One cool thing we got to do in our last week was spend a few nights with host families in Ocean View. Amanda and Katie stayed with Chevonne's family and Mary and I stayed in the flats with a woman they called Auntie Netta. While we loved staying in Kommetjie, it was great spending that precious time with some of the OV locals. Auntie Netta was so sweet and welcomed us into our flat with open arms. One of her daughters, who is in her mid-twenties, was also living with her and we had some fun conversations about traveling, some of the differences between America and South Africa, and a little bit about South African soap operas. Even though these conversations weren't extraordinarily deep, it was a great reminder that even though we live in opposite sides of the world, we're really not all that different from each other.
We also spent some quality time in our second home, the Green Room. It's hard to explain to people who have never been there, but its the perfect combination of a laid back restaurant and coffee shop. We got to know the owner, Ollie pretty well and made sure we spent some time actually getting to hear his life story our last week there. He never said he was a Christian, but he still seemed to have a soft spot for us crazy American missionaries. He let us use his wifi as much as we wanted, he always greeted us with a smile, and he welcomed us into his group of friends. Even though we were there to serve the people of Ocean View, God doesn't teach us to pick and choose who to love. Even though it wasn't much, spending that time with Ollie and hoping that he saw God working through each of us was just as important to us as all of the other work we did in Cape Town.
For our last Friday in Cape Town, we had a sleepover with the OV youth girls. In South Africa, instead of calling them sleepovers, they call them stay-awakes. It was pretty fitting. :) The girls loved it and it was a fun way to end our time with them. We got to know these girls pretty well during the six weeks we were there and I know Katie, Amanda, Mary and I all miss them a lot. Good thing we're all planning on being back in Cape Town one day. This isn't the kind of place you can go to once and then check it off of your list. It sticks with you and completely changes you. At least for me, there's no other option but to go back.
Mary was much better about updating her blog, so if you want to see more updates from our trip, check out http://maryinsouthafrica.wordpress.com/.
Amanda also created a blog when she got back from South Africa with some of her reflections about her time there. Its amazing. Seriously...go read it. http://amaddox093.blogspot.com/
-Alison
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