The Wonder of it All

Our trip to South Africa continues to bless us.  We’ve fellowshipped with wonderful people.  We’ve enjoyed worship and challenging preaching.  The students at DBC continue to bless and amaze us with their maturity in the Lord…even though they are still young adults and it shows often.  There is a lot of laughter…a lot of heartbreak for souls of the lost…a lot of joy in the Lord. 

Last Thursday night I prepared dinner for the eight young Zulu men who are living at the school.  Only pictures can give you an idea of how they live…but they remain full of joy.  I am ashamed when I think of the quality of furniture I enjoy in my home…of the importance I’ve been putting on “looking good” if I want to invite people to my home.  These young men were delightful…pulling plastic chairs and a couch with torn cushions up to a table we could all dine around.  And their compliments and praise just blessed so much.  They told me the meal was “powerful” and then explained that was the nicest compliment they could give.  But the real blessing came after the meal when I asked them to sing a song for me before I left.  I’m hoping to put it on FB soon.  The video isn’t great…but you can hear the deep, rich tones of their voices blending in praise to God in their native tongue.  They then prayed…all at once…out loud…and I mean “LOUD”.  I might have thought I was in a service with tongues being spoken and I would have been frightened…but knowing it was their beautiful native tongue just blessed my heart so much.  It’s one of those nights I’ll carry in my heart forever.  It’s changed the spirit of the young men towards us…they’ve been friendlier today because they had an opportunity to meet us outside our roles on the staff here.  What a fun evening we had.

I’ve been riding an emotional roller coaster since arriving in South Africa.  There have been some traumas on the homefront that have required that I trust God with those I love dearly…and once again He’s proved faithful to care for my children and grandchildren in my absence.  There have been moments here that have tugged my heart and squeezed till I thought I couldn’t breathe.  As a kinetic learner, I’m thrilled with anything I can see, touch, taste, smell or hear…and so I’ve been over-stimulated by all the new and beautiful things in South Africa that are not a part of my “normal” life at home.  I took a few minutes this weekend to try to list these blessings:

Sights

·         The hues of light and rich and deep black colors of skin

·         The dark, wide-eyed wonder of Indian children

·         Opulence vs poverty in the quality of homes here

·         Beggars on the street corners…almost all street corners

·         Traffic coming towards me on the “wrong” side of the car

·         Vervet monkeys stealing bread from Marcie’s KITCHEN…yes…in the house!

Smells

·         Pungent spices of Indian bath products

·         After-shave…spicy and rich smelling

·         Pollution…black dust on everything…I know I’m breathing it in

·         Salty air…it shows on the car windshield

·         The winter flowers of South Africa…such deep, dark colors

·         Car exhaust fumes…3,000,000 people makes for lots of cars, taxis and buses

Tastes

·         Palatable to unpardonably hot (peri-peri) food

·         Samoosas

·         Dust in my mouth

·         Granadillas (sloppy looking but oh, so delicious)

·         Tea time – going to keep this up when I get home

·         Biltong – dried, salty beef that is YUMMY

Touch

·         The sea breezes off the Indian Ocean

·         Soft skin after a “Dead Sea” salt treatment

·         No animals to pet (sigh)

·         Granadillas (they look dried up and ugly…wrinkly…feel rough)

·         Soft, dark hair of an Indian baby

·         Hugs and handshakes from EVERYONE each Sunday at church

Sound

·         The deep, rich laughter and song of the Zulu men who love God and each other

·         The constant hum of machinery in the night

·         Zulu radio…clicks and laughter and I don’t understand a word

·         Foreign languages or accents all around

·         Haededa birds and the rooster next door (and the dog fights)

·         Voices in the night

These are just a few of the many things that happen each day here in South Africa that keep me praising God for his goodness and His greatness.  I feel sorry for people who never have a chance to travel to a place that’s “different”.  While I love and appreciate most of these differences, I’m gaining a new appreciation for home and the things that I have taken for granted.  Things like:

• Cold running water (because the government hasn’t shut it off)
• Hot water (for more than one bath in an hour)
• Comfortable furniture
• A BIG van instead of a tiny little car that makes me feel vulnerable and terrified in traffic
• Large, shade trees
• Rain (we’ve not seen any since we arrived…it did rain one night…but it’s almost always sunny)
• Familiar faces
• Familiar food in the grocery stores
• Hot dogs that don’t taste like the texture of soft tofu
• Biscuits  (here they call cookies biscuits…and I’ve yet to see a plain, old biscuit anywhere)

It’s a strange, new world…different…good…different…bad…different.  Just different.  It’s like most big cities in America…except that the faces are almost all dark-skinned (the Indians can actually be darker than the black South Africans).  I will say this…the smiles on the faces of dark-skinned humans are BRILLIANT.  I love the smiles here!

So that’s my update for this week.  The next few weeks will be busy, busy (in South Africa you double your words for emphasis).  Besides the weekly classes, Dan and I will be doing a concert next Friday…helping with the Missions Conference the following week…conducting a “Lead Like Jesus” Seminar the following week…and then it will be finals week the last week of August.  We’ll conclude our visit with an actual Safari Weekend the first week of September in the Krueger National Park of South Africa where we should get to see all the wild animals in their natural habitat…elephants, leopards, hippos, gnus, springboks, water buffalo, giraffes, monkeys … you name it, they’ve got it (smile).

God has been working on my heart not only in my preparations for class, but in the material I’ve been reading in my free time.  Jerry Jenkins will be remembered as my favorite author for the summer of 2012.  I thought he’d only written the Left Behind series, but discovered he’s got multiple books out.  I think I’ve read nine of them throughout June and July.  I’m finishing up a series of books written just before Christ returns…after WWIII.  Yes, it’s fiction…but I’m challenged because in these books “religion” has been banned from the world.  So the church has gone “underground”.  I know that there are Christians now who meet knowing that doing so could put their lives in danger.  And I’ve found myself wondering how would I do it?  How would I find other Christians to fellowship with if I had to do it secretly? Would I be willing to risk my life to do it?  I have a new appreciation for those who live that way…and an even greater appreciation for the opportunity to worship openly and freely.  But, like Jenkins, I believe signs are indicating the approach of Christ’s return.  And I believe it will get harder before things get better.

Are you ready for that day?  I’d love to talk to you about how you can be ready if you’re not sure.

Please continue to pray for us.  We know we are where God intended us to be.  Dan has been very busy making repairs around the school building and Marcie’s apartment and making preparations to facilitate the “Lead Like Jesus” seminar.  He is loving South Africa as much as I do.