RivLife comes to an end...

So I realize that I have slacked 100% in blogging about my service site. I apologize to everyone in advance. I hope I can do the best in catching everyone up in what has happened over the past couple of weeks. Well since I last blogged I talked about the frustrations I was having about my service site. Well God never ceases to amaze me. I have come to love RivLife and I am walking away with a life changing experience. All my expectations have been broken down but at the same time completely built back up in ways I could never imagine. God used my time at RivLife as a way to push me to limits I have never been before. To throw me so out of my comfort zone to the point where I have wanted to just give up. I never imagine it to be this challenging but when I look back at my time at RivLife it has allowed me to see myself in a whole new way and to ignite passions I have never had before. It has been a bittersweet ending to RivLife in a way where I feel like I am ready to move on to the next things in South Africa but at the same time my heart still feel pulled back to the women, children, and workers at RivLife. I feel like I just started getting into deeper relationships and then we are saying goodbyes. To be honest I just feel like I have not understand just how much RivLife has meant to me until I will leave South Africa. A lot of people back on campus right now are devastated to be done with service sites and are already craving to go back. I am stuck in this in between feeling of missing the people at RivLife but feeling this sense of needing to move on. Knowing that what I learned there has been accomplished and it will alway be a piece of me. Sometime I think back and wonder why I did not have the amazing life changing don't ever want to leave service site and team but in the end I know that my team and the people of RivLife is the experience God wanted me to have. I must not live in the regrets but live in the precious memories. I am so thankful for the team of girls I got to work with and how each of us truly gave something unique to RivLife. I have enjoyed getting to know all of them on a deeper level and we have had such amazing times together. So that is just how I am feeling on my last day at service sites. I really want to talk about some stories that happened over the last couple weeks.

The biggest thing that was impactful for me was home visits. I give so much respect for social workers, in going out and seeing just what they have to see all the time. Last Friday we went out into a whole new community and did some home visits. I was astonished at the things I saw. The first home we went to was one room about the size of most people bathrooms back in the states. This women who was an older woman had no fingers on her hands. She could not move from her bed at all and to go to the bathroom she resorts to going in a pan that she slides under her bed. For the social worker it was the first time she had been meeting this women. This women lived with five other people in that house, there were dirty dishes everywhere and little kittens were laying along side her. She could not hear very well and I am pretty sure was not all together. They kept asking her simple questions of how old she was and her name. She could answer none. They even asked her if she would want to go to an retirement home but she refused. It amazed me that this women simply did not even want to accept a better life. The thing that broke my heart was when she began to cry. As soon as I saw that I had to hold back the tears. Right then I was able to see a women in her twenties, smiling and living life to the fullest. It was then that I came back to reality. Sometimes I have these instances where I can see people when they were at their happiest. This women I knew was once a very happy and active women and now was sitting in a shack all by herself. Another thing that happened at service sites was a home of a women we visited. She had to be in her midthirties when we saw her. The first thing I saw was a women completely naked except for a diaper on laying on the concrete floor. She had a blanket and pillow by her side and had absolutely no energy. She was shaking as she was drinking out of her water bottle. I had this huge burden on me to pray for her that entire time. She was so frail and out of it that I thought that she might die while we were there. Despite her condition her home was in great shape. It was well cleaned and put together. Walls lined with bible verses and so on. I spotted a bible laying on her bed. Her sister was there and she lived across the road and took care of her sister. I was again amazed of how well she took care of her. Most of the houses we saw they were filthy and left a mess. This woman truly cared after her sister. We were asked to try and move her up to the bed. So some did that while we figured out just what was wrong with her. They think that she had TB in the spine. She was in immense pain while we were there. The social worker said that on Monday they were going to take her to the hospital to check out her condition. We were asked to pray for her and so we did. We grabbed her hand and prayed and were about to get up and leave when she said why don't you pray for my legs they hurt too. So we did that and said our goodbyes. We were all a little distrait at what we had seen. We went on a Friday to her home and came back on Monday when our social worker told us that we would be going to pick up the woman to go the hospital but that she had passed away on Saturday. We all just were hit like ton of bricks. It happened so fast. It was then that we realized that we were suppose to be at that women's house for a reason. We were suppose to be with her in her final hours of life and to pray for some healing and relief from the pain on her final hours on earth. Honestly I hope that this women is with God right now and relieved of her pains. This home visit effected me the most. It taught me to take a step back and realize that death is a daily occurrence for the people of South Africa and especially the rural places. The last most influential home visit was to a man right near our Gogo's support group. We were told that he had asthma and that his child was trying to be taken away by the abusive mother. So we were going to check out the situation. When we got their the social worker demanded to see the treatment for his asthma. She was really smart to do that because it ended up coming out that he was HIV positive. It was brought to our attention that we were the first people he had told to be infected with it. I was astounded because we had been witnessing and hearing stories how hard it is for people to be open about that stuff. We were able to converse with him about it and invite him to join the support group down the road and so on. He said that talking to us just allowed for him to feel more free and as a huge burden was lifted. Side note on that his kid we were convinced was a boy but found out minutes before leaving that it was a girl. It was a really funny thing to actually realize it. From this I learned the power of a support group and how much it can help people affected. I have a passion to begin to start support groups and so on. I find it so amazing what joy it brings peoples lives.

This weekend we were able to do a three day safari. It was the most amazing thing I have ever done. It was like living in the real lion king. I was constantly finding myself caught in a daze of being pinch me....is this even real? I got to see elephant, rhino, lions, impala, buffalo, wildebeest, pumba, hyenas, zebra and so many more. Seeing animals in the wild is great, and we were on constant hunts to find all of them. We saw 4 out of the big 5! Pretty darn good for a single group to see all that. We almost got charged by a elephant, we saw a group of lions trying to hunt down a giraffe and so much more. We slept in tents with mosquito nets. I actually felt like I was on a safari. We also got the best food ever! Made me miss home so much. I literally did not want to leave that place. I fell in love with it!

P.S. A month from today I will be flying home!