New Friends

I spent time with a new friend from church this weekend who’s studying law at Wits University. It was nice to get out of the area I’ve been in for the past seven months and see a new area of Joburg. We went to dinner and a movie (No Reservations … cute, but I can’t tell you how many times I almost cried!), then I spent the night at her place.

Getting to know Karen (inasmuch as you can do that in a few hours) was such a cool experience. Hearing her dreams and the ambitions God’s placed in her heart both challenged and encouraged me.

One of the things we talked about was how God used the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) to challenge her in her everyday walk with Him. He basically spoke to her about being faithful with the giftings and abilities He’d placed in her, as well as living in balance with Him and in relationship with others.

I walked away from that conversation asking God what talents He’d placed in me that I’d buried or wasn’t being faithful to walk in to bring Him glory. He showed me a few things that I’d “buried in the ground” since being in South Africa – partially out of fear, partly because timing and logistics haven’t made it possible. However, I feel like the time to resurrect these things has come.

What complicates matters is that I’ve been really thinking and asking God about what training would be beneficial to me in pursuing the things He has for me in the future here in South Africa. One of the things that come to mind whenever I do this is health and nutrition for HIV+ children. I’m sure that some of the children I’ll be working with will be HIV+ … at this juncture I don’t know very much about caring for them.

I’m kind of regretting not doing the HIV/AIDS School in Muizenburg right about now. It looks like I’ll have to look into some other avenues!