The following nine emails were my journals documenting my experience and sent to friends and family during my three weeks in South Africa. These journals are candid, unedited, and in some cases sloppy, but if you wish to read on, I expect you will hear my heart beat a bit more clearly and learn a lot about South Africa as well. Enjoy!

Date: Fri, July 18, 2003
Subject: This is not…

… just another mass email…well, ok, so it is, but hang with me for a few minutes and then you can delete the rest if you must…

It’s Jaime, yeah, Jaime Rau. A lot of you haven’t heard from me for a while but “Hi! Hope you're doing well since last time we talked! Me? Oh, yea I’m doing fine, feeling healthy, weather’s nice, every thing is just great.”

Ok, now that we got the small talk out of the way, let’s get to business. In about an hour and a half I will be leaving for South Africa and I would appreciate any prayers you could send on up to the big guy for me. Please pray for God’s will to be done in the three weeks ahead. Ya see, I just found out I was going to South Africa about two weeks ago when a pastor (who lives there) and I discussed hosting a Purely Committed banquet in Cape Town. It has been on his heart to bring Purely Committed there since he first prayed over it with me at its beginnings two years ago. Now he is a missionary in South Africa and it is his hope that through this trip I will learn enough about the culture and break enough ground to eventually host banquets in the surrounding townships. It will be a hard message to get across, but it is needed so badly, so we want to see what we can do. God never did say it would be easy to stand for him and his principles, boy, don’t we all know that’s the truth!

I really have no idea what will come of this, if anything, but I know God’s hand is in it and he will have his way with it. So here I am off to Africa and in need of God’s direction, wisdom, compassion, and a heart of surrender, so please remember me in your prayers. Dennis warned me that I am entering the territory of the enemy and many prayers will be needed so “it’s all you…and you…and you…”

Thank you so much! I will update you with long, annoying, mass emails as I find the time, so stay tuned or tune out, it’s up to you. I understand if you have to skim or scrap it, all I request is before you click it, offer up a quick prayer. (and I’m sure I’ll feel it:) )

Thanks ya all! You’re the best mass email group ever!