Good Morning

My heart already is starting to hurt as I think about our time here coming to an end. We are headed up north tomorrow morning early and we will be leaving the JAM staff that we have come to love. They are bringing a team of high school students up to where we will be but they will be a couple of days behind us so we will not be able to be with them at all while we are up there. It has been an incredible week and a half or so and God has tremendously opened our eyes up. Yesterday was a powerful day for me (Amber) God broke my heart in several different places. I will share one really quickly as we have only a couple of min before we are heading out. As you may know there has been Xenophobia (fear of refugees) here in South Africa. We went to a community center yesterday that was about the size of an average US basketball court. In that GYM there were 200+ refugees mostly from Zimbabwe who are living there. They were forced to leave their homes because of the violence they were experiencing and they cant return home because that country is a mess as  well. I looked in the faces of 200 people who literally had no where to go-no place to call home. They were stuck in this gym and were at the mercy of other people to bring even the basic necessities of food (and that wasnt always brought to them). It was a powerful moment to stand around holding hands with these people having nothing to offer other than the hope that our Jesus brings. These are people who have nothing and it broke me. How often am I so dependent on the things around me and the people around me to make my home, and yet Jesus wants my home to be in him. These people are now in a place where they have to make that a reality because they have nothing else. Please pray that God will provide above all else love for these people. They feel cut off and hated simply because they are from another country. Many of them have kids and families back home that they were sending money to but now they cant so there are some HUGE needs. Please pray for peace and forgiveness in that area. Please pray that they will have food and medical attention. As I write this I am rocked again by the reality of yesterday. This was just a small less than an hour segment of a day that will be forever burned into my mind. God is doing some amazing things in this country but there is still a lot of work to be done! I love this country and I love these people and I cannot wait to see how God brings me back here and leads me to get involved. A quick side note from me-this whole week has been focused in on the ministry of JAM and what they are doing in this country (which is identifying leaders and building them up and discipling them). That fires me up and I could really see myself investing my whole life doing that-but as you know I am studying nursing and so I felt a lot of confusion wondering why God lead me to this degree. On Tuesday we got an opportunity to see a ministry called Living Hope, and they are working with AIDS patients. We walked through their facilities and met their staff and I was fired up. God spoke directly to my heart and he blessed me with showing me how I could fit in with the gifts and talents and degree that he has given me!! I cannot begin to describe how amazing it was! The lady that gave us the tour told me that the hardest position to fill in their clinic was christian RN's and I was moved deeply. I am confident that God is leading my heart in the direction of international missions and it God confirmed that in my heart on Tuesday. So the plan for today is...the boys all went shark cage diving!!! How amazing does that sound?? It didnt work out for me to go on this trip but DEFINITELY the next one :) Us girls are going to meet up with a friend of mine from high school who is working with that Living Hope organization. She is working in the branch that feeds homeless people so we are headed over to the soup kitchen this morning. Then we will meet up with hopefully ALL they boys (all limbs included :) this afternoon and then I have no idea what the plan is from there other than for sure church at 6:00 pm for the last night of the missions conference. But the JAM  motto is TIA (this is africa) so its okay that I dont know the plan and that we are currently running a half an hour behind the scheduled time to leave :) Thanks for all your prayers much love to all of you!

Ambs and Nat