Mothers Day

Well first off Happy Mother's Day to all you wonderful mothers out there! So many of ya'll have been a blessing to my life and I am so thankful for you! Three in particular however are the women who have shaped me into the person I am today! I love you Mom, Nanny, and Nana! You each have blessed me in more ways than I can think of and I am blessed to call you my mom and grandmoms! :] Wish I could be with yall today. 

 Nanny 

 Mom

Nana 

Well these last few days have been really good but really tiring. One day I left the house at 7:30 and didn't get home until 10! I am still going out on outreaches with the team so those take up my mornings. The other day we went to a Rehabilitation Center. When we walked into the room where we were going to be testing I felt like I just walked in on an AA meeting. Everyone there was sitting in a circle and there was a lady talking to them. She introduced us and we just told them what we were doing there. It was a muslim place so everyone there were muslims, which was different for me but fun being in a new type of environment. When we got there Eric was talking to everybody in the room, there were about 15 guys and 2 girls. All these people were here because they were drug addicts and now they want to straighten up there life. Well from the get go one of the guys raises his hand and say's to Eric, "I want to know her name" pointing to me. I just smiled and didn't say anything because Eric took the floor. Now I've said before this guy has taken me under his wing in a sense of being 'protective' and this was just another instance. He looked at the guy and then at everyone else in the room and said listen, see that beautiful girl over there....NO ONE talk to her! She does not understand you..she doesn't speak afrikaans or english, she is german and only speaks german. Then he goes AND she is engaged to be married in THREE days so none of you even try to get with her. It was too funny I couldn't help but laugh. Soon enough they realized that I was not indeed german and was from America. So I got to play the heres 100 questions about America and GO. Later they found out that I wasn't engaged either. One guy came up to me and said Shelby, I lost my number could I have yours? It was all in good fun. Another guy then sang me some love song and randomly put my name into the lyrics. I keep telling Jennifer she needs to come and experience these outreaches with me...one of these days she will. 

  What amazed me the most was that after everyone got tested, Eric said now I know all you guys know what HIV is but do you have any questions for me. One guy talked about how when he used to shoot up heroin, he would use the same needle as the guy before him. He said that he would sometimes burn it before to sterilize it. We told him that that isn't 100% reliable, especially when dealing with HIV. To my absolute surprise there was not one positive test result! 

This weekend Living Hope had an opening day where people around could come and see what Living Hope as an organization did. Jennifer and myself went up there because we figured it was a beautiful day might as well go do something. We got there and it was slow. Not many people came in the morning so a few of us got together in Joey's Land Rover and drove down to the big intersection at the robots (traffic lights) and passed out little fliers saying come check out Living Hope and what not. At one point we made it a competition to see who could get rid of theirs first....Im proud to say I won that! I just flashed smiles and people rolled down their windows. Heres some pictures of us in action. 

 Ntandazo went blonde for this outing. 

 dodgin cars 

 picture moment.

Ntandazo and Desmond 

Well all that lasted a good 30-45 minutes. Then we got back to the main campus and there were still not many people there so we left early. But I finally can give ya'll faces for names! I hate reading about people and not knowing what they look like so here ya go

 This is Tammy...I was showing her what I do when I am at the testing outreaches...which is height and weight 

 This is Siya! one of the 4 health counselors i'm with in the mornings 

 Anele! were best buds 

Anele && the infamous Eric

two of my all time favorite guys in Africa. 

THEN 

after this wonderful morning we went back home to get ready for the Rangers game! It was a day game which ment it was on at 7 here! I'm not able to watch the night games since the time difference. Well Clark, a good friend of Jennifer's back in Abilene, is living out in Stellenbosch for the same amount of time that we'll be here. Now I will never for the life of me figure out why me and him were not friends in Abilene...but I suppose the whole becoming friends in South Africa is a way cooler story! As he put it last night, I'm pretty much the girl version of him. So needless to say we get along fantastically. Well obviously he LOVES the rangers as much as I do so we thought it only fitting we watch it together! Well I decorated and we went and got food so we had a bbq. When he got here I was blaring Texas country throughout the whole house! Thankfully we had the entire place to ourselves for the night. Well naturally the sight we usually watch the games on is deciding it doesn't want to work. So we only got to actually see some of the game but we listened to it all on my phone. But good food, great company, and rangers game was just the way to end our Saturday. They lost unfortunately but we can't win em all! After the game I plugged up my phone to the speakers in the house and I was playing 95.9 the Ranch, which is a station back home in Fort Worth and I sent in a message about how we're listenin in South Africa and this that and the other. I had forgotten about it until about 20 minutes later they gave us a shout out!!!! I hadn't told clark or jennifer I did because I doubted they'd(95.9) of even said anything. But boy was I wrong, we all went a little crazy. We then ended the night with a few games of pool. So even though I missed being there for some of my best friends graduations from college, I had myself a very fun night. 

 put my shirts on pillows. 

Well I hope everyone is having a wonderful Sunday! I am blessed beyond measure not only to have great friends here to keep me going, but knowing there are people back home sending their love. Enjoy the simple things and live each day to the fullest! 

Always end with a little something...

As much as you want to plan your life, it has a way of surprising you with unexpected things that will make you SO much more happier that you originally planned. 

....that's what you call God's will.