19-01-2010
A locally supported partnership of churches and individuals in Scotland
with those involved in ministry and mission in South Africa
with those involved in ministry and mission in South Africa
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Dear Friends,
In September, along with other mission partners, we received a circular from the Board of World Mission, in which we learned that the contracts of a number of mission partners outside selected countries were not to be renewed when they expire. This includes us.
We are deeply saddened by this news and by the means that was used to inform the Board’s employees. Since then we have had a visit from the General Secretary of the Board who wanted to discuss our future with us, but at no point actually mentioned the non-renewal of our contracts.
However, this is difficult since we have only now received official notification that our services are being dispensed with. Also, several options have been listed concerning our future but neither we nor our church are allowed to offer any further alternatives. Strong representations by our church during a recent visit to Scotland by our General Secretary and Ministry Secretary yielded no compromise in this position.
We have now been involved with the Board in various capacities for 30 years, so you can imagine the shock and dismay we are experiencing. When we returned to South Africa in 1998, it was on the clear, but unwritten, understanding that we would complete our ministry here; it was further understood that this would happen so long as the Uniting Presbyterian Church continued to request our services. So we are facing Christmas this year trying to make sense of what God is saying to us in this situation.
Our call is stronger than ever and is confirmed by our church, the University of Pretoria and the Church of Scotland (until recently).
We have tried appealing to Board members and wrote to all of them before their meeting in November. Only a few responded saying that they would either see what they could do or just acknowledging our correspondence. The majority of Board members did not even bother to acknowledge our correspondence!
Since the meeting there has been a wall of silence: we have heard nothing at all! We have been advised that the only way we can fight this is through our presbytery partners. Apparently there was a case of a Mission Partner that BWM wanted to redeploy and they had to reinstate her because of the pressure put on them by her partner presbyteries.
The reason BWM are giving for this drastic action is because the General Assembly has cut their budget by half a million pounds, but they are not making it public that, despite this, they are spending several more millions of pounds into the new 5-star hotel that they have built in Tiberias in Israel; this is after having spent in the region of +/- £15m already on this project. In addition there are presently 11 mission partners and their spouses serving in Israel/Palestine.
We had already taken a cut in our salaries from the beginning of this year as well as having to pay an additional 5% of our income each month to cover shortfalls in our pension. You can imagine how bad we feel to discover that our financial sacrifice is being used to subsidise a hotel in a war zone! We would appreciate any advice or assistance that you can give us with this problem. In the meantime we ask that you pray for us to find a way to continue our work here in South Africa.
Since our last partner letter we have lost one of our students, a young woman who has died of AIDS. We feel so angry and frustrated by her death because it was not necessary. When we returned from Zambia, Sandra noticed that she was not well and was sure that she was HIV+. She offered to take her to a clinic where she could be tested and, if HIV+, would be given ARV’s (anti-retroviral drugs). She refused, saying that she had already been to the clinic and had some medicine and was already feeling better. She died a month later after suffering greatly. She did not want to know if she had AIDS, and was afraid of the stigma attached to this disease. She preferred to die rather than face the reality of what she was suffering from.
This is the tragedy of AIDS in South Africa; people will rather die than face the diagnosis because of the stigma attached to the disease.
In September, our two volunteer nurses from Alva arrived in South Africa; they graduated from being the “nurses from Alva” to Joyce and Caroline. They were thrown in at the deep end and started work immediately. We took them to a hospice in one of the local townships the day after they arrived.
Since they were here for a month we wanted to get as much experience as possible from them, so we set up 3 week-long workshops for them in 3 different townships. We used the most central church as their classroom and they taught groups of 24 people. They were teaching the groups basic palliative care. We realised this was what people in the township really wanted as, when patients have full-blown AIDS, they are sent home to die because there is no room for them in hospitals. Most families do not know how to care for someone dying and the home based carers only visit, if patients are lucky, once a week because of the huge demands placed upon them.
As well as the classroom work Joyce and Caroline gave the groups 2 days practical work where they went out with some of the home based carers to patients in their homes. They also worked with 2 hospices that have been set up in 2 of the townships. They found this part of their task very distressing because of the situations they came into contact with; such as the lack of simple medical supplies in the Hospice, such as Paracetemol or basic creams, mouth washes etc. to give comfort to patients. Because of the lack of supplies they found that some of the home based carers were washing their patients with Jeyes fluid!
We gave them packed lunches because they were out for the whole day and they would return home starving telling me that they gave their lunches to the families they visited because they had no food in the house.
They took lots of pictures and are willing to share their experience with anyone who would be interested in what they did. We would recommend that you contact them; they were wonderful ambassadors from Scotland and made so many friends in the short time they were here, and most important of all, did a wonderful job sharing their skills and faith with us here in South Africa. It took great courage for them to do what they did, and they travelled in and out of townships working with people at home.
We have had so many requests from other churches and organisations for them to return and share some more. They are both members of Alva congregation and you can get in touch with them via their minister.
While Joyce and Caroline were here we had the General Assembly, and we were able to take them to the opening and Sunday worship. It was a great relief for us, as Graham was stepping down as Moderator making way for our new Moderator, Jerry Pillay. Amongst the tributes given to Graham was from one of the white ministers in our church who was “unhappy” with Graham’s appointment as Moderator. He said that he wanted especially to thank Graham for opening the way for whites into understanding the black church and that Graham’s year as Moderator has enabled transformation to begin in our church.
Graham was approached by several members of the Assembly to consider being re-elected but refused for many reasons, not least the uncertainty of our future. It was a wonderful Assembly for us, with people who once viewed us with suspicion thanking us for all we had given the church in the past year.
Soon after the Assembly, Graham was promoted to Associate Professor of Church History and Church Polity in the Faculty of Theology at Pretoria University. Along with the academic success of our students and their strong discipline in work and worship, this has shown the strength of the Presbyterian commitment to the cause of ministerial training and transformation at Pretoria.
Amidst all this, Sandra was also very busy getting Sedibeng, our house of studies, in order so that the students could move into it. The church is very proud of this place and, although the move and consequent time living together has not been without teething troubles, we are very happy to have it operational.
We have already had several visitors from the UK enjoying its hospitality, not least the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and her chaplain.
A few weeks ago we had an official opening where we had the pleasure of Helen and Jim Mein with us. Helen is one of the Scottish executors of the estate that provided the endowment which has purchased the house and provided for its future, so we were thrilled that they were able to be present for the official opening which was done by Graham as Immediate Past Moderator of the General Assembly, assisted by the Moderator, General Secretary and Ministry Secretary.
The name Sedibeng was very carefully chosen: "SEDIBENG" (pronounced phonetically) meaning well or fountain. It refers to the story of Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well (John 4:7-30). It is the place where difference is overcome and the Other is welcomed, racism and culture (e.g. gender) are dealt with and all people are drawn together. It is the place where the living water is received; where right knowledge about true worship is revealed: where barriers are dissolved and removed. It is the place of salvation where the woman's mission is initiated as she goes forth to witness in her community. It is a place of hospitality, empowerment, of unity, of reconciliation, of cleansing (baptismal image) where trans-formation occurs and from which God's mission is advanced.
There are so many aspects of our work we would like to share with you but our letters seem to get longer and longer; the last one was cut by BWM because they said it was too long. We have now decided to send this to our partners directly as far as we are able to via email.
On the family front we would like to thank you all for the many prayers for our daughter Susan’s recovery from her accident. The surgeon said to us that her full recovery was a miracle; he did not think that her arm/hand would have recovered so quickly and so fully. We have seen the power of prayer so many times in our life and we thank all of you who remembered Susan and us in your prayers.
She has set her wedding date; it will be Easter Weekend 2005. So we are in the midst of wedding preparations as well as Christmas arrangements.
We have always believed that God has a sense of humour. All our time in South Africa we have worked with black people and generally speaking Afrikaners have been viewed as the “enemy” in the Apartheid context. We have also been liberal in our faith and theology. Susan is marrying into a very strong Afrikaans family who are extremely conservative in their faith and the father is a pastor with conservative theology! We have been able to laugh with God, realising that there was a need for us to transform the same as the rest of the population of this country. We are very happy about the marriage and are looking forward to having Afrikaners as relatives.
For us, Christmas will be a sad time this year as we struggle to come to terms with the BWM decision not to renew our contracts. In addition to this our microwave, washing machine and vacuum cleaner have all broken and are irreparable – is there a message in this for us?
Despite all these catastrophes we remember the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ and are thankful for His presence in our lives. We thank Him too for all the prayers you have offered on our behalf, for the support both financial for our work and letters that we have received throughout the year.
Thank you for the many Christmas cards expressing your thoughts and greetings to us for Christmas. We also wish you a very happy and blessed Christmas.
Best wishes!
Sandra and Graham
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