever hear with them.  Please pray that we are "Unafraid" and that we continue to completely give our lives away and dont waste away these last few days we have been given.

       (Below is some of the CCP girls along with some Sunnyside girls we've built friendships with)

On Saturday, we attended a professional rugby game.  This was really fun for all of us to do.  Before we came to South Africa, we learned how to play rugby as a team.  It was a good time for us to hang out but also to apply the small amount of knowledge we have on this sport to watching an actual game.  Below are some pictures of my team and I at the Lions game.

On Sunday, the guys took all of the girls on a group date.  They took us to get frozen yogurt, which is one of the only places in Jo'burg that has froyo.  At the frozen yogurt place, we did speed dating and just got good time to get to know each other more.  After that we did a scavenger hunt around the mall and this was fun and gave us an awesome opportunity to get out of our comfort zone.  That night, we went to a place called Carnivore.  This is a really high class steakhouse and they start off the meal by giving you bread and soup and then they bring out a salad bar to your table.  From there, they come around with food on skewers and they put it over your plate and give you how ever much meat you want.  There are 12 different meats that you can try and almost everyone on our team tried everything.  Some of the foods we tried: (Crocodile, Lamb, Antelope, Chicken Liver, Impala, Venison Sausage, Pork Sausage, Ribs, Chicken, Eland, Rump Steak, and Venison Meatballs).  They then serve dessert and lets just say, by the end of the meal, we were all extremely full but also extremely satisfied.
                                   (Below are some pictures of my team and I at Carnivore.)

We have had the time of our lives so far and are excited for these next 3 weeks.  We are blown away by the prayer requests that God has answered.  He has done so much in our lives and also through our lives.  We are all learning what it looks like to really strive to know Jesus more and out of the overflow of knowing him, we will want to love others and to share about that love with them.  Please continue to pray for my team and myself especially.

Prayer Requests:
1) Pray we strive to know God more deeply each day!
2) Pray we invest our lives these last 2 weeks on campus and don't waste it.
3) Pray for intentional conversations with girls on campus.
4) Pray for the girls we are taking to JWC and the girls that want to go.  (Specifically pray for  Yezee, Cheryl, Joy, Zee, and Dee).

In Christ Alone,
Samantha