CREATIVE PRAYER WEEKEND – FEEDBACK

Sorry for the silence in the blogosphere of late - STILL waiting for my home internet to be fixed... ;(

Thanks to all who prayer for this past weekend’s activities. We had a great time, here are a few highlights:

1. 17 young people watched ‘THE PASSION’ on Friday night. I know that ‘enjoy’ is not the right word to use, but they appreciated seeing the film, many tissues were used, and the discussion afterwards was good. One boy, however, asked if there was anyone else famous in the film apart from Jesus!! I suppose it’s logical, if you believe Jesus is alive, why shouldn’t he star in his own film?!

2. The Creative Prayer Room 'THE SANCTUARY - HOLY SPACE SACRED SPACE' which was what the prayer room was transformed into on Saturday proved very popular with the children. Over the day 35 of the children here (aged from 6 to 16) came in. A couple stayed 3 minutes, some stayed 3 hours. They loved the activities, although one girl is now convinced that if she stirs salt into warm water all her sins will go away, she kept thinking of things she's done wrong, going back, and a lot of salt got put in the water!

3. One of the activities was to write or draw prayers to God. I'll put some of the examples into another post as I don't have them with me, but they were amazing. Some kids wrote over a page of A4 pouring out how much they love God. When you think that some of the backgrounds that these kids have come from (not pretty at all) it's fantastic that they are so free to express their love in this way.

4. Praying for the children was amazing. Prayer is a big thing here and they have no qualms about asking someone to pray for them. It was brilliant to be able to pray over some of these children and to see God working in their lives.

5. The t-lights were another popular section, i've never seen so much wax in my life. They loved lighting the candles and praying for others, a lot prayed for family members. Yet the greater fun was in watching them burn and removing any 'spare' wax... (don't worry, they were being closely supervised!)

6. Sunday was Pentecost and the worship in the morning was great. I think for the first time since I've been running the services, I sensed that the kids were really into worshipping. I even taught them a new song 'Father, we adore you', which I'm sure will be sung again and again. At the end of the service we waited on the Holy Spirit to come and for a few brief seconds there was absolute silence in the room as the kids prayed. That in itself is a miracle, when you realise that we had 6 under fives in there too.

All in all, a BIG success, the kids loved it, the volunteers who helped out loved it and it was such a peaceful place to be. I'll definitely do it again, with different activities, as the Spirit leads.

cold

yesterday I was wearing my usual t-shirt and skirt.
this morning it was ICE-COLD out and I had to layer the t-shirt with jumper, scarf, gloves, shawl, just stopping short of the hat!

winter is here with a vengeance! ;-(

it's definitely time to head to warmer climes..

but that's ok, I'll be there in just 35 days!

Pretoria

There's a long and complicated story to do with M's visa/passport etc for coming to England and it's my job to sort it out...

The complete (and I mean complete) failure of ANYONE in the British High Commission to answer any phones or emails meant that we had to take the 1200 Km round trip drive up there at the end of last week.

But it did give me a chance to experience another SA city. Pretoria's not bad, we arrived on the wrong side and had to drive through the centre to get to where we were staying, not much of interest on that route except the 'German Foot Clinic' (where Matthias should have gone to increase his chances of escaping aforementioned cheetah).

Pretoria is quite a friendly city, despite being the administrative capital of South Africa. A lady I phoned re guest house couldn't fit us in but found us alternative lodging which turned out to be very comfortable and extremely near the British HC. (possibly shouting distance, although that's as useless as phone/email)

Being a University city, there are lots of student hangouts. We had dinner in Hatfield Square, which is the most European piazza I've been to this far south of the Equator. It's even more European-looking than Cape Town (and that's saying something). The only problem is, I felt really old, as we sat in a bar for dinner surrounded by young-looking students. It made for fascinating people-watching though, even if the now familiar black guy/white girl combo got the usual strange looks again (one gets used to it quickly)... There were even pavement cafes, with decent coffee... nice.

The BHC weren't able to help much, they sent us to the airport, where we had a 2.5hr wait for someone to come down a few steps and escort us through security. I'm sure we only got helped that quickly because I was white and moaning I was tired (in a nice, gracious way, not really moaning you understand!) I think they thought we were yet another mixed race couple!!! But in any case, we made some progress and managed to avoid the Bulls supporters driving down the N3 home (HUGE rugby final in Durban on Sat - Durban 'Sharks' v Pretoria 'Bulls'... meant the FA cup final was relegated to late Sunday night on E! TV, tsk tsk, priorities!)

I am totally fed up with the BHC though, I spent most of last week calling the line for 'Distressed British Nationals' (please hold for the switchboard and someone will be with you shortly..). 'Shortly' in BHC terms is obviously before the end of the decade. I'm lodging a formal complaint as soon as I find out who to do that to. It's disgraceful that a 'Helpline' would remain unanswered. Especially in this country where the crime rates are higher than most warzones... I only pray that I NEVER need to actually use that line to get help. It seems there are distinct disadvantages to being British here. If anyone from the Foreign Office reads this, SORT IT OUT! Pathetic.

it's not a serval it's a...

cheetah

after all that.

Apparently it killed and ate a cow, so that makes it a cheetah.

still no sign of it though, even though I've been looking very hard!

Watch out there's a serval about ...

Reports on Thursday morning of several sightings of what looked like a cheetah sent the reception into a frenzy of contacting the Parks Board to come and catch the cat. Fears were mostly for the younger children, the dogs, the locals with their travelling cattle grazing nearby and Matthias (with a recently sprained ankle he can't run fast...)
The Conservancy people duly arrived and on inspection of the animal's tracks it was decided that we weren't dealing with a cheetah or leopard but merely a serval. Now, servals don't seem to exist anywhere else, but from my wildlife guide it seems they look an awful lot like a cheetah, but with big ears. Perhaps an outcast from the supreme big cats breed, they never seemed to feature on 'Big Cat Week' on the BBC.
Apparently there are a couple of them that live in this area. The book doesn't say they are dangerous, but then the book wouldn't say that Nata, the teeny black cat who has made it his mission in life to get into my house, is 'dangerous' either, but that doesn't mean the claws and teeth don't hurt when he decides to bite me! Small, but sleek and sharp.
I haven't seen this creature yet, would be kind of cool to spot it, but perhaps from the safety of my car instead of face to face in the bush!

Oh and it certainly made for interesting conversation during the audit - which went very well indeed! Now I'm slightly less busy, but only slightly...

work...

I don't know what is going on, but since Monday morning when I started work, I feel like I've not stopped. It's like a whirlwind of things to sort out. Plans I've made about what to do each day have gone out of the window in favour of small disasters and other little issues that I've been faced with each day. I've started work around 7 am and am finishing late in the evening.
Yesterday I think I survived on almond chocolate and was still typing around 10pm when I forced myself to give up. My head hits the pillow and I'm out like a light until the alarm wakes me at 6 the next morning...
And the weird thing is, it's actually quite enjoyable to get things done. A lot of the time has been spent driving round the valleys picking up various people, going to home affairs/post office/Spar etc and then taking them home. But I've achieved various goals and now we have almost everything ready for an audit visit tomorrow that I'm in charge of. It's only a small percentage of my job that we're dealing with - Lifeskills facilitators, but I think we're ready and I'm hoping this is not going to be some kind of NGO version of Ofsted inspection (although I did quite enjoy my Ofsted inspection when I was Headteacher - mostly because I was taken off-timetable to host!) ... in any case, my head is now a bit fuzzy...
I had to make sure our life-skills library is all ready this afternoon. The older kids have been using it for homework room, it was a TIP! Fortunately for me I had some little helpers in the form of L (girl, aged 4) and A (boy, aged 6) in tidying up and it became a game to put the board games (Risk/Monopoly in a homework room? Hello?!?) , cuddly toys and other things away neatly. L was a little star and put all the rubbish in the bins, and moved all the chairs around .She was too small to move desks. A (and my family will know who I'm refering to here) decided the best way he could help was to put himself onto the shelf with the board games and to shut himself in there. (It kept him quiet for all of 30 seconds)... In any case, job done and we're all set...

my cellphone still not working... pray for a miracle (or at least that the guy in the phone shop can help me get it fixed.) I really miss not having internet access at home.

Crazy…

So my blogging came to a temporary red light at the weekend as my cellphone which I use to connect to the internet is taking a short sick leave…. Pray that it gets fixed soon, it’s the only way of getting photos onto here and keeping in touch with the world when I’m not in the office!

Things here have gone a little crazy with passport problems, but they could be being sorted. Pray for a resolution to the problems for 3 of the choir, too much detail to go into now, but until this afternoon I didn’t have a clue what to do and suddenly various things have occurred that make it likely things will come together – Praise the Lord! But I still don’t have the passports in my hand all ok so we need to keep on praising and praying until I do and everything is done and dusted!

Kids

I love my kids.

They are the best.

It's so nice after a day in the office (a very productive few days actually, what's going on? I'm in shock!?!) to wander down and catch up with the kids here on site. They are always pleased to see me, even if I do put my years of child behaviour management into practice almost immediately (it comes as second nature) and so often end up instructing children not to do certain things.

Today was lovely though. We have a couple of trampolines on site that the kids can use and the creche were down there bouncing. They wanted to go on the jungle gym (but sadly it's fallen into disrepair and they have to be banned - anyone got some spare cash to restore it please?!?!) but settled instead for a little walk.
So it was that I set off with M(aged 2), S(aged 3 and a half) and L (3 as well) for a short walk to the edge of the field. It had to be correspondingly short with the length of their legs... We came across some wild flowers and another older child picked some for me. Sweet. I tried to educate my little ones in the art of boys giving girls flowers (you are NEVER too young to learn) M did understand that he should give them, he even learnt that they smelt nice, but then he ripped them to shreds before he could give them to anyone! But he'll get there. They are also really into having their photos taken (something to do with having so many volunteers working with them) and they wanted to pose at every opportunity. M wanted to see the snakes, but thankfully there weren't any (it's a little too cold now).

Earlier in the afternoon 2 of the teenagers visited the offices to talk to someone about money. We nearly managed to convince them that the dogs on site actually work in the office and take messages from one room to another. Patches was asleep under my desk at the time so she was taking a break, but Topsy was around to take them to the end of the corridor. They are certainly more efficient than the sheep, who is still on the prowl to eat any paper he can find. Some people have child/baby gates, we have to have a sheep gate on the main door...

The beauty of having bank holidays is that the week always seems shorter. Especially when Monday and Tuesday are holidays. My weekend off starts tomorrow! Hurrah! I'm not going anywhere though, got painting to do and little odd-jobs to catch up on here, but it's nice not to have to be up at a certain time and all the rest...

Passports, the saga continues...

Another semi-fruitless trip to Passport office at Home Affairs this morning. Now we're down to 2 people needing new passports for the tour in July. They don't currently have ID books, although it's in the system. No one will help us until their fingerprints show up on the computer. But no one will give me a number to call to find out when that is.

So, my plan for tomorrow is to find a number, any number to do with Passports, and to make a complete nuisance of myself (in the nicest possible British enquiry way) until someone tells me the prints are up... and then we're off... straight back to the P.port office. Thing is, then it still takes several weeks to get the actual passport... We need some prayer coverage here if you can help, thanks! Time is rather short, but it's not run out yet! There's still hope...

Better!

I know that some are asking about my health after my previous post. Nice to know people read this and are concerned about me ;-)
I was ill all of Saturday and slightly better on Sunday after a long sleep. But on Sunday night I decided that enough was enough and so I 'rebuked the sickness in the name of Jesus' and then I woke up the next morning feeling absolutely fine. Praise the Lord!

So on Monday I managed to get a lot of painting done in my living room, on Tuesday I managed to get the boys to move my massive wardrobe round and do some more painting. Now I have a much nicer bedroom area and this weekend I'll do the living room end of my room. I needed to get better to get some decorating done over the bank holiday!

More details of decorating to follow, plus pictures to prove I can paint, and even use polyfilla...