Last night Paula was invited for the first time for tea with some ladies in CNP. She drove down at 7 pm last night to meet 5 ladies for tea and cake despite the freezing conditions. They spent the time in the house of a lady whose house had been deliberately burnt down a while back and whose court case against the perpetrator was about to draw to a close the following day. Paula was really humbled by the reception she received. The ladies simply cannot believe that she, a white woman, will drive alone to CNP at night and spend time with them. On top of this, it really dawned on her for the first time that for 3 of these ladies, this was the FIRST time since independence (10 years now!) that they had sat and had tea with a white person. They were incredibly nervous at first whilst history was being made, but soon warmed up as the conversation, cake and laughter flowed. God was so good as He allowed them to talk about being one in Christ as well as speaking plainly about the problems of gossip and dissension in such a small community.
-
The Finnie family in Blighty, December 2021
-
Dean and Paula pastor The Gathering together -
The Gathering -
Baptisms at The Gathering -
Preparing to serve at The Gathering's Soup Kitchen -
Soup Kitchen Welcome To 2022 lunch
-
Serving hands - the heart of The Gatheirng -
Thankful Thursdays -
.JPG)
HOPE Home Based Care Team -
Gathering Ground -
Staying fit as a family -
The Helderberg - The prettiest of the mountains we face
Below are some photos taken in the last few days in Chris Nissen Park, we hope you enjoy them. We feel that they give a taste of life in CNP and some of the issues people have to deal with on a daily basis. As you can see in the photos the sun is shining which has been a welcome break from the rain, Sunday was truly awful! As soon as the sun is out in winter we all pile outside to get warm! We know most of you don't believe us when we say it's cold here in winter, but this morning there was ice on my windscreen and I had to spend a few minutes scraping it off!
Jerome with his mum & dad. Jerome was released from prison yesterday morning after a year inside. He was so glad to be back home! Please pray for Jerome, he is basically a good lad but is easily led and has previously fallen in with a very bad crowd. Pray that he would get work so as to distract him, but also pray that he'll be strong enough to stay away from his old crowd.
Firstly, anything which moves this glorious continent toward debt free existence should not be knocked gratuitously, after all, Africa really needs all the help she can get. We fully support the principals of the 'Make Poverty History' campaign and are pleased to see Gordon Brown doing so much to champion African poverty. Equally however, Africa cannot be generalised about, especially in terms of development as the continent is huge and incredibly diverse. If you've not travelled to more than a handful of countries you can never fully grasp the diversity of this beautiful land!
Thursday morning marked a one-off highlight for Paula and her mum's and grannies cell group! They all went off to the Spur (equivalent of UK Aberdeen Angus steak houses) for coffee and dessert courtesy of a wonderful gift from 2 very special people in the UK (thank you, thank you!). It was a tearjerker as 4 of us drove in to Chris Nissen to collect the ladies and children. All 15 of them were there eagerly waiting, dressed up to the nines, some even with new hair do's and everyone else wondering where they were going!!
Here are some photos of Emyezweni taken on Monday morning when we popped in briefly with Mary. Crosslinks are considering the possibility of SMILE teams coming and serving at Helderberg Christian Church and Emyezweni would be an excellent place for SMILE'rs to serve.To see more photos and learn more about Emyezweni visit Deb's SA News
Dean went to Patrick's funeral in Chris Nissen Park this morning. It was a moving service conducted by Donald, one of the community leaders. He did an excellent job and Francois our lead elder at church gave a short preach. This was great and has really helped our witness in the community. Patrick's family were deeply upset, but again Aunty Kuku barely registered any kind of emotion, we are really concerned for her.
Paula had another interesting and emotionally exhausting morning in Chris Nissen on Friday. She spent quite a while with Lorraine talking about her illness, general health and the various options that she now finds herself faced with , particularly with regard to her little daughter. She is very anxious and tearful about the future for Evidine, her daughter. Lorraine is not afraid to die, she said, but she is so afraid of what will happen to Evidine. This is such a common story and yet, thank God, she does at least have wider family who will care for her.
These photo's are of Joel at his friend Sean's Pirate Party. As you can see from the photos Joel had great fun even though he was significantly younger than the other children.The rain has been pretty relentless this weekend, don't be fooled by the sun in the photos below, the rain abated for Sean's party but kicked in again afterwards with a vengeance! The rain is desperately needed and the locals are quite excited about it but somehow, being English, we just can't get excited by rain!
Paula had an excellent morning in Chris Nissen on Friday. It was pouring with rain but she really wanted to go and visit some of the women. At last, after over 2 weeks of not seeing Dina, she found her curled up in bed recovering from a very nasty bout of gastric flu! Dina was so pleased to see her and they had a good chat. Many bridges were built and it was so good to hear from her why she has been so upset lately. It is amazing how easily an action or words can be misconstrued and misinterpreted so as to cause offense. Paula was also able to advise her about her diet, the drugs she was trying to take and her busy lifestyle. They prayed together and then Paula set about trying to catch up on Dina's busy 'visiting and caring' schedule that she had had to drop during her illness (typical Dina! always thinking of others).
We had an excellent bible study this morning, looking at baptism (see the material below). Unfortunately we were not able to use the container as there was some building work on the go but we managed to cram into Michael's house. as it turned out we had all been baptised as consenting believers which is excellent.
The last few weeks have been a bit of a strange time. CNP has been a bit of a frustration for Dean, particularly as Dina is not making herself available, we've not seen her for 3 weeks now. Dean has rung the ANC office but received no reply. Please pray for Dina as we know she was upset about the funeral arrangements for Michael's daughter and we think that her absence is related to this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
