Date: Mon, August 4, 2003
Subject: A weekend getaway, and I was the only white person

Hello All! I am sorry I haven’t sent anything for a while, it has been extremely busy getting the conference together and just this last weekend I was able to go to a retreat promoting abstinence for high scholars that are in the townships and the city, “Keeping it Real” as the name. I of course was the only white person out of the 70 there. It was funny because I came with 5 kids from Philippi and they were the only black people at first, the rest were colored, but then that night 15 black, Xhosa people from another township showed up and I was so relieved to be around more black people that spoke Xhosa, I felt more comfortable, isn’t that funny! It was a real learning experience, frustrating and discouraging because of the immaturity and I was not very happy with how the program was run, but I learned a lot from being with the kids. Their stories were so humbling, they told me about the rape, shootings, and gangs that happen around them every day, it was heartbreaking. I will tell you all about it in detail later but I have a lot to do today so I gotta make this quick. One thing that was interesting is that they asked me to speak for about 15 minutes before I got there and then when Saturday rolled around the speaker wasn’t able to make it so I was the speaker! It was an amazing experience, the most challenging thing I think I have ever been through. There is just so much work to do here, young people are responding positively but they feel like it is hopeless, it’s not so much that they aren’t convinced through our talks that purity is important and that they should become secondary virgins, it’s just that they don’t know how to live a pure lifestyle in the midst of the pressure and culture they are in. We got into some pretty intense conversations and at times I though some girls were going to start crying they wanted to start over so bad but didn’t think they could. We think we have pressure in the US, but I tell you, we don’t know what pressure is. We just chose not to control ourselves because we want to experience pleasure before God intends, here it’s different. To some black women sleeping with a man is the only way to make sure they get food for their children because they are unemployed and can’t get jobs. At a very young age boys are told they aren’t a man unless they sleep with many women. Which is so backwards it’s frustrating, it doesn’t take any strength to sleep around, a strong man is one that can stand up to the temptation, anyone can have sex, there is no challenge in that. The more I learn about the culture here the more frustrating it is because I will never understand what they go through without being them. All I can do is encourage them in the fact that we all have the strength to be pure, it’s up to us whether we want to stand up to the challenge, and God will carry us through every circumstance if we rely on him. Through him there is hope even for the Xhosa people, a truth I am sure of but have to remind myself daily.

Hugs,
Jaime