Letters from the Other Side

11.2 Adventures of a Media Missionary - Part 2: The Empire Strikes Back

Newsletter 2 – The Challenges

Dear friends

In my previous newsletter, I told you the whole story of how it came to be that I went to film school, seemingly out of the blue. I called it "The Prologue" because it was everything that occurred before I arrived at the film school in Cape Town. Yet, it was just as important as the actual main events. Now I will tell you everything that happened in August to November 2017 and all the challenges I faced in those three months of adjusting and how God was with me every step of the way.

I landed in Cape Town on Monday morning, 8 August, on the early morning flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town International. It was a miracle! I was exhausted. The previous evening I had tossed and turned. I just couldn't fall asleep. The dark lord of Mordor ("The Lord of the Rings") was trying everything to stop me.

On the flight, I had also experienced something that had never happened to me before. While we were circling down, going lower and lower in stages, I experienced the most severe pain in the mask of my face. It felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly in my forehead and face. Next it felt like my eardrums were going to burst and explode. The pain was so intense that I was terrified. Then I felt the pain going down from the top of my head and forehead into my jaw. I even felt it in my molars! It was two minutes of acute hell. I thought I was going to die. I kept swallowing and massaging my face but it only made it worse and made the pain spread more. It only stopped once we landed.

I still don't know what had happened but I assume it must have had something to do with the flu and sinus infection I had had in May and the chronic allergies I've had for years combined with the altitude. It was very scary and I was all alone when it happened. Yet my heavenly Father was with me through it all.

One of the film school staff, Jedi Master "Obi-Wan Kenobi", came to pick me up at the airport. I felt like I had just walked through the wardrobe into Narnia ("The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"). Little did I know that that feeling would soon grow stronger at an alarming rate. YWAM (Youth with a Mission) is a world of its own, but luckily, the force is strong there.

Jedi Master Obi-Wan took me to our principal's house. I was exhausted and sick from lack of sleep and felt like I had jetlag, though I had only missed one night's sleep. I was so tired I kept falling asleep during the proceedings.

After filling out endless form upon form, introductions and lunch we were taken to the YWAM Base house, where we were instructed in meal times, YWAM regulations and the YWAM code of conduct. Lastly we were taken to our student house, Royal House. Thank goodness! I wanted to black out by that time. But that was not to be. An unofficial house-warming party was next on the student committee's agenda.

Huge adjustments awaited me. As a 37-year-old woman, I was used to having my own room, lots of privacy and as I'd gone to Thailand all on my own, independence and freedom of movement.

I shared a dorm room with five girls of 17 – 23 years of age. There wasn't any privacy. The next day I was scolded for walking alone to the ATM. A few weeks earlier a woman was stabbed right in front of the Base. Talk about a culture shock. Cape Town has gangs, and in my opinion, the crime is ten times worse there than in Gauteng (Pretoria and Johannesburg).