first couple of days

Hey everybody! jenni shipley speaking (...or typing) and i was chosen to do the first blog (WOO!)
Anyways, the first couple days of our trip have been long, unenjoyable (sorta), sleepless, but ok :)
The two plane trips were 9-11 hours longs, and there were certian times we had to go to bed. Also, time in the airports seemed endless, but we luckily passed the time with some games. When we arrived in London, several people walked around JUST to hear the amazing accents :) When we finally arrived in South Africa early in the morning, we immediatly set off to go to an isolated spa, on our way to Worcester (Vu-ster) this was fun because all the pools were from natural springs, so it felt like a giant hot tub. After some chilling time (literally), we headed off to our final destination- YWAM. This site is a place for people from over 40 nationalities to come together for several different reasons: some to take english classes to continue their goal of missions, others are here with their families for many things. So today (Friday) we were constantly busy, either listening to some teachings or unpacking. But the most significant event that we did today was the prayer walk at the local mall. Now, although your thinking, Africa, 3rd world, this mall looked like your average Capitola mall in California, in English and everything!
So, back to the prayer walk; in this exercise we (in groups) were to walk down the mall and each take turns praying out loud to God. For me, this was a little nerve wraking because i had never done ANYTHING like it before. After a couple of minutes of prayer, our group (Alyssa, Lindsey, Mattye, Kristen, me and Natalie) decided to go outside into the parking lot and prayer over the cars owners and lives. We did this for a while, and ocassionally we ran into owners and we asked them if they wanted prayer too, and most of the time they said yes (Ha, in Santa Cruz, if we did that, they would freak out!) So there were several that we came across the really stuck out in my mind: One coupld we came across asked us to pray for the deliverence of a baby, one very Christian man told us about how he gave up his career (20 years of teaching) to go make a chirldren's center to bring Christ to his community (this one meant a lot to me), another man said to Kristen, after they prayed together, "Thank you so much, I really needed that." So although we felt weird about doing this at first, afterwards we almost felt exillerated! This definitely is the start of God's work and will for us.

So all I can say to you worried parents, is that we are very jetlagged and need some encouragement and endurance (and maybe a little patience :) ) and i just hope that you parents and siblings will just keep on praying for us to listen to God's will and to show His love to this community.
Peace and love
Jenni