Thursday, January 21
Our day started with a visit to another school. This time, we had an actual stage! Kids love singing silly songs with dances and this school was no exception. Willie preached and we distributed newspapers to some of the teachers.
Our next prison visit was a grave one. This section of the prison held prisoners who were awaiting a trial. Some of the young men had been behind bars for several years for alleged crimes and would stay there until their meeting with a judge. Regardless of where these men would end up, they were scared and eagerly awaiting someone to give them some hope. After some music, testimonies, and preaching from Willie, many of them expressed a desire to know Jesus. Many individually stood up and identified themselves. As with all of the other prison visits, we noticed that 99 percent of the prisoners are black, which is disproportionate in a country that is 10 percent white. I noticed that one Arab man announced a desire to be a Christian and I wondered what his presumably Muslim community might think of his decision.
When we finished, the men swarmed us to get Christian literature. We had some pamphlets in several languages, and the Zulu ones went the fastest. I think we ran out of Zulu but many of them read English and Afrikaans as well, so I think everyone got something to read. There was an overwhelming demand for copies of the Bible and we had them sign request forms to get them each a Bible.
It rained heavily most of the day. We ate lunch at a trendy restaurant called Catz Pyjamas" which had a lot of Mexican-inspired dishes, something we all craved after a week away from Texas. Nasty weather and exhaustion kept us from doing much more work that afternoon, but we needed the time to deflate emotionally, write in our journals, and share our experiences and feelings with our comrades.
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