My First Month In Muizenberg

Oh my goodness, has it really been a month already?  Wow!  Time really does fly by fast!  5 weeks and 6 books later and I feel like I've only begun to scratch on the surface of all God wants to show me!  From Philemon to Titus, Philippians, Mark, Acts, and Galatians, I've been so challenged by God's humility, suffering, and love for us.  Mark especially hit me as we got to dig deeper into who Jesus is and what He actually did for us.  You hear it again and again that Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins but to actually study the book of Mark and walk through all that Jesus did while He was here really gave me a deeper understanding of this truth:  God humbled Himself by becoming fully man, living a life on earth like any other, experiencing joy, love and fellowship along with pain, suffering, and rejection.  He showed us the way to live and then died... for us... in order to reestablish perfect relationship with Him.  He loved/s us so much that He was willing to die for us.  He surrendered all rights as God and experienced the most painful and humiliating death that anyone could ever experience so that we could have eternal life with Him.  It's difficult to comprehend such a love... but that's what makes Him God... that's why I love Him and that's why I will be forever grateful. 

I guess there's a lot that I have to catch you guys up on!  Here's a few pictures to help =) This first picture is of our entire SBS class!  All 40 of us, 27 students and 13 staff.  I know I already said it before but I can't tell you how thankful I am for such an amazing group of people to share this season of my life with.  

In the inductive method of studying the bible we go through each book at *least* four times, starting with an out loud reading, color coding, making paragraph titles and then adding paragraph points.  There's a whole lot more to the method with historical background checks and chartings and applications but it'll probably all go right over your head so I'll spare you the details =P  Here's a picture of one of the books that I color coded though!  It's really cool!  At first it was so hard for me to mark up the pages of the bible but now I can't imagine ever reading it again without all of the symbols!  Basically we take each book and break it down to pieces, color coding things from people, places, and time elements to commands, figures of speech, atmosphere and so on.  It's really changed the way that we see and even talk about everything!  It's so funny because we'll just be talking during lunch or something and start randomly color-coding each other's sentences, ha, it sounds really dorky but it's been something fun that we've all been able to share and be dorky doing together =P

Once again I am so blessed to be doing SBS here in South Africa where the mountain and beach are right in my backyard.  With such a busy schedule it's nice to have this oasis just 2 blocks away!   My roommate and I enjoy taking morning walks along the beach each day before class starts which has been really nice =) 

On Friday nights there's a market that they have nearby that a bunch of us like to visit to take a quick break from our studies.  Here they have lots of fun goodies from clothing and home made goods to various ethnic foods and desserts!  The base food here is pretty good but trying to stay healthy has been a challenge so I usually like to get fresh fruits from the market on Fridays.  In terms of taste it's kind of hard to compare to the awesome flavors from Hawai'i but when it comes to cost, this market has Hawai'i beat hands down!  Believe it or not you can actually get 10 apples and 10 oranges for under $2 here!  Crazy right? 

It had been a while since my roommate and I had ventured out of Muizenberg so we took the opportunity to do so today and what a beautiful day it was!  Here are a few of the pictures that we took at the waterfront in Capetown =) 

It's been a great first month and many more to come.  I miss you all and hope you're doing well! <3 Leslie