Partner Plan Letter - JANUARY 2008

56 Daphne Road, Maroelana, Pretoria 0081, South Africa
email: sedibenghouse [at] telkomsa.net

Dear Friends,

It is quite late now to send you all our best wishes for the New Year. Nevertheless it is no less sincere - we really do wish you all a very Happy New Year.

Life as usual has been quite hectic here in South Africa and the only excuse we can offer for our lateness in writing this year is that we both enjoyed a very quiet and restful Christmas and New Year and became lazy to even write to people! We both started work early in the New Year and got caught up in the momentum of jobs left undone and new things to do!

We would like to thank all of you who either hosted or came to meet and hear Violet and Alina when they were visiting Scotland. They both had such a wonderful time in fact they said had they been younger they would never have returned to South Africa!

I asked them how they coped with the cold and their response was “what cold?” They said the warmth of the Scottish people was so great that they never really noticed the weather very much. Both of their congregations have allowed them to take the pulpit so that they could share their trip and experiences with the whole church community.

Graham had a good visit to Scotland in November and was glad to catch up with partner congregations and presbyteries to keep the partnership alive. At times his itinerary crossed with that of Violet and Alina so that was good too. He remains Acting Head of Department in Church History and Church Polity at the university and we await a decision about the department’s future.

In the meantime, two new staff members have been appointed: Dr Kobus Labuschagne of the Hervormde Kerk and Dr Johan van der Merwe of the Dutch Reformed Church, so we are well staffed for the foreseeable future.

Mamelodi congregation (Violet’s congregation) where Graham is Interim Moderator has now called their own minister. Some of you may remember him; it is Wonke Buqa who was in Scotland some years ago while he was still a student here at Pretoria. Wonke has done so well he has just completed a Masters degree in Theology and will now embark on his PhD. He will be ordained on 2nd March and we are all very happy and excited about this as he has become a fine minister as well as becoming an accomplished academic.

Graham is also a Locum for St Columbia’s a mainly white congregation here in Pretoria and they are also in the process of calling a minister so Graham will be relieved of that responsibility as well. The Presbytery have another job waiting for him, the mother church of Pretoria, St Andrews, has been vacant for some time and there are problems within the congregation so they want to send Graham there – it seems as though he is rapidly becoming the Presbytery trouble shooter!

We have started the New Year with a bang at Sedibeng! The house is full and almost bursting at the seams – we have 23 residents for this year. We really only can manage 20 but have decided to use the guest room for students as it was not very much used last year and Graham and I felt that we could probably host any short term guests at our house since we are so close. It is a very big room so we have put 3 single beds into it and the 3 ladies who are sharing it have their own bathroom with a shower and bath en-suite. The ladies have already arrived and they are very happy with the room and sharing.

We will have three students from Zimbabwe and two students from the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in SA. Twelve of the men and women are training for the ministry and the rest are doing degrees in business, computers or tourism. As the reputation of Sedibeng has increased within the church we now have requests from ministers, elders and lay members of our church requesting accommodation for their children who are coming to university for the first time and they want them to live in a Christian community while they pursue their studies. We are delighted with this turn of events because Sedibeng has become a service to the whole church and not just to the ministry of the church.

During the vacation period we had the youth of the church staying for a few days for their annual conference and it was a huge success for them and they wish to do this again. We are hoping that the organizations will do the same as the youth and plan their smaller meetings to fit in with the vacation periods and have not only meetings but perhaps workshops and retreats here at Sedibeng. We are gradually projecting so many facets within the church as well as within the community as we continue to have our Zimbabwe refugees living with us in the little house in the garden.

Nozuko who works with Sandra at Sedibeng has just completed an advanced cooking course which is just as well now that we have so many to feed next year. This has helped to decrease Sandra’s workload considerably because Nozuko now does the majority of the cooking for the students and she is doing it very well.

The family news is that our son David has been living and working in Thailand for the past 6 months. He returned to the UK on the 3rd of January. His company was requested by the Thai government to set up a new flight programme within Thailand and he with some other crew members were sent out to set it up and to train local staff. Susan and Richard are both very well and Nicole started 'real' school this week. She is so smart in her Crawford (the school’s name) tartan uniform – all of the schools still have uniforms here in SA. She loved her first day and it looks as if she is going to be very happy in this new school.

Ellis our other grandchild is also doing very well at school; we were almost in tears over Christmas because he phoned us to thank us for his Christmas present his mum said it was his idea he wanted to speak to his grandparents in Africa! We were so thrilled by this we cannot explain how special it was to hear his voice even although he could not understand his granny’s Scottish accent!

The whole of SA is having problems with electricity supply - nobody seems to understand why - all we know is that this week alone we have had no electricity for 8 hours every day and it has been from mid-day until 8 pm at night which means that we have not been able to cook dinner! Apparently Escom (the national supplier) say this situation will get worse in 2009 and by 2010 it will be twice as bad as it is presently. It makes life so difficult in every sphere. The roads are chaotic because the traffic lights are not working and this has resulted in the increase of accidents; we already have a very high road accident rate here in SA. Businesses are suffering with the prospect of many going under and of course this will cause the unemployment rate to escalate. Escom claim that this is the fault of the government who were requested to build an additional plant here in Pretoria some 4 years ago and the government apparently refused saying it was unnecessary expenditure.

We receive so few letters or e-mails from partners these days but thank you very much to the few faithful who do respond we still enjoy and appreciate the news of our partner congregations and are very grateful to know that we are constantly upheld in prayer.

With lots of love,
Sandra and Graham