standing out is better than fitting in…

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When I walked into Hope House yesterday I was greeted by Lindo, he kept saying, “baby, baby”. He took my hand and led me back to the babies room. We found 9 day old Busisiwe sleeping in her little bed. She had arrived at the orphanage that morning.

I don’t know if I’ve ever held a baby that small…aww, baby Busi. so cute!

Here are a bunch of photos from this week at LaunchPad. We taught lesson 9 of 10, it’s crazy to think it’s just one more week and then graduation! This week was on marriage…

My friend, David, is our interpreter for LaunchPad. He usually hates photos…but, he looked at this one and said he actually liked it [he gave me permission to put in on facebook, so I assumed that applied to my blog too...]

When he looked at it, he said, “look at us, we’re going to change the world.”

I’m definitely up to the challenge.

Just for the record, I counted 7 different varieties of bugs in our bathroom a couple minutes ago. This includes a moth the size of a small bat (which will probably try to dive bomb my head later as I sleep). 

done.//

I started this last week…

Here’s to week numero dos! 

1) We had amazing weather yesterday! I spent a few hours outside AND didn’t get sunburned [that's a first...].

2) You may know that I live on a farm, we commonly refer to it as “the base”, but it’s a farm [i figure cows, chickens and being surrounded by corn all fit the description of a "farm"...]. We have horses that roam free around the property. Right now we have a few ponies that have been born over the last few weeks. I walked outside today, and one of them was standing in front of the door…they’re so cute!

3) The rand is still over 10. Whohoo for a good exchange rate!

4) The movie Rent was on TV yesterday. We’ve watched all of our movies a few times, so it was great to have something different to watch. 

5) My friend Kaylen’s birthday was last week. Last night we had a party with a bonfire to celebrate. It was a perfect night for sitting around the fire.

done.//

This progression of pictures cracks me up! There’s nothing like a good water balloon toss…

Today, I came across some statistics that put things in perspective for me. Here’s the one that hit me hard:

Young women in South Africa face greater risks of becoming infected than men. Indeed, among 15–24-year-olds, women account for about 90% of new HIV infections.

This is my generation of women. These are the girls in my LaunchPad class. These are my friends.

This is why I’m here. To be part of the change. Because I’m confident there can be change.

And here’s another reason we do what we do [pictures from Hope House yesterday]:

Many of you know that I rely on the 100% on financial support from individuals and churches to stay on the field. You may also know that I’ve decided to stay in South Africa for at least three more years.

I’m not saying this to pressure you or guilt you into giving, but I wanted to let you know that the scales have been tipped in my favor recently. literally.

Usually, $100 would equal about 750 rand (South African currency), but the exchange rate has escalated over the past couple of days, and as of right now, $100 would equal just under 1020 rand. I’m not sure how much longer the escalated exchange rate will last (it’s hovered around 8.5 rand to a dollar for the past week or so which is still really good), but I just wanted to let you all know!

If you’re interested, check out my new you can help page. 

Thanks for supporting me if you have in the past, and thank you if you’re considering it.

In some ways this feels like a long year, but in other ways it feels like it’s gone so fast!  

After today we’ll only go to Hope House four more times this year. It’s always funny when you start something, you feel like it’ll will always be a part of their lives.