It's the last day of February, tomorrow March begins. It's been one of those days when I've asked myself: "What will happen in the month ahead?" I've also been thinking about my own DTS outreach. It's a year ago, today, when at the end of my DTS, the team began to travel from our debriefing location the town of Paraty on the Atlantic Sea, to the airport in São Paulo, Brazil. It was an amazing elven weeks of outreach and the journey back to the Netherlands was long. The flight from São Paulo to Frankfurt, Germany, was about eleven hours long (one of the longest long haul flights I've ever done, despite having lived in Uganda).
I've been in South Africa for almost eleven months now. It's far longer than I had thought I'd only be here for and I've learnt an awful lot about myself in the space of the last year, I can tell you that. I've been so grateful to be back in Africa. I know it's not Uganda, but it's Africa none the less. There's something about Africa that is so deeply beautiful. Like the impala in the photo, they'd came into our garden last week. The young ones were playing whilst their mothers grazed. It was lovely watching them. The friendly, curiosity of the warthogs has also been incredible. They love the attention they get when my father scratches their faces. They can be quite demanding when it comes to getting water, though. One mother warthog knocked the birdbath over, in attempt to get human attention, which she knew would bring the water for her and her piglets.
On more serious matters, it's been almost a year and a half since I left Uganda. I've never spent so long away from my home country and there's times when I dearly miss the people, the Kampala traffic and the way of life there. In particular, I miss my little dash hound, Bessie. I know that by the time I left Kampala, there were a few things I knew I wouldn't miss! Like haggling over public transport, motorbike drivers who ignored the traffic lights and being oggled at by men who saw me as a means to get money and visas to the west.
I'm still not sure what the future holds. However it may be starting to come together slowly. Over the last few weeks I've been working on a YWAM application and I have a Skype interview (as part of the application process) with a YWAM base in London, England on Monday. I've applied to join their Basic Leadership School (BLS), which starts in April. The BLS is a training school for perspective leaders, which runs alongside the DTS. The BLS students are usually part of DTS staffing team, with some extra things that they need to do. I haven't said anything about it until now because I wasn't sure if I'd even be doing a BLS or where I'd end up doing it. Honestly, I'm really looking forward to being a part of this and I'm praying it works out.
I'll keep you posted on what happens.