Greeting from Muizenberg!!!-- 

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I arrived back in South Africa about a month ago! My first month back has been a little bit on the wild side. I spent my first 10 days sick with a cold/flu, which actually took about 3 weeks for me to completely recover.

I also arrived back to Xenophobia, which was so bad in one area that one we had to cancel one of our outreaches. Xenophobia is the unreasonable fear, distrust, or hatred of strangers, foreigner or anything perceived as foreign or different. From time to time Xenophobia will raise it ugly face here in South Africa and violence will erupt.

For the last two weeks the government civil workers have been on strike. Teachers, health care worker in the public hospital and customs and immigration workers are all on strike. Schools have been closed; the army has been deployed to take care of the sick in the hospital. Hospital workers walked off the job just abandoning their patients. Several babies have died from being abandoned in hospitals; pregnant women in labor have been turned away at the front doors of hospital because there is no one there to help them deliver their babies.

We all are waiting to see if other unions will join the strike this week. The unions have threatened to bring South Africa to a standstill if their demands are not met. This should be an interesting week!

 On the lighter side: The last couple of weeks I have been busy processing applications for Church Planting School which will begin 27^th of September and working on the logistic for the outreach phase of the school. The outreach will be in Cairo!!!! Which we are very excited about only around 18 million people inhabit the city today. Is that not amazing!!!

I have started Arabic language lesson, it is difficult.  I have also been knee deep in studying the History of Islam and the Middle East. My heart is so challenged as I study and read about the oppression of people, especial women throughout history.

I will be applying of a long term visa for South Africa, can you please keep me in prayer for this. I will write more on this soon with the specifics. Most important thing right now is that this strike will come to end and the immigration worker will return to work. So we can actually submit our visa applications.

As you can see, things are a bit on the wild side here in South Africa!!!!

Love and Blessings,

Jackie