Victory

For about the last 8 months I've been playing squash with my friend Em. We both started as beginners, learning together, and once I sussed how to serve we were pretty evenly matched. Even so, Em would beat me every single time...until tonight when I won a game!!! Oh the sweet taste of victory....

A wedding....

On Sunday a couple from my cell group, Mathandela & Melittah got married. They have been together for a long time, over 7 years I think and have 2 beautiful little girls. For various reasons they haven't been able to get married until now.

In Basotho culture, as in almost every culture, weddings are traditionally very expensive. Mathandela & Melittah live in a 1-room shack, Mathandela was not working until very recently and Melittah serves on our People of Hope team for very little financial reward. So they have never had a hope of paying for a traditional wedding.

But that was actually great, because it meant that our cell group was able to work together to give them a lovely day. They got married during the morning service, and a lot of their unsaved family came along. After the service there was cake for everyone bought by the church. Then about 40 people went back to Jeremy & Laura's house and we had a little reception for them. We had borrowed tables & chairs from church and laid them out on the lawn. Our group provided the main course and drinks, and another cell group very generously made puddings and cakes. Everyone had a great time, Mathandela even gave a little speech before they cut a beautiful chocolate cake. Jeremy's sister had sent from England 2 bridesmaid dresses for the girls and another lady at church had made a simple but lovely outfit for Melittah to wear. And the best wedding present - Mathandela's mum who has been very difficult about the wedding and church etc gave her life to Jesus after the gospel call in the morning!

The whole wedding was such a testimony to the community of the church. Mathandela & Melittah were blessed with a lovely day which cost them nothing, and to be honest in the grand scheme of things didn't cost us much either! It was hard work, but so worth it. Mathandela & Melittah are now married, something they've wanted for a long time. They can now begin the next season of their lives together. They have been and continue to be a wonderful example in our community of what it means to follow Jesus, even when that means making the difficult decision to shun your culture risking family relationships.






PS - it was also another first for me....I was in charge of the food for the reception! So I can now confidently say '40 people, easy'!

A milestone at Mapheo.....

Last week was very exciting for Mapheo - not only did we have our end of term trip but we also had our first parents evening.

Over the last few weeks we've been inviting all the parents and carers to come with their children to parents evening which was on Wednesday. We really want to reach out to whole families, not just the kids and this was our first idea of how to get them involved in what we're doing.

So on Wednesday we set up the church and welcomed about 150 adults and kids for dinner. As leaders we sat amongst the parents and tried to get to know them a little bit better. Jeremy & Laura shared the vision for Mapheo, we watched some photos of what we've been doing, the kids got certificates, we ate pap and wors, Jeremy shared the gospel, then we prayed with the families.

The whole evening was fantastic but my favourite part was when the kids got their certificates. Over the past 2 terms we've been watching the kids and writing down positive things about them. So every child got an individual certificate congratulating them for all sorts of things like politeness, ball skills, sewing, helping etc. The kids stood up while their certificate was read out and then we all clapped them. It was brilliant to see them so encouraged. Here are some photos:




Then on Thursday we had our end of term trip for the kids who have been the most faithful at coming to Mapheo. We took them out to a farm a few miles away which borders Lesotho. We walked down to the river, which forms the border, set up a gazebo and parasols and played in the water. Then we played some games on land, and finished with eating hotdogs and pap. It was great, and wonderful to see how easy it is to give these kids a treat!

Rain!

Being an english girl I never thought I would be so excited about rain! But we haven't had any rain since about mid April, although I've completely lost track. The winter here is as dry as a bone, and the whole landscape turns depressingly brown. The earth becomes dust and with a winter wind it's impossible to keep things clean.

So over the last few weeks as the weather has warmed up we have begun eagerly expecting the rain. We have had a few false alarms with big clouds building up, the weather becoming very sweaty only to find it all disappears again. Last week we even saw a storm over the mountains, but it was so far away in the Drakensburg that we couldn't even hear the thunder.

Then yesterday, after a beautiful morning, over the course of the afternoon the day became ominously dark and finally at around 5pm we got our storm. I cannot describe the smell of the first rains. I've heard other people say how amazing it is but I really didn't realise that it's so awesome. The smell of all the dust dampening down, and the earth coming back to life. It was almost worth all the months without rain....almost.

Courage to stand against injustice

This post is totally lifted from the intro to a brilliant book - Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugen (the founder of the International Justice Mission). If reading this, God stirs you about the injustice that is rife in our world, then read the book - you won't be the same again.

"CS Lewis said 'courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful until it became risky.'

As Christians we have learned much about sharing the love of Christ with people all over the world who have never heard the gospel. We coninue to see the salvation message preached in the far corners of the earh and to see indigenous Christian churches vigorously extending Christ's kingdom on every continent. We have learned how to feed the hungry, heal the sick and shelter the homeless.

But there is one thing we haven't learned to do, even though God's Word repeatedy calls us to the task. We haven't learned how to rescue the oppressed. For the child held in forced prostitution, for the prisoner illegally detained and tortured, for the widow robbed of her land, for the child sold into slavery, we have almost no vision of how God could use us to bring tangible rescue. We don't know how to get the 12 year old girl out of the brothel, how to have the prisoner set free, how to have the widow's land returned to her or how to get the child slave released and the oppressors brought to justice.....we sit in the same paralysis of despair as those who don't even claim to know a Saviour.

It need not be this way. We can recover a witness of Christian courage in a world of injustice. We can rediscover our Maker's passions for the world and for justice - passions which may have grown unfamiliar to us. We can come to know the compassion of Jesus like never before as we go with Him to look into the eyes of those who are in need of rescue. We can be restored to the conviction that God is prepared to use us to 'seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow' (Isaiah 1:17).

Our God is a God who spends His days weeping beside children in brothels, prisoners in pain or orphans in trauma - a God whose core hatred of injustice is rivaled only by His hatred of idolatry."

Complements

A few days ago, I was walking through the township between appointments, collecting unknown children along the way, who hung on my arms, bag, pockets etc and bravely trudged up hills with me.

At the top of a particularly brutal hill, I came across some kids I actually knew. I stopped to chat and ask them to tell the other kids that they had to stop walking with me now as I was going a long way. Katleho, a kid from church, promptly told me that he thought I would turn into a black person soon. I asked him what he meant, and he said 'because you just love black people'. Around here, that's a serious complement, and one that I will treasure. Things like that are what keep me going on the tough days when I feel so far from home and out of my depth.

A sad day for Sawana....

Last week at Mapheo we took the kids up to the dam for an orienteering lesson. This VERY exciting event was organised to help explain that God has a plan for each of our lives, and He gives us a map to follow. The trip meant an opportunity to ride in cars again, and to visit the dam - a first for many.

The Kloof Dam in Clarens is nestled in the mountains above the town. It's a really beautiful spot. The kids were put into teams with a 'responsible adult', given a map of the dam and sent off to find various spots. It was a competition to see which team could locate the most things on the map. They were instructed to work as a team and not to leave the little ones out in their eagerness to win.

I didn't have a team, so proceeded to spend a very pleasant half an hour sitting by the dam chatting to the other leaders with no teams. The kids returned, and while we handed out juice and cakes Jeremy worked out the scores.

When Jeremy read out the scores, he got to one team who had done particularly well, but then said he had to deduct some points as they had treated one of their members badly.

Jeremy on his wandering to see how different teams were doing, had come across little Sawana (5) standing on the side of a mountain where his team had left him as he was slowing them down! He didn't have sufficient clothes on and his team had told him to wait there and they would come back for him. So for I don't know how long, he'd stood there waiting for them, getting colder and more frightened.

You should have seen his little face as Jeremy shared the story with everyone. He was literally re-living the horror. It was so heart breaking.

But all appeared to be forgotten when he arrived at Mapheo the next day with his (now usual) smiles, and got busy making a pair of binoculars with me. It would seem that kids really do bounce back.

Random happenings from the last week.....

1. Wildfire season has arrived which means that some farmers are creating 'fire breaks' to try and protect their land. This basically means they try to burn a stretch of land in a controlled way so that if a fire does start it won't be able to cross over onto the farm as the land is already burnt. Unfortunately on a farm just outside of Clarens the firebreak got out of control last week and burnt the entire mountain! As a friend was saying 'quite an embarrassing mistake to make - they'll have to look at a black mountain for the next few months'!

2. Last week there was a meercat in my garden - a MEERCAT! I've only ever seen them in the zoo before.

3. Visiting Mpho and Phetheso's family last week me and Moshoeshoe let them try on our sunglasses. It was a complete comedy. They instantly changed from these smiling little boys to complete moody gangsters! It got the whole family laughing which was brilliant. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me to capture the moment.

4. Walking away from their shack we saw some little girls who had built a miniature shack complete with chimney, lit a fire inside and were huddled around it pretending to cook. Very sweet, but oh so crazily dangerous!

5. At Mapheo this week to try and consolidate some first aid stuff we'd done the day before we created a hospital during free play. When I 'arrived' at the hospital as a patient, I was promptly told to lie down because I was dying. Then I died and was buried in toilet roll. Not exactly what we had taught the day before!

6. When I went to the post office this week, Clement the postmaster, promptly asked me if I'd been playing soccer the day before. When I said no, he asked 'why not, Gareth (another white church member) was!' To which my reply was an incredulous 'because I'm a girl!' The same day I had to explain to another Basotho guy that it's not polite to tell a girl that she looks exhausted. Great day for me!

7. Walking home with some Basotho's the other day, my friend Chommy called out to a guy in the street greeting him as a 'nigger'. Seeing as the guy didn't deck Chommy I asked if it's not an offensive word here. No, in fact, here 'nigger' is a complement! It means you're super-cool.

8. At church on Sunday morning I ended up with 8 kids under 6 sitting with me. One of them had a piece of chewing gum that I reckon she'd already been chewing for quite some time. After a little while she decided to be really nice and share it out. So she gave everyone a little piece to eat. I declined my share. After they'd chewed for a while she demanded it all back, put it all back in her mouth and chewed away before repeating the whole cycle several times. Pretty disgusting, but it was encouraging to see this particular little girl share something!

The story of two adorable little boys....

So I thought I would tell you about some more of the kids I visit (again I'm changing names). These two boys are cousins. There's Matt who is 5 or 6 and Paul who is 3.

I'll start with Paul. He is a very fortunate young man. He has both a mum and a dad who still live together. He also has a very cute baby sister and a greatgrandma who loves him. They all live in a complex of 3 one-room mud huts, along with another cousin, greatgrandpa when he's home (he works away) and Matt.

When I first met Paul he was quite frightened of me. But over the last few months I've taken him to church with me every week, played with him at Mapheo and visited him at home, so he's finally warmed up to me. He will not gladly come up to me for a hug, and when I pick him up he flings his little arms around my neck and clings on until I make him put his feet back on the ground.

The main problem in Paul's young life is poverty. This family are living in such a desperate situation. They have no water or electricity. The very small piece of land they live on isn't suitable for growing anything. The 2 men of the house are constantly searching for work and often only manage to find work that takes them away from home. At the moment the only income for all 8 of them is two small goverment child grants. Often when we visit, Paul's mum isn't there as she's out searching for wood and wild food, sometimes taking her baby with her. On the occassions that we've been there and she hasn't taken the baby, she is crying constantly, I assume from hunger. This week when we visited there didn't appear to be any food in the house. Paul is consequently tiny, he looks more like a 2 year old than nearly 4. They can't afford to send Paul to nursery, and there are absolutely no toys at home, which means he's unlikely to be ready to start school in a couple of years. Life in this home is about as tough as it gets.

Another major issue in this family is their belief in ancestral worship. Paul has strings of beads around his stomach and neck which are part of ancestral worship rituals. They do not realise it, but this kind of activity is so damaging. They are opening themselves and their children up to all sorts of spiritual problems.

Matt is not as fortunate as Paul. He has a mum and dad who are both living. But his dad takes no responsibility for him, still living with his own mother. His mum lives in a tiny shack up the hill from the rest of the family. She shares the shack with her boyfriend who has been high every time we have seen him, openly smoking joints in front of us. He does work, but I assume that most of his pay goes on drugs, and he gives some to Matt's mum for food. Since I've known Matt he's been passed backwards and forwards between these two homes.

A few months ago I got a call at 8pm asking me to come to the township as someone from church had spotted Matt wandering around. They had taken him home and discovered that when he got back from school at around 2pm his mum hadn't been home and the house was locked up. He played for a while but when it started to get dark he buried his school books in his yard so they wouldn't be stolen then wandered around looking for his mum. I immediately went to get him. Thankfully as I was about to take him home with me for the night his mum turned up.

Matt's mum has a tough life. She has no parents. She has no ID so struggles to find work. But she's also made some unwise decisions. This means that with all that's going on in her life, Matt doesn't seem to be a priority. She started working a few weeks ago, so sent Matt back to live down the hill with Paul. It's hard to see such a young child being passed around with no stability. He still goes and sleeps at his mums at the weekend sometimes. I wonder how long it will be before he starts to react to the situation. At the moment he's always smiling.

Matt was going to the church school. Sadly a couple of months ago his mum wasn't able to pay up her school fee debts and so he was asked to leave. We're hoping to get him into a different school for next year, but he was quite far behind in class so it will be tough to get him upto the standard he needs to be. Again he has no toys, and no real adult interaction except at Mapheo and church, so his development is behind.

Matt also comes to church with me every week. And every week he delights everyone with his crazy kid dancing at the front of church. He's even been put on the stage to demonstrate it before now! He loves to sit on my lap, and he will wrap his little legs around mine while grinning up at me. A few months ago there was no kids church so he and Paul had to sit with me through the whole service. Matt very quietly and cutely entertained himself (and many others) by draping my hair over his head to see what it would be like to have 'white hair'. The game lasted a good half hour. Needless to say my hair looked interesting afterwards!

Please pray for this family. None of them know Jesus. They are hopeless in their situation. Please pray for opportunities to share the gospel, for continued building of relationships. Pray for an end to ancestral worship. Please pray particularly for these boys, that they would grow up knowing that we love them, and more importantly that Jesus loves them unfailingly, unconditionally, steadfastly. That He has good plans for their lives. That in Jesus there is a hope and a future for them. Pray that they would come to know the beautiful person of Jesus for themselves, that they would follow Him all their lives even through the trials of poverty.

Spring has sprung!

Well the last week has been pretty interesting.....

At Mapheo last week we looked at Jonah and the Whale. To help explain the concept of the size of a whale we showed some footage of 'The Blue Planet' from the BBC. It was really interesting watching with the kids. None of them have ever seen the sea. Most of them will never have even seen a body of water, as the dam in Clarens is a long way from the townships and most Basotho people never go there. I doubt that any of them have ever been swimming either. They were fascinated by the DVD (apart from Lebote who took the opportunity to snooze in my lap!), Mashoehoe translated some of the facts about whales and Jeremy explained what a wave is and how some people surf on them for fun.

Thursday brought the first storm of the season. There was lots of thunder but it was very cold so the rain failed to arrive, instead we got pebble size hail stones (which are very painful when they hit you!). Friday warmed up a bit, and on Saturday Spring definitely arrived. Since then the blossom has blossomed, the weather is beautiful, the wind has died down, and of course being the english girl I am, I have got sunburnt. But still no rain.

This weekend I went to 2 funerals. Two good friends lost parents over the last couple of weeks so I went along to support them. It was my first experience of a Basotho funeral. Traditional Basotho believe is that we must please our ancestors (ancestral worship), and within this the funeral is very important.

On Friday afternoon, me and Mashoeshoe were visiting a Mapheo family who live next door to Sankwela's dad who died last week. As we approached the house we were greeted by the sight of the cow being slaughtered by a group of men ready for the funeral feast, and beside the cow was a dead sheep being skinned. Quite a picture! It is traditional to kill a cow for the funeral and cook the meat to feed everyone who comes along. I think there are also some ancestral worship rituals performed with the skins.

After Salt and Light on Friday night a crowd of us went out for drinks at Friends, and then to the 'Night Vision' for Mme Elizabeth. Mme Elizabeth was my friend Anna's mum who died 2 weeks ago. She was a Chrisian, so the night vision was very focussed on God. We all stood outside in the 'tent' (a small marquee which is always erected for the funeral, either in the garden or the middle of the road) and sang Christian songs interspersed by people speaking to the crowd. Traditionally anyone who knew the person can speak at the night vision, and they usually speak about the person. The night vision continues all night but we only stayed til about 1am. There was another one taking place slightly nearer my house where the singing was so loud that it kept me awake!

The next morning Mme Elizabeth's funeral took place at the church at 8.30am. Because it was a Christian funeral it was a time of thanking God for her life, and one of our elders preached the gospel to the congregation. But it was not without some African wailing. After the funeral everyone goes to the graveyard for the burial. I didn't go to Mme Elizabeth's burial as I knew I wouldn't be back in time for Sankwela's dad's funeral. That was at 11am. So I went to the house and found Sankwela outside.

Sankwela is the only Christian in his family. He also didn't really have a relationship with his dad as his parents are divorced and his dad had remarried. The funeral was a very traditional affair. We chatted outside while the ceremony took place in the tent as neither of us really wanted to be there. Then we went to the graveyard for the burial. All the men go to the grave, while the women stand at a small distance singing while the coffin is buried. It takes a long time (hence my sun burn) then everyone returns to the house for the meal.

At the house everyone queued up to wash their hands. Because this was a traditional funeral the handwashing was a ritual. There were three bowls in a line, with different things in each. The first was designed to cleanse you from the graveyard (it had a particular plant in it), the second was for ancestral worship, the third just water. Then there was a plate with tiny pieces of meat and a cup of traditional beer.

Once you had completed the washing and tasting you could have food. The food was yummy but for the first time in my life I struggled with the meat. I just kept seeing that cow tied down being slaughtered. As soon as the food was over, me and Sankwela left and spent a leisurely afternoon sunbathing in my garden.

Despite being threatened with being thrown out of home, Sankwela stood his ground on Sunday morning and refused to shave his head as is traditional for the oldest child after the funeral in order to please the ancestors. Standing for Jesus in these situations must take so much strength. I am so blessed to have a family who are all saved.

Saturday night is youth group. The last few weeks have been brilliant. We have really been blessed by the presence of God in our meetings. This week Seabata (who used to live here and help lead the group) came back from Jo'burg and preached. He talked about being set free from sin, even inherited sin. It was another excellent night.

On Sunday night we had our penultimate evening in our 'sex series'. It's been a great series about God's plan for sex and marriage. This week was about homosexuality. The speaker spoke from his own life and it was a very moving evening. He made himself so vulnerable by sharing his testimony and I have no doubt that it will have helped people to understand more about this topic.

Tuesday was 'Spring Day' here, and as I said earlier, Spring has definitely arrived! Here are some pictures of the pretty blossom: