With our bodies not yet knowing we are in South Africa, most of the team was up between the hours of 4 -5AM. Groups started forming and exploring as soon as the sun was up. Camp Eden is approximately 5000 ft above sea level surrounded by lower level mountains, so like little boys, up the mountains they went before breakfast. Several showed up for breakfast with damp clothes and tales of reaching the highest peak.

After breakfast , Bhuti, one of the J-Life staff from Nigeria, talked with us about crossing cultures into South Africa. He provided insight into how we can be better prepared to relate and engage the people we will be meeting. While we will stay at the camp today, tomorrow will begin our interaction through worship and outreach.

The team was then broken down into several smaller groups to tackle various tasks around the camp. One group began preparing an area outside of a new shower house for paving bricks. Not only did they get to dig up large amounts of soil, they also carried bricks to the site in wheelbarrows and by hand. It was hard hot work in the sun with temperatures in the 80s. They used lots of sunscreen as it is easy to get a burn here. Another group built a removable wall in a newly constructed assembly hall while a third group put new wooden trim between the ceiling and the wall. Bill Myer and Josh Viggers started working on a list of fix-it projects all around the camp. The last group started cleaning all the contents of the assembly hall and getting things ready for use. We put in a long day and there are many tired people this evening.

Tonight we met after supper to learn about the total teams schedule…it is going to be great! While our focus is the roof on the dormitory silos, we will still have time to do a lot of Kingdom interaction with people in the area. Each member of the team will have an opportunity to do outreach – more on that tomorrow.

Please continue to pray for us as the material for the roofing project was not delivered as promised. It is now scheduled to be here Monday. Also, Mike Ehler and Rob Kochan are concerned that the silos are in much rougher shape than what we had expected. The task will require some improvising & creative thinking, but it will work out. Our devotion yesterday was on “walking by faith, not by sight” and the reminder was very timely.