Viva South Africa!

This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Johannesburg, South Africa with Campus Outreach, a campus ministry that aims to glorify God through building laborers on the campus for the lost world. During the seven weeks that I spent there, our team of 18 college students from all over Georgia partnered with Campus Outreach Johannesburg, specifically on the campus of The University of Johannesburg Bunting Road Campus. Our goal was to partner along side CO-Johannesburg and help strengthen and encourage their ministry on the Bunting Road campus. The time I spent in South Africa was full of exciting adventures, such as going on a safari on a game reserve and being 10 feet from three FULL GROWN lions, spending weekends loving on little children and trying to learn Zulu in order to communicate with them, many days spent in the dorms of UJB playing South African games and building relationships with students on the UJB campus, and even eating zebra,

antelope, and crocodile!

TIA! This is Africa!

Some of my CCP team and the leaders at COJ

Even thoughmy time there was not spent doing things that related directly to public relations, I was surprised at how many times PR came into practice! I was really excited to learn that Public Relations is also a major at the University of Johannesburg! Spending most of our week in the dorms allowed me to meet a good number of students who were PR majors and I was excited to talk to them about the differences about PR in South Africa and in America. In South Africa, Public Relations is more of the promotion of a business or product and does not contain as much event planning as PR in America. While I was in South Africa I got to put my PR skills to good use. Each Friday night we would plan a Friday Night Event that aimed to get first year student’s connected with the leaders and let them know more about what Campus Outreach was. My Friday Night Event was a trivia night and we had the biggest turnout!

I can say without a doubt that this was the best summer of my life! The things that I got to experience can in no way be encompassed in this little blog and my favorite part is that apart from God I never would of got this experience! So now as I approach my senior year in college, I am not sure what awaits me after May. I would love to find some way to encompass both my PR skills and my desire to help those in need. As I begin to look for internships and careers I hope that what I learned this summer will help in the many years to come. I’ve been bitten by the travel bug, so don’t be surprised if in ten or fifteen years I’m living in some remote country doing something unexpected!

-ltf

Playing with kids in a village called Butlang..Favorite part :)

Below: Me and a real lion cub! And our team with Nelson Mandela!