Grace, Grace, God's Grace

Ok so I haven’t done nearly as well as I had hoped as far as updating my blog. However, I am determined to not let it slide another moment longer. As soon as I posted my first entry I started packing for a weekend towards Joberg/Pretoria. I must share with you that I had a very hard time on the trip down towards Jobgerg. I kept missing home with every mile marker I passed and I kept seeing and hearing things that reminded me of different aspects of home that I was longing for. So as D.A. Carson had said about a week earlier at the conference in Pretoria, “Sometimes the best spiritual decision you could make is to just sleep”. He was indeed right. I knocked out for about 1 hour until I heard a “Boom” and then the car felt very bumpy for about 30 seconds after that until we all realized what happened…we had hit a person…jk…sorry (that is humor actually considered funny here)…we of course had a flat tire. So we pulled off to the side of the road to fix it. This is one experience that I will never forget. God was so good and so gracious to us. We ended up getting a flat tire right next to a freeway off-ramp which just so happened to have a gas station about 50 meters from the off-ramp, which also happened to be the exit we would be using to arrive at our destination even though we didn’t know it at the time. If you don’t see God’s hand in a situation like that, you are blind.

In addition to having a gas station very close to where we pulled over, two highway maintance employees stopped and changed the tire for us. It truly was a time where you just sit back and thank God for being so gracious to us. We ended up getting Josh down to the Airport just fine. After we delivered Josh to the airport we headed for Joel James (seminary grad and pastor of Grace Fellowship) in Pretoria where we stayed the next two nights. We enjoyed a nice thunderstorm in Pretoria before going to bed. We made our way to Joel’s church where we all barely survived awake. We already had made lunch plans however so we went over to our hosts house. They needed to go shopping so I stayed at the house and “kept watch”…Yah right…I fell asleep so hard that when I woke up I didn’t even know that the Beakley’s had left to go to the store…but in reality…they had gotten back already. From there we went back go Joel’s house and spent another night. The next morning Mr. Beakley and I awoke early (6:25) to go look for a tire to replace the spare we had put on the combie. We ended up putting 4 tires on the combie and off we drove to Die Oog (it’s a resort) We enjoyed a day full of swimming and going down a slide that would be labled at best “hazardous” in America…Literally I can see someone being killed on the thing. But it was still fun. Then we spent the night under the most amazing looking sky singing choruses of worship songs. Then we hit the sack..thats about what the bed felt like and awoke the next morning to once again hit the road and come back to home sweet up Polokwane.

Since we got back not much has gone on. We had youth group on Wednesday which went very well and then we had Sunday services tonight. This week I have been working really hard on rehabilitating my right bicep. Its quite challenging but its all part of learning patience. This week will be a challenge as well as I start engaging in seminary classes. 5 Seminary classes is my load so far but we’ll see what it ends up being in about 2 weeks. Tommorow I will work out in the morning and then get supplies set up to give to the new seminary students and then I am off to watch the Patriots rock the Colts (hopefully). Ok well its late. I will post pictures later. God bless everyone.

This is a picture of the typical scene here in Polokwane. A kid who is not with his parents, who probably dont see their child for 5 days or so. The thing that absolutely blows me away and that might shock you, is the fact that you might find this kid with his baby brother on his back walking down a street on any given day.

This is literally a typick sunset here in South Africa. I can't explain to you the color differential between sunsets here and in America. What I wish I could take a picture of is the stars. At night you feel enveloped in stars. Satellites are also very often found crossing eachother in the sky at night.


AHHH yes...the Combie. This is the vehicle that the Beakly + benjamin + Stephanie clan operate in every day. This is also the car that you have just read about as breaking down in Pretoria. You can easily fit about 18 people in the car...of course about 4 of those would be sitting in the trunk but that is not uncommon here in South Africa. This is also the car that I learned to drive on the right side of the road with...The combie and I have become quite aquainted with eachother.

A typical day in the village. This is the village of Venda. It is quite a bit north but the people up there are lovely. I will be going there in about 2 weeks time.

Well that is it for now. Goeie Dag en lekker slaap.