Flyering in Worcester
Football Results…
Goeie naand almal! (Good evening everyone!)
My Afrikaans just gets better and better…
Hope we are all well this evening, we are just back from a thrilling 5-a-side football match in Riverview, with the Scotland men’s team beating the South African men’s team, but Scotland’s ladies losing to the South African ladies. A very good afternoon had by all, and hopefully some photos and videos to follow!
This evening is Next Level, a youth event for teenagers and young people in the church – with our very own Rachel Massie sharing the word with the young folk, which we are very excited about after her previous public appearances! Fiona G and Tassie will also be leading worship – more on this tomorrow. I do apologise, some of the comments have reminded me that I didn’t update you last weekend on our speakers and worship leaders – Tom, Glenn, Fiona and everyone else on the team did a fantastic job of both the explosive youth event and the Sunday morning service, and we expect similar wonders this weekend!
We are very sad to realise that today is our second last day in Worcester (awwww) – and not just because that means we have to pack! It’s been quite emotional finishing Holiday Club and doing our last Kinderbond in Avian Park yesterday, and although we’re all shattered I reckon we’d all quite happily stay an extra week if we could!
Tomorrow we are going to be at the Peoples Church in the morning, followed by lunch and debrief with the team from the church before heading to Cape Town – not sure what internet access/free time will be like in Cape Town so don’t be too worried if you don’t hear from us!
Please pray for the debrief, that constructive comments will help both the folks from the church here and also the team as we head back to Scotland to reflect on our time here, and learn lessons for the future. Also prayers would be appreciated for Rachel as she preaches to Next Level tonight, and Glenn as he preaches in church tomorrow morning – and for all of us that we wouldn’t cry too much when we have to leave Worcester!
Totsiens!
More Braais, More Fruit and No Power
Hello!
A warm welcome to today’s installment of the SA Team blog. This morning was an interesting start, with the girl’s house finding themselves powerless – the electricity is bought in tokens and we had run out overnight! So try if you can to picture 7 girls attempting to dress and get ready in the dark – it was not pretty I can tell you! Glenn was like a bear with a sore head when we went round to the boys flat for breakfast – he is SO not a morning person.
After we got over that minor setback, we managed to get our energy together for kid’s club (I think we were more energetic than the kids this morning!). Back home for lunch and then we headed out – some to Kinderbond and some to keep digging up our garden project. Will try to upload a photo from Kinderbond later when we’ve uploaded the photos to the computer – amazing to see so many kids turning out, and being able to give them a piece of fruit to take away.
This evening, Paul and Elaine (pastors of People’s Church) have fed us on a wonderful meal of pizza and sweet kebabs cooked on the braai (BBQ) on the stoep (verandah) – look at my Afrikaans there!
Thanks as always for your prayers, they are much appreciated by all the team, as well as your comments on here. As always, please pray for more energy for the team – especially those who have picked a wee sniffle (or man flu, depending on your gender…!) Pray for the kids coming to the holiday club and Kinderbond, that they would take something away from what they hear, and that we would be able to plant a seed which will be watered in the future.
And as always, much love from your SA team 
Braais, Fruit and Power Cuts
G’day folks (oops, wrong country…oh well!) The weather here could make us believe we were in Australia though – it’s been a beautiful day, very hot this afternoon while we were doing Kinderbond in Riverview – about 300 children came out to watch the team prance about and generally make idiots of themselves for their amusement, and they all got a piece of fruit to take away with them – its amazing how such a simple thing like giving out fruit can be such an amazing experience for the team, we felt like we were making a difference to them in a practical way.
This morning was the second installment of the holiday club at People’s Church, which again was a massive success with the kids, and the team managed to keep their energy levels going – but please keep praying for this.
This evening a power cut in the whole of Worcester led to one positive outcome – we decided to have a braai (BBQ), so the fire is on and hopefully the meat will be cooking soon!
Some memorable quotes from the team over the last couple of days, to amuse and entertain:
Fiona Gibb – “Ooh, I’ve had a lot of fumes today”
Rachel Massie – “It’s just going to be me and Paul in the bath”
(Don’t worry, they are clean in context!)
Until next time…
Bricks, Tiles and Hyper Children
The title of today’s post really says it all…! This morning was the first of 5 holiday club installments, with about 60 kids turning up – harder work certainly than I expected it to be, but the kids seemed to have a great time so that’s what counts, and all while learning about Jesus. This was followed by lunch with some of the people who we have been working for – 5 at each house, and all EXTREMELY well fed – a humbling experience when the people feeding us would have made quite a sacrifice to be able to buy the food.
This afternoon we have been out at our CATs again, making good progress in the sunshine, and this evening we are resting a bit before another full day tomorrow – holiday club, CATs and Kinderbond (outreach to hundreds of township kids!)
Please pray for energy, energy, energy – thanks!
From the wonderful SA team
Soup Kitchen
Here you can see some of the team modelling this season’s latest fashion – waterproof yellow trousers! We are helping Mickey with the soup kitchen she runs, and on this day we fed more than 250 children in the pouring rain – an amazing and humbling experience!
Riverview kids photo
Here is Hannah and a bunch of the Riverview kids, including some of Jonny’s friends and relatives, while we were playing with them in the rain! They taught us songs, dances and marbles, and went mad when the camera came out!
Work Hard, Play Hard!
Goeiemore! There you have it, the extent of the team’s Afrikaans (except Tim, whose vocabulary seems to be neverending!) Welcome to today’s update of events here with the Braveheart team in Worcester. Yesterday (Friday) we woke up after our liein to see that the rain had stopped and the sun had come out – hoorah! Good thing too as we had a little surprise coming our way…a trip to a local safari park! I would like to take this moment to emphasise how difficult, fulltime and energy-sapping mission is, especially when your mission field for the day is a safari park. The team worked so hard at telling our guide (and the elephants) about the People’s Church and inviting him along, and occasionally took a tiny break from this to learn from him about the animals, and to take photos of the lions…
Most of the team headed to the cinema in the evening to see the new Transformers movie (nope, not sure how I can twist that story to make it mission related…sorry!)
Before you start wondering why you sent us out here, don’t worry – yesterday was a well-earned day off for the team, the only one we will have here in Worcester, and from the renewed energy levels among the team today I can assure you it was well needed!
This morning we were straight back in at the deep end – handing out flyers in Avian Park, as part of the vision of People’s Church to flyer every house in Worcester over the next year. This morning alone we covered about 10% of the town – that’s 1900 houses, or about 10,000 people. It was amazing to see how enthusiastic people were to chat to us, and how people would run after us to get leaflets. The children were also very friendly, and were very up for helping us to hand out the flyer. In fact the only downside was the large number of big scary dogs behind pretty flimsy fences – I don’t think Glenn will stop twitching for a LONG time!
Thank you on behalf of all the team for your continued prayers for us out here, we are very aware that everything we do here is useless if it’s not done in line with God. Please keep praying for us as we are starting a long stretch without another day of relaxation/safari, from today (Sat) until next Sunday when we leave Worcester – pray for team dynamics, that as we get more tired we would not get more snappy! Also please pray for Tom as he preaches at the Explosive Youth Event tonight – pray that his words would be God’s words – and for Fiona G as she leads worship tomorrow morning in church.
Til next time!
Fun and Frolics
Good evening! For those of you who got all the way through yesterday’s post – well done! Sorry for the length of it – wanted to keep you all up to date with all that we were up to!
Today has been another busy day – another assembly (our last) this morning, this time at a mainly white Afrikaans-speaking primary school. It is funny how different our 3 assemblies have been, in terms of size and language and background, and yet how enthusiastic all of the kids have been – all very up for dancing along to “Jesus you’re my superhero” and “Rainbow”, and very attentive during the dramas. This morning it was the turn of Billy Graham wannabe aka Hannah Younge to bring the message of Jesus to the kids, and she did an excellent job! Many of the kids stayed back after the assembly to chat to the team and get email addresses, which was lovely – some of them even took a stab at some Scottish dancing!
After the assembly was a quick change and then out to our CAT projects – some of the team headed to Juanita’s bathroom to continue painting and tiling, and some others started a makeover on Jonny’s sister’s bathroom, also painting and tiling. The others made a start on preparing crafts for kids club next week – much mess followed! This afternoon a few of us headed to Riverview (the area of Worcester where Jonny grew up) to hand out flyers for the People’s Church – but got waylaid by about 40 kids who immediately came to meet us, play with us and get their photos taken!
This evening some of the team have headed to prayer houses, one in Riverview and one in Avian Park (these are the two main areas where we are focusing our work here in Worcester) – we are hoping to be able to be an encouragement to these guys, please pray for this.
Please also pray for the team tomorrow as we enjoy a well-earned day off – that our energy levels would be boosted!
Hopefully another update soon….!
Love from the team x
Sorry for the delay…
We are well into day 4 of our mission here in Worcester, South Africa. How can that be, you may ask, when the last you heard we had only just arrived?! The thing is, we have been having internet issues. Boo! And because we can’t get online, it makes it much more difficult to bring you all our uptodate info – so an especially large apology to all the parents/spouses who have been relying on the blog to make sure their children/spouses are still alive. Good news – they are! We are all still in one piece, with no injury more serious than Fiona’s eye, which luckily has healed and doesn’t seem to be causing any more problems.
OK, so with the limited time I have before someone physically harms me in order to use the computer, I will attempt to update you on our activities and goings on so far…
Day 1
We went to People’s Church in the morning, some of the gang ran Sunday School and Excel (for teenagers), also known as baptism of fire, while the rest of the team got to hear Pastor Paul preach on the ten commandments. Oh yes, they call them “Pastor…” out here – so although we brought Glenn out with us, we will be bringing Pastor Glenn home! After church we went to meet Juanita, whose bathroom we have been refurbishing.
Day 2
Monday morning, bright and early at 8am we found ourselves in Victoria Park primary school to do our first assembly – in front of about 300 kids! Although a pretty intimidating experience, we managed well, with Rachel doing an amazing job of sharing the story of Jesus and his salvation with the kids. She is now known as Billy Graham the second. Anne Pirie and Fiona Gibb also shone in our drama of “Daft as a Brush” – a DVD of Anne as a chicken and Fiona as an elephant will no doubt be shared with everyone at some point – it’s definitely worth a watch – or ten! After the assembly we started on 2 of our CAT (Community Action Team) projects – one team cut down a tree and knocked down a wall in one family’s garden, and the other team began on redoing Juanita’s bathroom. After a hard afternoon’s work we had a relatively easy evening – testing Glenn on his knowledge of spiritual gifts!
Day 3
Our first taste of a true South African winter – it tipped it down with rain all day! This kind of scuppered plans to continue on clearing the garden, although the bathroom work continued as planned – the draughts coming through the windows and the lack of hot water in any of the flats reminded all of us how lucky we were to be going back to a warm shower and warm bed that day! Also managed to join the People’s Church team for their devotions in the morning, which was lovely – although certain members of the team had been looking forward to a wee lie in…! We knocked off work early to head out for one of the things we have been most excited about out here – the British Lions vs Emerging Springboks at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town! Even this event was not without drama though – about quarter of a mile from the stadium, one of the People’s Church combis broke down! Abandoning them by the road (no really), the rest of us headed for the game, and were joined at halftime by the unfortunate combi inhabitants, with the news that the combi would have to be towed. So after a good game which ended in a draw (keeping both the Scots and Jonny happy!), we piled 16 people in a 10seater combi for the drive back to Worcester, with the others following with the tow driver. Luckily it looks like the combi will be fixable, though please pray for it, as it is crucial for the work of the church.
Day 4
Another day, another rainstorm…! Yes, another day of South African winter, which although we were warned many times about it none of us seem to have seen coming! First thing this morning, another school assembly, this time at a small private school, so a very different atmosphere from Monday morning. This time Ian got the job of sharing the message of Jesus with the kids, and he managed excellently – we seem to have brought a whole team of Billy Grahams away with us! After the assembly some of the team headed back to continue working on the bathroom, while Fiona B, Anne, Hannah and Emma headed to Avian Park (a township on the outskirts of Worcester) to work with Mickey, a wonderful lady who lives in a tiny house and yet once a week makes soup and gives it out to the kids of the township. It truly was a humbling experience to work beside her, chopping vegetables and making soup and then giving it out in the pouring rain. We fed over 250 children, and she says that she can get up to 500 children some days – and has to make the same amount of soup do for as many children turn up for it. It was so hard to only give a child 2 ladles of soup (about half a mug) – and yet we knew that the more we gave to one child, the more likely it was that we would have to turn kids away hungry at the end. Luckily this didn’t happen – Mickey thought that the rain may have kept some of them away. We all agreed that it was such a privilege to serve alongside her – and this event brought home to me especially how much the team is also gaining from this trip, as well as being a blessing to the people here, we are being changed and blessed ourselves in more ways than we can count. This evening, Jonny and Susan have kindly cooked us dinner – Jonny did the South African equivalent of men with a BBQ and made us a potjies kos (like a stew).
So, as I leave you until next time, can I leave you with some prayer points for the team:
Please pray for the CATs which we are involved in – that they would go well and be opportunities for making friends and just getting to know the people we are working with. Also, we are heavily involved in running a youth event on Saturday night, which seems to be Worcester;s equivalent of Encounter (for those who know what that is). Tom is preaching at that so please pray for him, and also for Pastor Glenn who is preaching at the People’s Church on Sunday. Please also pray for energy for the team, and for the holiday club and Kinderbond next week – we will have been here a week by then, so hopefully our energy levels will stay high. A prayer of thanks as well for those who have had exam results – so far these are good, and we are grateful not to have to consider resits while we are working out here. The weather has been dire, and whilst we accept that is a side effect of coming here in winter, we would love just a wee bit of sunshine.
Right, this may be the longest blog in the history of the world, so will leave it here for now…with one last quote from the team, as Pastor Paul tied red and white banners to the combi for heading to Cape Town yesterday:
“Take the English banners off – we don’t want to get shot!”
