Connecting Zeal's need to serve with Mimosa's need to receive

Here's the story ... of a lovely lady... who was bringing up 4 orphaned children and living in horrible conditions.  Jesus to the rescue. An American church group built this cinder brick house in one week last summer.  Well, technically the foundation was already poured and the roof was put on after the team had returned home.  Nevertheless impressive. 

Mimosa was so very excited that the day to paint the interior and exterior of her home had arrived and warmly greeted Julia the missionary overseeing the project.

Side of the house with the 'bathroom' window open.  The 'bathroom' was a 6x6 square room.  Four walls.  That's it.  No tub, No toilet, No sink, no plumbing, no running water.  I asked how they went to the potty... the family usually has a bucket in that room for that purpose.

Same side of the house, bathroom and living room windows are open.  See the trench - break in the grass and the line up to the window?  That is where the family runs a line to get electricity from their neighbor

True dat!

We enter to assess the situation.  Cinder block walls making the home dark and drab.

Mimosa had moved all their possessions either outside or to the middle of the rooms.

Pastor Thwala painting the primer on a bedroom wall. Corner had already been cut.

We had a team of 6 paining, here they are in the living room.

Pastor pouring me more paint; the walls were drinking up the paint.  Those huge buckets were very heavy to pour from.

I love painting, always have.

Great fun, talking with this team from American and getting to know them as we worked.

Serving the Lord with paint brushes

Deaconess Katelyn Heitt joined the fun and braved a ladder.

Smile

The paint dried quickly and we were onto the second coat: CREAM.

Whistle while you work.

This hallway leads to the small bathroom and 3 small bedrooms.

The next day when we arrived all the fruniture was put back into its place. Hard to tell that the walls are a beautiful cream color but 100% better than the gray walls of yesterday.

Open floor plan... living & kitchen in one small area.

Nothing much in each bedroom besides the bed. Concrete floors.

Broke my heart that there wasn't any toys for the children. Concrete floors.

What DON'T you see?  Light fixture.

What DON'T you see? A light switch.

Living room is one love seat.

On to the exterior.  This is the front of the house with the living room window.

Living room window on left, only door and two bedroom windows on right.

Bedroom windows.

Mimosa washing her dishes outside - no running water in the house.  I went up the hill to fetch water for her from the 'tap' which was a gallon milk jug cut to funnel the water which was kinda dripping down.  Rather heavy carrying that 5 gallon bucket and I was coming down the hill.  When I got back to the house Pastor Thwala was cracking up and said that I went to the wrong place for water and that Mimosa had gone to get water.  I see her coming UP the hill with a 10 gallon bucket of water ON HER HEAD!!!!

From Grey cinder block to white primer to beautiful cream.

Bathroom and living room side of the house - see the line for the electricity.

Washed out brushes.

Washed out paint trays.

Two days of enjoyable work to show the love of Jesus.

This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Savior, all the day long!

The sweet church where the conference was held

The second weekend every October the Lutheran women of province Kwazulu-Natal gather for twenty-four hours of fun, fellowship and food.  Nope, that's not quite accurate.  Boring American women gather for fun, fellowship and food, what I experienced October 8th and 9th was a women's conference going all out and getting wild and crazy.

Our church group from Shongweni Lutheran church,  rented combi (taxi bus) for the 12 of us to ride the two hours together.  First the women and Pastor Twala were picked up in Shongweni Village and they came to Hillcrest to gather Julia, Shara, Katelyn, Ginger and myself.  Our final destination was the Lutheran church at Shelly Beach, on the coast of beautiful Indian Ocean.

The opening scene could have been out of any women's conference, lots of hugs and greetings as van load after van load of happy women filed out like circus clowns.


Circus clowns dressed in black and white.  Married women wore more black than white and single women wore more white than black.  I wasn't sure what I was to wear.  My favorite part of the  ensemble was their 'Gillian' hats, which they NEVER took off.

Since it was lunch time soon after we arrived I was given lunch; half a corn muffin.  'Oh, thank you", I graciously said while wondering when and what was for dinner.

The conference was entirely in Zulu.  Every word, Zulu.  The singing, Zulu. The announcements, Zulu. Worship, Zulu.  You get the idea, Zulu.  Fortunately, I've been to enough women's conferences to have a pretty good clue what was going down.  We opened with worship, followed by a business meeting.

The added all the offering by pencil and paper.  How I wanted to give them my laptop with an Excel spreadsheet.

Interesting enough each church group came forward to present their report and gave their offering.  It was suggested that I donate 100 Rand which I cheerfully did. Now let me just tell you that they DID NOT walk up to the front, they sang and danced their way forward with gladness and volume.  Group after group after group each dancing and singing louder than their predecessor's.  I asked my peers where on earth would these women get 100 Rand (about $15) and was told they save up all year because this was the weekend they all lived for.

I'm peeling carrots with a KNIFE.

Hours of the business meeting until this ADD English speaking gal couldn't sit on the hard wooden beach any longer.  I meandered outside where I was invited to peel carrots for what I thought was for dinner - only to realize while at dinner and no carrots on my plate, that they were for lunch the next day.

Pastor Weber also raises pigs... next years meals perhaps?

How would you like to cook for a crowd on this?

Women have always kept the home fires burning.

Speaking of food... I witnessed Pastor Weber bringing one open crate after another of raw, whole chickens which I learned from his thrilled wife that he had raised in their garage for this occasion. Chicken parts were in our dinner on top of rice with a sauce and in our Sunday lunch.

Oh don't let me skip past breakfast. An apple. 'Oh, thank you", I graciously said while wondering when and what was for lunch.

Pastor Weber giving Julia Wehrenberg communion

Sunday was  huge worship service followed by the giving of the offering to two retiring Pastors.

Shara Cunningham

10 000 Rand each (about $1,400)  Now I realize that sounds like a huge gift but what you have to understand is that these men have no method to save for retirement.  Nothing, zip, nada, goose egg, no money post employment.  One Pastor bawled his eyes out.  Without knowing Zulu I realized he was overwhelmed with the gift from these precious women.  

Pastor Weber's garden

Lunch was served and the conference was ended.  Did you notice that I didn't mention the sleeping arrangements?  That is because the women didn't sleep at all!  They praised God all night long, singing and dancing with the joy of the Lord in their hearts.  We silly, sleepy Americans were offered a place to stay for the night which we jumped on.

Never did figure out if one side were for women & the other men...

No place to sleep and the only bathrooms were these open pits. Which according to reports were 1000 % better than the ones last year at another location.

The only thing better than attending this gathering of sweet, holy women is the fact that next October is the National gathering and I along with a year of Zulu under my belt will be there to join in the celebration of being a daughter of the King Jesus.

Katelyn & Shara walking from Pastor Weber's home to the church a few  yards away

Sweet treat from a sweet missionary

I’m the only one with an oven.  The Lutheran Seminary campus is an assortment of 5 houses, 3 classrooms and a chapel.  The Bishop’s office is in the chapel, his secretary Salome’ is in the guesthouse, were I, a guest, live. I use the word houses loosely.  More accurate, they once were homes but now they have been turned into student housing with the barest of creature comforts. Except the guesthouse – which has an oven.

180 Celcius

Matin’s worship is every morning at 10:00am. A special treat follows each Wednesday of tea and stale, store-bought cookies.  I decided to surprise the seminarians and professors with a rare fresh baked goodie.  Chocolate Cake!

500g cake mix, 125 ml oil, 250ml milk, 2 eggs

The first challenge was realizing that the stove dial was in Celsius and measurements are not cups & ounces.  My humble baking skills prevailed and the cake was instantly consumed.  Can’t wait for the Vanilla Cake week, maybe I’ll get wild and crazy and make cupcakes.

Seminarians

success, tea and cake

                                                            

Ginger, Pastor Nathan Tambo and Pastor Randy Asburry from St. Louis, MO

going... going...

Gone

Manqoba (pronounced with a click)

Lapa where students gather to relax, missionaries too

happy students ready to return to class

Lemonade

I am completely aware how pathetic my life is.  So, when I make the announcement that I’ve never made homemade lemonade before, please don’t judge me.  What was I doing throughout my youth when I should have been learning the important things, the simple things of life? Surfing?  So, it took a trip to Africa to take one of my favorite fruits, again pathetic, and my new friend Coral to squeeze my first lemon (or for all you Steve Carell/ Get Smart fans: Squeeze the lemon.)    At the grocery store I bought four lemons with the intention of adding them to my drinking water.  

Water. Water is about the only thing I’ve been drinking here in South Africa and while I am grateful that I am able to drink it from the tap, verses the alternative of boiled or filtered, it didn’t take long for me to grow weary of water 

While a lovely, little sliver of lemon in our glass of water at restaurants is quant, I only used one of my four lemons– the trick didn’t fool my taste buds more than once.

So, when Coral, also a missionary, a career missionary; came to dinner with 2 lemons from her tree the grand plan was hatched.  ‘Let’s make lemonade’ is squealed, ‘do you know how?’ Clearly Coral didn’t surf while growing up in Wisconsin. 

Is this bus going to Cartagena?

You know you are a missionary when … the entire busload of locals are roaring with laughter at the comedian on the video and I sit stone-faced wondering what could possible be so funny.

The day began way too early for this sleeping beauty.  With a taxi due to arrive at 6:20am, I was up, dressed, bed stripped, and taking the last box from our ‘home’ of  the past three weeks over to the place where we will live upon our return when I see the taxi inside the Seminary campus compound.  ‘Ah, hello and how did you get in here?’ The nice driver said he pushed the button and someone opened the security gate.  So much for the security part of the gate. 

Suitcase after suitcase filed out of the house and into the taxi until the driver finally asked how many were needing a ride.  ‘Two sir. Bus station please.’

Is this not the cutest taxi in the universe?

As the days grew close for the trip from Pretoria to Durban, for our 2-week sneak peek at the Shongweni Village and the AIDS orphanage; the only vision I had playing in my head was the scene in the 1984 Romancing The Stone. Remember Danny DeVito’s character shouting, ‘she got on the wrong bus, she got on the wrong bus.’

While the movie still causes me to roar with laughter, arriving at the terminal didn’t. 

Every bus line, countless bus lines all use the same terminal and at the crack of dawn on this Saturday, clearly it was a very popular spot.  Ginger, my ministry partner was asked to buy the tickets from Intercape.  She bought from InterCity.  Okay, it’s a few letters off and I can’t complain. Earlier in the week I didn’t want to walk the     10 blocks up and back to purchase the pesky tickets.

Needless to say we were at the mercy of ‘luggage handlers’ or rather average Joes, who for a few Rand would haul the baggage. This of course is because we haven't yet mastered the African skill of carrying our suitcases, or anything else for that matter, on our heads.

Finally and way pass the scheduled departure time of 7:30am (an entire blog could be written about ‘African Time.’ ) The engine fired up.  Happily, I had the two seats to myself and cuddled up to the window for a beautiful eight hour ‘XPRESS’ ride to Durban. Within an hour the dream turned to a nightmare.  We merely made it Jo’burg when we pulled into another terminal – OK, more passengers can board but no one is sitting next to me, after all I need my carry on in that seat should I require some food.  

The driver shimmed up the thin aisle and asked if I was going to the ‘South Coast’.  “No, I’m going to Durban” – the smile on his face told me that I’m an idiot and clueless as to my destination.  He told me that I had to leave this bus and get on that bus, pointing into thin air but a rather long line.  I asked about my luggage, did I mention that although only two suitcases, they are the world’s heaviest? I’m sure the look on his face was saying, ‘Yeah, lady, don’t forget to get your bags from under the carriage.’  

No doubt I looked like Grumpy standing in that line, too embarrassed and knowing it would do no good to ask when the bus was scheduled to arrive. I waited.  I waited in a really long line. 

Pointless to say, the bus was packed and I did not get a window nor a empty seat next to me.  What I did get was an 8-hour back massage.  That’s what I kept telling myself and reminding myself that I love those massage chairs at the pedicure place. Why should the two year old, sitting on her mother’s lap, kicking my seat the whole time be a nuisance?

Actually, that small child was the only one who moved the entire trip.  Except for me.  I was up and down more than a dozen times, digging in my overhead held carry-on for food and fun. I decided to lobby that bus tickets need to come with a disclaimer that those suffering with ADD should be forewarned of what lays ahead of them.

There was no air. No air conditioning, no air at all.  Well, there must have been some air because I could smell it.  Onion smell, body odor smell (I guess everyone’s luggage was heavy) and worst of all, yes, you guessed it… the toilet.

Let me tell you about the toilet.  Cleverly, it was placed in the middle of the bus, and as best I can tell, when the handle is turned to lock the light comes on.  Well, there was no handle to securely shut the door and NO light.  I’ll end with the obvious, the long we were on the bus, the stronger the stench become.

Miserable, I decided to focus on my I Pod Christian music and the view.

The scenery changed from what a capital of a country looks like: busy, crowded, building filled to, after a steep ascent, beautiful vistas.

I certainly had my doubts that this old bus could make the climb the hills/mountains.  Glug, grind, sputter,  grind, sputter, glug, glug. g l u g.

I know a thing or two about clutches & gears.  After declining the suggestions from Cindy and Coral to learn to drive their cars, I took the leap of faith in my own rental.  My logic was if I crashed at least it would be my own responsibility. I’m still not positive if my love for driving in South Africa is the thrill of a manual / driving on the left or that I’m just so darn proud of myself for mastering a skill that requires all four limbs.

I’m blogging on my MacBook as we drive, and yes it is a wee-bit over the top; most of my fellow travelers are quietly watching the movies, few have earplugs/ music.  The first hour I had my I Pad out to play games and quickly realized it was time to put it away lest I earn the reputations’ that most American missionaries have…

Much more beautiful than a picture from moving bus can capture

The view is as far as the eye can see. We have been through a few towns and some shantytowns.  The rolling hills are green with some ‘wild life’ cows, horses and something far away and really small so I’m gonna think they were impala’s. 

Hitchhikers are standing on the side of the highway, but rather than stick out their thumb, they are holding up their index finger.

Finally and thankfully we arrived in beautiful Durban, was greeted by Harold for our thirty-five minute taxi ride to Hillcrest. I will enjoy every minute in Hillcrest and Shongweni Village and I will not think about the return trip to Pretoria.  The thought of another bus ride like this one leaves me only alternative.  My only reasonable solution is to buy a car and drive back to Pretoria.  I know gears & clutches.