Thick and fast

Hey, everyone! Sho! Everything is happening thick and fast at the moment. Loads of good stuff going on, but means I'm so, so busy!

Since summer camp (which I do need to still write more about) I've been working hard to prepare things for O-Week, which is like freshers' week in the UK. We're soon to have thousands of students coming, and in fact many are starting to arrive. Our aim is to connect lots of Christians into our church where we can spend time building into them biblical values and a passion for building church God's way, full of truth, full of the Spirit, across all boundaries. We've got some cool t-shirts for Hope On Campus, a whole bunch of flyers advertising our student society as well as advertising Alpha, and we've got a sizeable group of students who were with us through last year and are fast becoming amazing men and women of God. We're very aware though that this is more than a casual advertising exercise and we've really felt stirred to pray and act with great boldness in this spiritual battlefield. If we want students, we're going to have to fight for them. Please labour with us in prayer because the potential influence here is massive with students coming to Durban, being trained and filled with passion, and going back to their homes, their new jobs, their countries, etc. Hope Church has been so enriched with students who are bearing fruit every bit in line with the work we've put into them, and we want that to continue.

I've also had my friend Jat visiting me from the UK from Thu-Wed, which has been great. I've had to be working here and there, but largely we've been able to hang out, catch up, and do some of the things I've not been able to do so far. One of those things was to go to Hluhluwe/Umfolozi game park, where we came up close and personal with Zebra, Giraffe, Boar, Wildebeast, Buffalo, Nyala (and various other sorts of deer like creatures), Black Rhino, Hyena, and some more besides. It was a great experience, and an eye opener into what SA is like when you take away the modern developments. The week as a whole has been great and myself, Jat, and a number of Hopers (I think that should be the new name for people from Hope Church) just hung out and did stuff. I've got a stream of visitors coming between now and the end of April, so it's a tough balancing act between having fun, spending too much money, being a good host, and doing the work I'm here to do. It's so nice to have people visit though - I think I'd much prefer it to visiting home, which will come soon enough!

The other big thing that's been going on is that we've managed to pick up where we left off with the Cato boys. Myself and Themba took them to the beach the other week, where we soon got out of the water after receiving jellyfish stings (not serious, of course). We went along the beachfront the the public open-air pool and swam there instead. The water was only ever about a metre deep, so it was more of a place for fun and games than swimming. There is another pool a little further down that is deeper, but you need to pay to enter. The seemingly unwritten rule, as with the canteens at John Ruskin College when I was there, was that white people go in the paying pool, and black people in the free one. I'm sure there's more than mere economics to this one, but we went along to the free pool and I was one of two white people there. The fact that I was there and taking these boys there meant lots of people were dumbstruck, but it was fine really. At some points when I was just standing in the pool looking around some people looked at me with a look of fear, like I was some pool guard or something who was going to tell them off. Just weird. But it was fun. The boys were doing all manner of stunt dives into the pool, one where two of them linked arms to form a closed loop which the others proceeded to jump through. Feeling brave I decided to take a turn, figuring I could dive through and stop myself with my hands when entering the water. No chance! I landed on my right side hitting my arm, shoulder, and head, with a small scrape on my shoulder. It didn't actually hurt too much and it was a good laugh, but I won't be doing that again!

This week we brought them over to my place where we could swim in a proper pool. Again, it was good fun, and we cooked up some meat on the braai that I had left over from when Jat was around and we had a student's return party. Amazingly 6 boys managed to demolish two whole loaves of white sliced bread, along with a bottle of ketchup, and the meat. Apparently white bread is marginally more expensive here, so they tend to end up with brown all the time and white is a rare treat. So strange for us, where it needs to be some herb flavoured foccacia type to be "treat" bread.

This would be all good in and of itself, but in doing so we found out that one of the boys, Fana, was still not in school. He told us the schools were full and wouldn't take him, which Themba originally suspected to be a lie as schools aren't allowed to do that. Nonetheless we're finding what schools should do and what they actually do can be two different matters. So we've taken him to school, spoken to the head, paid his paltry school fees for the year, and got him in. He actually seems very happy to be in school, but not all are so happy. We met his former teacher who would be his new teacher also and she went ballistic. Apparently Fana has been a bad boy before, but she would have nothing of giving him a second chance and was losing her rag in front of us and even other pupils. Left unchecked a frustrated teacher of 45, underpaid and overworked and undersupported, could do serious damage to a boy like this as she pronounced verdicts that he will always be a troublemaker and what not. So we went back today and the head, despite having to grapple unions and education board and such, is going to look into it and make sure it's sorted. Fana was back there of his own accord today and another teacher was helping him, arranging books, etc.

From there we went to see another of the boys, Lindo, who is not in school. We visited his house in the township and spoke with his parents. We're going to find a way to pay his fees (which are about £25 for the year), and they are going to get the necessary paperwork to get him enrolled into school only these few weeks late. Without school these boys literally have nothing to do and can only get in trouble.

It was so good when we arrived at Lindo's house as people said, "Look! There's the people from Lindo's church!" We're really getting known in the community, and at a face to face level, which is great.

We've managed to make headway so suddenly and almost without trying to into this community. Having dropped the boys back on Tuesday after coming to my place, being back there to enroll Fana in school, being back again to make sure he's settling in and to try to help Lindo, visiting his house.... suddenly it feels like this township is open to us as we get to know families and the school. I sense an immense opportunity here - please pray again that we press through with all that God has planned for us and for them.

More to come... thanks for reading!