So, Christmas is only a week away - how exciting! It doesn’t quite feel like it here, given the high temperatures, but we’re doing our best to get into the festive spirit. The past two weeks have been as busy as ever, and we’re now really looking forward to our approaching holiday - in two days’ time we’ll be off to Antelope Park! Anyway, before I get to that, here’s an update on the past couple of weeks...
Foundations For Farming: This is the one Oasis project we’ve been continuing through the month of December. Our mealies (or maize plants) have now grown to about a foot in height, which we are quite excited about. They’re really coming along nicely. We’ve been going back each week to check up on their progress, and to weed the plot. We’ve all caught the sun nicely from doing all our farming (I have a rather splendid patch of burn on my back), but it’s been enjoyable. All the motherly instincts in me are coming out in those plants! It’s really nice to have something physical to do, and something where we can see the progress and the results of our work week by week. We just keep praying that they’ll all keep growing!
Northside Community Church:
The vast majority of the work we’ve been doing at the church is Christmas-related. There’s been a lot more cutting, sticking and folding - doing the jobs that no-one else has time to do. We’ve also helped Sarah organize SALT books (Sunday School teaching resources), dating way back to 1981. That was a mass clear-out, and something Sarah really appreciated us doing. It’s not very exciting work, but it’s making a difference to people, and they really appreciate our help. We’re learning what is meant in Luke 16 when we are told to be “faithful in little things”. Not everything we do here will be huge and incredible, but by serving others in the little things we are learning, before we tackle the big things. And people really appreciate it - we have the time, and we are willing, so we can help.
This weekend the church has two Carols by Candlelight services - one in the nearby shopping village, and one in the church. Last night we were in the Village, and for that service Jess, Helen and I were selling candles and holders, and then we performed two drama pieces as well. It’s very much outreach focused there, so our skits were based on the true meaning of Christmas. It was a very nice evening, despite the rain! Honestly, if you get caught out in the rain here you get soaked! On Sunday night’s carol service we have the responsibility of ... the lights. It means we’ll get to enjoy the service too, which will be nice.
At Northside we also had a day of baking mince pies and biscuits, for the various Christmas events that are happening soon. We did this with the help of lots of children, so as you can imagine it was messy stuff, but amusing and fun too!
As I said before, we have the responsibility of doing the children’s talks on the Sunday morning services. Last week there was a special service for the Upward celebration (I’ll tell you more about that just now), so our second talk will be tomorrow. We have it all planned out, so hopefully it will go well.
Upward Soccer Camp:
Otherwise known as football (sadly, I have definitely got in the way of calling it soccer here, purely because people struggle to understand when you say football!). Upward Soccer Clinic is a soccer camp for kids aged 5 to 13 which took place last week, from Thursday to Sunday. We were team leaders; it was exhausting, but lots of fun! The first three mornings (the sessions ran from 8am till 12 noon) involved being with our teams, and leading the half-hour devotional times in between taking the kids round the soccer skills stations. On the Saturday they also had two mini-matches: I was very proud of my team, when they won 7-0 and 5-0. We had some real football stars! I had 3 girls and 5 boys, and a big mix of ages in my group (called Team David, because we “defeat the giants”) The youngest was a brilliant little boy called Alex, who struggled with skills like step-overs and things because his legs were barely long enough to step over the ball! But his effort was absolutely fantastic, and each day he’d come to me and ask if I thought he was improving, and tell me about how he’d been practising the night before and things. The oldest was another boy named Alistair, and although he was quite a bit older than some of the kids he was very helpful and encouraging. On the Sunday morning, all the kids were invited to come to Northside for an “Upward celebration”, where we sang the songs they learned and gave a certificate to each child, for various different things. It was a really good way of bringing families who don’t usually come to church into the church, because it was a very informal service. And the kids all seemed to love the week they had!
Being leaders at a soccer camp is not something Helen, Jess and I would have initially thought we were cut out for, but we were enthusiastic and gave it our all (and thankfully didn’t have to teach any kids skills!) We were the encouragers, the supporters, the “pick-you-up-when-you-fall-down”-ers, and ended up really enjoying it, despite the early mornings (we were up at 5am each day...)
And everything else...
God at work: We have each been so challenged in our time here, and are growing in our faith. We have learnt what a faithful God we have - he has protected us at every turn. We've also learned that we don't need to be doing huge, massive things to make a difference. Sometimes it's the little things that people really appreciate. I've found my daily quiet times in the morning have helped me grow and sustained me - the number of times the passage I've studied has come into relevance that day is far from coincidence, I'm sure. Each night we pray together, about the day, our issues, and the days ahead, and we've found that God really does hear and answer our prayers. As we've been feeling homesick, He's surrounded us with people who are just there to be our friends and "family", which is incredible. We found that working with the kids at Upward Sports was brilliant too, because, like at Gateway, although a lot of them know about God (their biblical knowledge is outstanding for their age!), they don't know him personally.
Relationships: We have formed some wonderful friendships here. I do have a special mention to make, to Nix and Gayle, who have been brilliant - we decorated Gayle's hoouse with many festive things, and she often comes to our rescue in times of crisis, She is therefore named "Super Gayle". And Nix is such a good friend to us, and never fails to make me laugh. Her stories of Zimbabwean life are highly entertaining! (Ok, so that mention has nothing to do with the fact that they have both read this and both asked about it....) Our other friends have been equally brilliant to us, and we're going to Victoria Falls at New Year with two of the other girls from the bible study and their friends.
Things have been a little strange with Kate away, but Sarah is wonderful. She is full of advice and wisdom, and when we had more problems with our car she was right on hand to help us out. Everyone in our church has been wonderful too, and we've had dinner with a few different people. It's really nice to feel part of the church community, and to know ltos of people too.
This and that: We've had an enjoyable few weeks. This morning we went to a flea market to buy each other Christmas presents, and tried our bargaining skills with the sellers. We were all quite proud of ourselves! We also went to a pantomime - it was so cheesy and fantastic and put us righjt in the Christmas mood! There are so many similarities to a British pantomime, but so many differences too. It was certainly an experience to remember.
Prayer Points:
- continued safety - we are going travelling as of Monday, so as we go to areas of Zimbabwe we don't know we are praying God will still protect us and watch over us!
- the Christmas children's talks - they've been fun to prepare, and we hope we can deliver them with confidence, and make people think a little more about Christmas.
- the outreach events Northside has planned. We really hope that people in the community will be provoked to think about what it's all about.
- homesickness. Obviously as Christmas approaches we're all thinking about home a lot more, but we pray we can enjoy our experience of a hot Christmas here, and not miss friends and family too much.
- our car! Geoff (the car) is not always very happy. We've spent quite a lot getting him fixed, so we pray he will last us our trip this week, and that we'll get there and back without any problems!
God bless,
Jo
Jo! It's so nice to read your updates. Glad you are feeling God's love and learning to serve in the little, sometimes un-noticeable things. Praying for you, driend!
ReplyDeleteLove,
Brenda