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,
We are in a very real sense recovering from Easter at the moment. We traveled to Umthatha in the Eastern Cape with our two nurse colleagues from the Alva congregation, Joyce Bell and Caroline Izatt. They were going to work in the TP Finca congregation doing AIDS awareness and palliative care work with home based carers.
We arrived on Maundy Thursday and left them in the care of Elder Archie and Mrs Prim Ntlantsana. As well as being an elder, Archie is the former Mayor of Tsolo. On Good Friday, we attended the Seven Words of the Cross at our Erskine congregation in Umthatha. After the seven traditional sermons and the summary given by the congregation’s evangelist, both Graham and Sandra were invited to address the congregation. The whole occasion lasted for 7 hours!
On Saturday we joined Joyce and Caroline at Tsolo for part of the Choir and Youth Fellowship day and the birthday party of the minister’s son. The minister Vusi Mabo is a former Fedsem student and has a wonderful ministry in this rural area. On Easter Day we returned to TP Finca where Vusi conducted the service and Graham baptized 56 infants, confirmed 32 young people, ordained 2 elders and 2 deacons, preached and celebrated Holy Communion.
It appeared to us to be anything but a holiday; yet it was good to be back in the eastern Cape.
On our way back to Pretoria, we stopped off in Pietermaritzburg to visit an old friend, Kay Rasmussen, whose husband Henry died last year. Henry and Kay were very good friends to us when we lived at Fedsem. We are also recovering from our autumn graduation season – 34 ceremonies with 10,000 graduates! We attended only two, our Theology graduation with an increasingly large contingent of graduates, including 20 doctorates. It was interesting to note, and it is very noticeable, that one third of the graduates are black in this former bastion of conservative Afrikanerdom. Such is the progress towards transformation. The degree of change in other faculties is even greater.
We also attended Susan’s graduation where she was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Social Science in Psychology although she took the degree in Sociology. Nicole couldn't understand why she couldn't sit up on the stage with granddad as she always does in church!
Our work at Mamelodi congregation is going on quite well. We are soon to ordain eight new elders to strengthen the Session. This is one of our priorities. Another is expanding our sanctuary. This has involved a lengthy process of fund raising and we have come up against municipal bureaucracy in getting plans passed. The Municipal Planning Dept. is severely understaffed and this may delay progress for some time. However, that gives us more time to fund raise.
We had a lovely communion service last Sunday. Our preacher was Prof Alisdair Heron, a Scottish academic from Erlangen university in Germany who was visiting our faculty. Graham celebrated Communion and the rest of the service was led by some of our Elder Trainers who were in Pretoria for the weekend attending the Executive of the General Assembly Training in Eldership Committee. We were hosting three of our elder trainers.
We had a visit from 12 young students from USA to Sedibeng; they were in South Africa for two weeks to experience living with young people from another culture. It was a wonderful exchange for both the American students as well as for our own students. Hopefully, one day, our students will get the opportunity to go to either UK or America for such an experience.
Talking of cultural experiences, we would like to share a little more of Joyce and Caroline’s trip with you in order to whet your appetites to invite them to hear more of their time in South Africa. We took them to the poorest and most rural part of South Africa this time. They were the only white people around and some of those they interacted with had never even met anybody white before!
They experienced washing from a basin as there is no running hot water and life generally was very difficult and probably uncomfortable for them as they lacked many of the things we take for granted in our every day lives in the west. They were very courageous to undertake to go and work and live in such a rural area and they returned so humbled and full of praise for all those they had met and worked with. They had funny experiences and sad experiences, saw the face of God in many of the situations and people they were dealing with as well as experiencing the pain and heartache of many others.
They have wonderful experiences to share and stories to tell, so please invite them to your guild/church/coffee morning and hear them talk of their work in HIV/AIDS with the Xhosa people in the Eastern Cape.
We leave South Africa tomorrow and may well be in Glasgow before you receive this letter. We shall be renting a furlough flat from Sunday 4th June until 29th July 2006 the details of which are below. Please do not hesitate to contact us and we will be more than happy to come and visit as many of you as will be possible in the time we are in the UK. We are looking forward to meeting with you all again.
Our address will be:
Flat 1/2
84 Silvergrove Street
GLASGOW
Tel: (0141) 556 6352
With lots of love,
Sandra and Graham
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