There’s been plenty to do around here this week as I settle into my new routine of being at AnHouse two days a week and ASF three days. The house is still pretty quiet, but in a week or two, things should be quite busy! Both parts of my job are going well, although, I’m really excited for the students’ return and the beginning of Bible Studies at the University of Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. I love the discussions we have!
The biggest challenge recently has been the heat! While most of my loved ones are snowbound, I’m sleeping in front of a fan.
As AnSoc at UCT gets ready for orientation week, the officer board is putting together a newsletter to give out to students with jokes, games, and articles from the students and chaplain. This year, I get to include an article, too! For most of you who know me, this is stuff you already know, but here is is nonetheless!
When you follow God’s call, you never know where it will lead you. By trying to keep a listening ear, I have found myself the most wonderful and unexpected places over the course of my life. Most recently, that call has led me here to Cape Town, South Africa, where I am about halfway through my one-year term volunteering with Ansoc at the University of Cape Town and the Anglican Students’ Federation. I also hope for the opportunity to spend time with some of this province’s other AnSocs.
I am a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church, which is the USA’s branch of the Anglican Communion. I grew up in Watchung, New Jersey, on the northeast coast of the United States about an hour outside of New York City. After graduating from the University of Delaware last spring, I began my participation in a program called the Young Adult Service Corps, which is run by the Episcopal Church. The Young Adult Service Corps, or YASC, sends out young adult missionaries from the United States to places all over the world to spend a year serving as volunteers and hopefully, strengthening relationships between branches of the Anglican Communion. My Young Adult Service Corps mission placement has brought me here to work with campus ministry once again in Cape Town, South Africa!
While I was at university, I served as President of my campus ministry and of the geographic region of the Episcopal Church known as Province 3. In addition, I had the pleasure of being involved with our national leadership and conference planning team, the Episcopal Student Leadership Team. I was blessed to have had the opportunity to experience campus ministry from so many angles.
My campus ministry served as my home away from home, where I grew up and grew into (and continue to grow into) God’s call for me. There’s an old saying: “God doesn’t call the qualified; he qualifies the called.” Through my experiences in campus ministry, I went from a quiet girl in the background to a young woman who knows how and when to use her voice. The possibilities are endless. Where will your journey with AnSoc take you?
Friday, January 28, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Week 21 - "Where you invest your love, you invest your life..."
After just starting to get back into my old routine after the holidays, it’s time for a new one in a new place. Monday morning I moved out of Suzanne’s home to start my time living at AnHouse, the student house for the Anglican Society (AnSoc) at the University of Cape Town. I love living with Suzanne and her awesome dog Thembi; they were very good hostesses and I was sad to leave. Nevertheless, I am also quite excited to start this new chapter of my time here working with this campus ministry. Moving into my bedroom at AnHouse on that summery morning felt just like moving into my dorm for another semester at UD! My room has a big window, a bed, a desk, and a wardrobe. It’s a not a lot, but it’s all I need. I’m still getting into my new routine, but I’m excited to be there. I’m significantly closer to the train station but also am significantly uphill from it. Near the train station is a small shopping mall with a pharmacy and a few grocery stores and others stores similar to what you would find in a downtown college area (Newark <3). For now, AnHouse is fairly quiet; the students don’t arrive for fall semester until the first weekend in February and there are only three summer session residents at AnHouse (the house holds 14 students when it’s full).
Another recent experience also merits a blog post. Last weekend, I served as a camp leader at Fikelela’s Agents of Change Camp. Fikelela is the Anglican Church’s HIV/AIDS outreach program in Cape Town and touches local communities in so many ways. This camp hosted youth and youth leaders from parishes all over the Cape Town diocese and aimed to educate them as peer leaders and their leaders as peer educators to run the Agents of Change program. This program, as outlined in the manual given to each camper, aims to use youth to educate their peers to make responsible decisions in all spheres of their lives, especially when it comes to safe sex and healthy relationships. It was so exciting and inspiring to work with the other leaders to help the youth work toward this goal. I haven’t worked extensively with youth, but sometimes, when I would sit back and watch the more experienced leaders interact with the campers, I thought of my experiences in campus ministry, going from the little freshmen girl in the back of the regional retreat sessions to leading those retreats and helping to plan the 2008-2009 Gather. More than familiar experience though, I could sense that familiar ministry energy – that passion and love of what you’re doing and how you’re answering God’s call! In addition to inspiring choosing the above line from a Mumford & Sons song as the title for this entry, it reminded me of the Buechner quote I used in my fundraising sermon; “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” So, where is your deep gladness?
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| The whole gang - campers and leaders - at the end of the weekend! |
Another recent experience also merits a blog post. Last weekend, I served as a camp leader at Fikelela’s Agents of Change Camp. Fikelela is the Anglican Church’s HIV/AIDS outreach program in Cape Town and touches local communities in so many ways. This camp hosted youth and youth leaders from parishes all over the Cape Town diocese and aimed to educate them as peer leaders and their leaders as peer educators to run the Agents of Change program. This program, as outlined in the manual given to each camper, aims to use youth to educate their peers to make responsible decisions in all spheres of their lives, especially when it comes to safe sex and healthy relationships. It was so exciting and inspiring to work with the other leaders to help the youth work toward this goal. I haven’t worked extensively with youth, but sometimes, when I would sit back and watch the more experienced leaders interact with the campers, I thought of my experiences in campus ministry, going from the little freshmen girl in the back of the regional retreat sessions to leading those retreats and helping to plan the 2008-2009 Gather. More than familiar experience though, I could sense that familiar ministry energy – that passion and love of what you’re doing and how you’re answering God’s call! In addition to inspiring choosing the above line from a Mumford & Sons song as the title for this entry, it reminded me of the Buechner quote I used in my fundraising sermon; “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” So, where is your deep gladness?
Monday, January 10, 2011
Week 19 – “We always have the rhythm here, in our blood and in our souls…”
Happy New Year from Cape Town!
Today was my first day back at work after the office closing for a very merry Christmas break. For the first time since Toronto, I got to see Sarah and Jessie, my fellow YASCers working in Umtata and Kenya, respectively. They arrived shortly before Christmas and stayed through the New Year; we had plenty of time to explore the city and share stories. It was so much fun to share stories with my fellow YASCers and speculate on where this journey might lead us. It was also pretty darn cool for Amanda and me to be the ones showing Cape Town to someone else on our touristy trips to Boulder Beach, Table Mountain and downtown Cape Town… Our adventures were SO much fun and went by WAY too fast. Let me tell you about the very special holidays we shared together!
The first big event of Christmas Eve was trimming our tree! It didn’t look quite the same as the ones we’d have found in the US, but it was ours and it was beautiful and we loved trimming it together, hanging Suzanne’s ornaments on the branches. As an extra special treat, I received a Christmas care package from my family back home. One of the highlights of the box was definitely the Christmas wreaths my cousins made me; they had a special place of honor on our little evergreen.
For Christmas Eve dinner, we were blessed by an invitation by our friend, and Amanda’s coworker, Mari, who served us an authentic Finnish feast. She is an excellent chef; there are no words for that deliciousness! Over some after dinner champagne and gingerbread people, she also introduced us to the holiday musical stylings of Boney M. I believe it was Jessie who had the moment of clarity that this was surely an occasion for swing dancing, which occurred right there next to the table, between the dining room and the kitchen. I don’t know if it was your typical swing dancing; I think we laughed more. There are some great pictures of this, but I still don’t think they do our joy justice.
It reminded me of dances past. When we were in Toronto for training, our fellow YASCer Steven found a nearby church that had Saturday night contradancing. For those of you who don’t know (and I certainly didn’t when I first heard the term), contradancing is a combination of British line dancing and square dancing. Like every other form of dancing I have ever attempted, it is super fun! From contradancing in Canada to swing dancing in South Africa… I wonder what happy hop New York holds for us YASCers later this year.
Anyway, after our Christmas Eve feast, we went to a PACKED Midnight Mass at St George’s Cathedral. Anywhere in the world, I think this is one of my favorite services of the year: the liturgy, the music, the candlelight. When I went in 2009, I was running late after dinner with my family (Christmas Eve is our big shindig on my mom’s side) and I ended up going by myself… but that didn’t matter. I love it as much as ever. After dinner, I didn’t want to go home yet, so I spent the first hour or so of Christmas Day driving around the area I grew up in listening to my favorite Christmas mix CD and admiring the lights.
Christmas Day was as magical as ever. We spent a lazy morning watching Boney M videos after the swing dancing to their music the night before. Then, before we started our culinary adventures, we followed Jessie’s lead to make monkey bread and drank some mimosas (because on my dad’s side, it’s not Christmas without mimosas).
By the time the monkey bread was done and we were a few mimosas in, it was time to commit some time to the kitchen! I made my first leg of lamb, following my Dad’s recipe. Suzanne made pumpkin pie. Jessie made asparagus, guided through monkey bread, and treated us to her yummy risotto. Amanda repeated her Thanksgiving magic mashed potatoes while Sarah starred as Inspector 29 and let her photography skills shine.
Gathering around the table to eat together – Amanda, Suzanne, Jessie, Sarah and I – there was such… joy. Even far from our families, who were waking to start preparing their meals as we started to eat ours, we were together as our own family with our own Christmas that we had made. It was hard to believe that a year ago we hadn’t even met; we were just finishing our YASC applications. Then, we were sharing a Christmas table, a kitchen, Boney M videos and Love Actually.
If you look for it, I have a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.
Today was my first day back at work after the office closing for a very merry Christmas break. For the first time since Toronto, I got to see Sarah and Jessie, my fellow YASCers working in Umtata and Kenya, respectively. They arrived shortly before Christmas and stayed through the New Year; we had plenty of time to explore the city and share stories. It was so much fun to share stories with my fellow YASCers and speculate on where this journey might lead us. It was also pretty darn cool for Amanda and me to be the ones showing Cape Town to someone else on our touristy trips to Boulder Beach, Table Mountain and downtown Cape Town… Our adventures were SO much fun and went by WAY too fast. Let me tell you about the very special holidays we shared together!
 |
| New Years' Eve |
The first big event of Christmas Eve was trimming our tree! It didn’t look quite the same as the ones we’d have found in the US, but it was ours and it was beautiful and we loved trimming it together, hanging Suzanne’s ornaments on the branches. As an extra special treat, I received a Christmas care package from my family back home. One of the highlights of the box was definitely the Christmas wreaths my cousins made me; they had a special place of honor on our little evergreen.
For Christmas Eve dinner, we were blessed by an invitation by our friend, and Amanda’s coworker, Mari, who served us an authentic Finnish feast. She is an excellent chef; there are no words for that deliciousness! Over some after dinner champagne and gingerbread people, she also introduced us to the holiday musical stylings of Boney M. I believe it was Jessie who had the moment of clarity that this was surely an occasion for swing dancing, which occurred right there next to the table, between the dining room and the kitchen. I don’t know if it was your typical swing dancing; I think we laughed more. There are some great pictures of this, but I still don’t think they do our joy justice.
It reminded me of dances past. When we were in Toronto for training, our fellow YASCer Steven found a nearby church that had Saturday night contradancing. For those of you who don’t know (and I certainly didn’t when I first heard the term), contradancing is a combination of British line dancing and square dancing. Like every other form of dancing I have ever attempted, it is super fun! From contradancing in Canada to swing dancing in South Africa… I wonder what happy hop New York holds for us YASCers later this year.
Anyway, after our Christmas Eve feast, we went to a PACKED Midnight Mass at St George’s Cathedral. Anywhere in the world, I think this is one of my favorite services of the year: the liturgy, the music, the candlelight. When I went in 2009, I was running late after dinner with my family (Christmas Eve is our big shindig on my mom’s side) and I ended up going by myself… but that didn’t matter. I love it as much as ever. After dinner, I didn’t want to go home yet, so I spent the first hour or so of Christmas Day driving around the area I grew up in listening to my favorite Christmas mix CD and admiring the lights.
Christmas Day was as magical as ever. We spent a lazy morning watching Boney M videos after the swing dancing to their music the night before. Then, before we started our culinary adventures, we followed Jessie’s lead to make monkey bread and drank some mimosas (because on my dad’s side, it’s not Christmas without mimosas).
By the time the monkey bread was done and we were a few mimosas in, it was time to commit some time to the kitchen! I made my first leg of lamb, following my Dad’s recipe. Suzanne made pumpkin pie. Jessie made asparagus, guided through monkey bread, and treated us to her yummy risotto. Amanda repeated her Thanksgiving magic mashed potatoes while Sarah starred as Inspector 29 and let her photography skills shine.
Gathering around the table to eat together – Amanda, Suzanne, Jessie, Sarah and I – there was such… joy. Even far from our families, who were waking to start preparing their meals as we started to eat ours, we were together as our own family with our own Christmas that we had made. It was hard to believe that a year ago we hadn’t even met; we were just finishing our YASC applications. Then, we were sharing a Christmas table, a kitchen, Boney M videos and Love Actually.
 |
| It's like this whole town has swallowed some magic... |
If you look for it, I have a sneaking suspicion… love actually is all around.
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