We have been in South Africa for 6 days and we have already been challenged in so many ways. It really is hard to explain the culture until you have experienced it first hand.

I knew I would be working with children suffering from HIV, but then you meet them and get to know them and realise how normal they are – it’s heartbreaking to think they have had to grow up knowing they haven’t got parents like most people and on top of that they have a terminal illness which will affect their future.

Tabitha does an amazing job of trying to give these 41 kids; a home with a ‘loving’ family, some prospects for the future through education and an almost normal life.

Some parts of South Africa are westernised. We have been to a mall which has everything you could find at home, but there is no doubt we are in Africa. The differences between wealthy and then a huge majority in poverty within a mile of each other is really difficult to see.

I have already had the opportunity to play football with the kids. I have been told and read about people in Africa playing football but actually seeing it blew me away. They played on the tarmac play area (which is just a car park) completely barefoot! So many people wanted to join in – girls and boys and of all different ages. There wasn’t a pitch marked out so the rules changed frequently whenever someone decided they wanted it to. You have to make sure you dodged the little tufts of grass sticking out from the cracks in the ground. All this in a scorching 38 degree heat. It was incredible to see how much of an international game it is, bringing people together.

There was a massive storm last night which isn’t common at this time of year because it’s summer here. It was apparently one of the worst storms even some of the South Africans had seen. The hailstones were the size of tennis balls and they broke quite a few parts of the roof in the orphanage, leaving the rain to come straight through. It was horrible to see how devastating it was for everyone here. We had to move a lot of the children into different rooms and spent a few hours putting buckets wherever we could and trying to save as much as possible. Although the staff said the roof had never been broken like that before, it doesn’t seem rare around here that things break and there is a struggle for the money to fix them.

Life here is never boring. Living in the orphanage means there is always something to do and someone to play with. I think we are all grateful that we have our own kitchen and lounge area where we can shut ourselves away from the kids when we need to.

I think it’s exciting that we have the opportunity to have such an impact on the kids lives during these next six months. We are their role models and so can influence them in a positive way. We have the responsibility to lead them in devotions, in reading groups, help them in their school work and in their free time and how they choose to spend it.

I can’t wait to see how we and they grow in these months.