"And there are greater things to still be done in this city"

First, I want to say Thank You - It's been a joy and a comfort to have our friends and family praying for us and supporting us from home; thank you for following our blog, reading our stories, and keeping us in your prayers.

I had the opportunity to spend our last full week working in Living Hope's health care centre. It's a Christian based facility and they have pastoral staff come in each day and church services on Sundays, as well as volunteers who come in daily to love the patients and pray with them. As a nursing student, this was an amazing opportunity for me. The health care centre is entirely free and treats patients with chronic illnesses. While most patients have HIV/AIDS and its associated complications; some have cancer, dementia, and other long term illnesses. They also have hospice type care and are the only free hospice in all of South Africa. It's a 22 bed facility and is pretty much always full. When the clinic first opened, they lost about 80% of the patients and only about 20% survived. Now that has changed, they are saving 85% of the patients and only losing about 15%. In just one week I have seen so much improvement in the patients. I met a patient named Xolani on my first day at the clinic. He was pretty sick and his body was so thin that you could see his skeleton as he laid in bed. On the second day I spent with him he began to get really cold and his blood pressure dropped to 50/30 (which is incredibly low). The doctor and the nurse expressed that he may not make it too much longer, despite their care. However the remainder of the week as I came into the health care centre, he seemed to be improving - still not looking strong but he was able to smile at me and chat a little bit. As a group we went to the health care centre today to sing to the patients, and as we walked in Xolani walked past me. I was amazed and God's healing power was so clear to me. He smiled and sang along with us and just looked so joyful. The nurses at the health care centre were able to tell me countless stories of incredible healing and how God's power is clearly present among the patients.

This is our last night in Cape Town. We are spending it among our teammates and the other volunteers we live with, who have become part of our team and our family. (Yes, we are going to get to watch the superbowl.)Tomorrow we are debreifing our trip as a team, spending the afternoon at kid's club with the children with whom we have fallen in love, having dinner at the home of one of the staff whom we refer to as Papa Gordon, then heading home to you.

As our time here comes to a close, we are feeling a mixture of excitement in coming home to share this experience with you and a deep sadness to leave the friends and family we have made here. It is also hard to leave when we still see so much that we could continue to be doing here to help and to love the people of Cape Town. Simply because we are leaving, don't allow Cape Town to leave your thoughts and your hearts. Keep it in your prayers. You can specifically pray for Living Hope and it's ministries (which you can check out at http://www.livinghope.co.za/), the township of Capricorn, the Life Skill Educators, and the ACTS staff. Each of us have seen God work in amazing ways, don't forget to ask us about it personally when we get home and please don't stop praying for South Africa and Cape Town. God is doing big things in this city and there are greater things to still be done.

Emily