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On Tuesday 9th August 2005 a team of 27 teenagers and adults set out from Sheffield to make history in another part of the world. 24 hours later they arrived in Cape Town airport excited, nervous and ready to play their part in the Great Commission.
The team stayed at the YWAM base in Worcester for the 5 days they were serving the community. The accommodation was extremely basic but for £5 per night what can you expect?! Cold showers, lukewarm food...each day brought fresh challenges! But none of this mattered once we had seen the townships.
The two main townships which the team worked in were Avion Park and Riverview.
Whilst we were in Worcester we formed CAT's which stood for Community Action Teams. One group were painting the houses which had been funded and built by the People's Church, another group were digging gardens in Avion Park and the third group sewed and decorated stockings in preparation for the Christmas Appeal.
Under apartheid, which was only abolished ten years ago, it was unheard of for white people to be serving the black and coloured people of South Africa. It was infact the norm for the black and coloured people to serve the whites. That is why what we were doing out there was so powerful - it may have been the first time that those people had seen a team of white people willing to serve them and love them.
On the first Saturday we spent the morning clearing up the rubbish in Riverview, it didn't take long for the children to come and join us in our task. By the end of the morning the people of Riverview had begun to take pride in their homes and were sweeping their doorsteps and putting their rubbish in the skips.
One of the best experiences in the whole week was the street evangelism which we did in Riverview on the Monday evening. We set up a simple PA system and some people sang, others danced and Johnny (a YWAMer) preached the Word. We drew a good crowd and it was incredibly powerful to see the children worshipping, some as young as 3 or 4 singing their hearts out.
On the Sunday morning we attended the People's Chuch led by Paul and Elaine Briers, it was birthed 6 months ago and already has a steady congregation of around 150. The congregation is made up of people from Avion Park and Riverview as well as other areas of Worcester. It is held in the main hall of a local school, and so is fully furnished with everything a church needs!
Whilst on mission we ran two of the youth events, Kinderbond (a fun event for kids of any age) and The Gang (an event where they begin to develop some of the young people). Once again our hearts were stirred as we saw the children and teenagers passionately praising the God they relied on for everything, it was an honour to worship alongside them.
All in all the trip was truly a life-changing experience. None of us will ever again look at the pictures on the News in the same way, having spent a week getting to know the people who live in such poverty, who have so little and yet are abundant in their love. One of the most challenging things about the whole trip was leaving it all behind, knowing that we were returning to our comfortable lives in Britain but for these people this was their lives, their reality.
