Success

“Success is not a function of the size of your title but the richness of your contribution."  Robin Sharma

How do you view success? We think success can be looked at from so many different angles—especially in today’s world! To many, success is determined by how big their home is, how expensive their car was, the amount on their paycheck or the number of material possessions they own. To others success may be completing a degree they’ve always dreamed of finishing, crossing a finish line at the end of a race or sticking to a clean diet plan for a certain amount of time. Depending on your view of success, each of these examples could be a moment of success for you (and a great accomplishment!).

We want to encourage you to look at success a little differently this week. Rather than trying to cross something off your list or base success on something you’re RECEIVING, think of success as something you’re GIVING. How can what you CONTRIBUTE lead to success? What can you do this week that will have a greater impact for your community and others?

As we start another week here in South Africa, we’re given the task to come up with our work plan for the next 8 weeks. We’re challenging ourselves to dig deeply into how we can make our CONTRIBUTION here as successful as possible. What can we add to our workload that will not only impact the children, youth and families while we’re here but how can what we do help make a sustainable impact on these individuals and families?

A few things we’ve been asked to come up with and do during our time here is:

• Create and implement an early childhood development curriculum for the Child Youth Care Center (CYCC). This is for children ages 0-5 that may be spending up to 6 months at the CYCC.  They need stimulating structure and activities that will help them thrive.
• Run a couple different after school groups around life skills, sports and decision making. The target age range for these groups will be 14-18. We’ll run two different groups, each group meeting twice a week.
• Helping the organization with a business plan and other business related items.
• Providing support with their social media and website to help spread the word on what is going on here.

We pray that our time and contribution here is guided by the Holy Spirit and truly blesses this community. At the end of the day and the end of our time here, that is the only thing that really matters. It’s not about the number of people we see or the number of tasks we can complete; it’s about the CONTRIBUTION. We pray that each of you can make a successful contribution to your communities this week, too.

With Love,

Ty + Michelle

It's Women's Day here in South Africa today (Monday). Neo, from SFCS, spoke at an event in Botshabelo on Friday. She shared about the organization and the importance of being aware of neglect and abuse as well as its effect on the community, even if you're not DIRECTLY being effected. There were a lot of questions and Neo did a great job answering and speaking on behalf of SFCS. 

This is a video from the Women's Day celebration. The audience was LOVING these dancers!

 

A picture from the neighborhood we've been staying in over the weekend in Bloemfontein. This is where we get our Magnum bars. :) 



We had a date night at a great Italian restaurant down the road, Avanti. Pizza tastes great to us!



Fro-yo for $1 makes Michelle VERY happy!



Exploring the neighborhood together... But FIRST, lets take a selfie.



South Africa loves their meat and BBQ's on the weekends!



We've found some great coffee shops but part of us misses our favorites back home-- LJ's and Madcap!