Final Blog?

Is this my final blog? Well it is in South Africa unless something unexpected happens, such as more volcanic ash over Heathrow. We are planning to fly home 10 days earlier than expected and on the last BA flight from Cape Town before a strike of the BA cabin crew begins. I like to finish well and so we are rather disappointed to end our stay rather abruptly. However having been offered seats and not knowing the implications of a series of strikes that are set really to go on for about a month we thought it was best to grab the opportunity of what will be a slightly earlier return. Fortunately this only really affects a final Sunday when I was going to preach at Jubilee, but I will have spoken the previous 2 Sundays so it might be a good break for the congregation anyway!

What a time we have had over the past 10 months. Not only have we spent many months in Cape Town, particularly working with the Jubilee Church, but we have also been to Dubai, Zimbabwe and had a 3 week tour around the Durban area.  We’ve so enjoyed being in Cape Town and really appreciated being part of the Jubilee Church during this season. We’ve picked up on many old friendships and made many new friends; all of whom we shall really miss. I even had a sentimental walk around a local shopping mall where Sue and I have often gone on a Monday and felt quite sad that we wouldn’t be going there again! Anyway, I’ll spare you any more nostalgia.

This has surely been one of the most politically interesting weeks of our lifetime with David Cameron eventually emerging as Prime Minister leading a Lib Dem, Conservative coalition. Everyone seems to have their ideas about whether or not the coalition can last, but it literally is a case of ‘time will tell.’ As one who likes to finish things well, I would hope this new form of government for the UK will also finish well. It’s a shame and really somewhat tiring that there has often been so much acrimony in British politics.

So it’s goodbye beautiful Cape Town and goodbye wonderful South Africa. What a fabulous country and what a challenging country. We’ve spent at least two and a half years here over the last 21 years. This country has deeply impacted our lives and we shall remember it for as long as we live. Sue said at our farewell gathering with the Staff that each time she sets foot on the steps leading up to the Aircraft to fly us out of Cape Town she prays, “Lord, please bring us back.’ That will be her prayer again on Monday evening. I remember 21 years ago after our first 4 month visit here that I stepped onto the plane and wondered if we’d ever return. How fortunate we have been to come back so often and especially for this extended time of 10 months, which is now coming to an end.

The Bible tells us to be thankful in all things. We are certainly immensely grateful for the time we have spent in this vibrant nation.

Thanks to all our friends here in South Africa. Thanks to many different churches that have hosted us and of course particularly to Jubilee. Thanks to Steve and the other Elders as well as all the Leaders and congregation of Jubilee. Thank you Lord.

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The other day Sue and I were discussing the way in which in Cape Town everything is more. Certainly in just about every sense things are much more extreme than in Brighton. Only today the headline in one of the local newspapers, and which was attached to lamp posts on the way to the church office was,’Domino Winner Shot Dead.’ Somehow I can’t imagine that happening even in the relatively turbulent city of Brighton. I know that occasionally in Brighton there might be a drug dealer stabbed or I guess it would be possible to speculate that a gambler who’d got a big win could be  under threat of an ambush or mugging, but I don’t expect to hear of anyone being shot for winning a game of dominos, or even Scrabble for that matter. As it happens also, today, the owner of the largest chain of strip clubs in South Africa has been shot dead. Violence is more in South Africa and it is more extreme.

But it’s not all extreme in a bad way by any means. The climate is definitely more and I mean more warm and more sunny. Ever since our return here after Christmas we’ve had absolutely stunning weather. The sky definitely more blue than we’d ever see it in Brighton and the temperature more consistently high than we’d ever know it in the UK. Today has at last brought the first real touch of winter, pouring rain and a lower temperature but, hey, it’s  equivalent to November 4th in Brighton.

The language is more extreme. In South Africa there are 11 official languages! One member of our lifegroup speaks 10 languages and most if not all of the group speak more than one and some several languages. I don’t think we’d find that replicated in a small group in Brighton; unless, perhaps, it was comprised of  overseas students.

The scenary in Cape Town, and the environment are more extreme. We have the Downs at the back of Brighton.  Cape Town wins here, built up against the slopes of the spectacular Table Mountain. In Cape Town the beaches have beautiful sand, whilst in Brighton we have to content ourselves with pebbles, although South Africans who have visited Brighton will insist on calling them rocks! Sure we have the sea in Brighton, but in Cape Town it’s the ocean - actually 2 oceans! On one side of the peninsular the Atlantic Ocean crashes in and on the other side the Indian Ocean washes the coastline. And as for the views here in Cape Town; so many high points in the city from where you can view wonderful light displays at night as Cape Town glitters beneath you and in the day just spectacular vistas in every direction. Brighton is a little different!

The poverty is more. In Brighton we have our street sleepers, but on the edge of Cape Town there are square miles of slums. We have the unemployed in Brighton but in this South African city you hear figures of 40% or more unemployed with all the misery that results from that. The schools are more. I would dare suggest that there are schools in Cape Town that are definitely better than any in Brighton in terms of education and sports results and facilities. At the same time I’ve heard only today that 17,000 teachers of science in South African schools are unqualified and that’s also represented in Cape Town schools where there would be more extreme examples of poor eduation than any child would recieve in Brighton.

It’s easy to go on like this. Cape Town has more crime, it has more extreme driving. Cape Town has more churches and more Muslims and more cults. Cape Town has more tears and more laughter. It has more danger and more excitement. It has more clapped out cars and more Mercedes! It has more people keeping fit and more people who are hungry. It has more demanding cycle races and marathons and many more coffee bars.

Friends are beginning to ask us what we feel about going home. We love Cape Town and yet we miss Brighton. This is a wonderful city and  yet we so look forward to seeing Brighton.

Today as I was teaching on the Book of Revelation I mentioned how the city of Babylon, representing earthly power hostile to Christ and his Kingdom will fall down, whilst the Church which is the City of God will come down from heaven to live on a renewed and regenerated planet. I guess for every Believer there is a sense that whatever city we may live in today we look forward to seeing another city and certainly there it will  always be more, but more in everyway that will be good.

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Sue and I think that it is exactly 21 years ago today that we first came together to South Africa. I had been asked to lead the Vineyard (now Jubilee) Church for some 3 - 4 months while the then Lead Elder was on sabbatical in the UK. Well, there has been a fair flow of water under the bridge since then and we now reckon that we’ve spent about two and half years of the last 21 years here in South Africa. This is a country, which as a family, we love and have visited so many times. When we first came 21 years ago Matthew met us at Cape Town Airport as he was spending a gap year in Southern Africa and had himself arrived in Cape Town some time before we got here. Eventually David was also to join us for the English summer holidays - he was still at school then - and so the whole family were here together for a time. It put a love for Africa into all our hearts. We of course have visited back on many occasions, Matt has made several visits and now has a very strong link with Zimbabwe. David and Emma spent 6 months in Zimbabwe themselves serving with a Christian project there and have also spent time in Botswana.

Today being a public holiday, Freedom Day, we went to Stellenbosch which was just about the first place we visited after our first arrival and somehow, and this wasn’t planned, we found ourselves in Lanzerac, where all those years ago we had lunch and which today is a combination of a Vineyard, 5 star hotel and Spa. We remember that all those years ago there was a restaurant there, other things have obviously changed, but the one thing that had stuck in my mind and which is of course still there today was the slave bell. Lanzerac is a stunningly beautiful place and I remember the shock of seeing that bell for the first time and thinking of men and women who possibly worked in really harsh and brutal conditions and certainly would have spent many long hours in the fields. They would,at last, at the end of another shatteringly weary day have heard that bell ring and returned, no doubt, to the hovels in which they lived. So with all the changes in South Africa the bell still stands there, reminding those who care to think about it of the terrible sufferings endured by so many in the past and gazed upon by the residents of a hotel which, so the blurb which we were given informed us, is now ‘one of the most prestigeous luxury hotels in the world.’

Twenty one years ago there was still petty apartheid in South Africa. We can remember the shock of seeing signs on the best beaches that read, “Whites only’ and how some of the public toilets were labelled in the same way. Of course what was soon to follow was the release of Nelson Mandela 20 years ago, the first democratic elections in the country in 1994 and eventually the complete demise of the Nationalist Party which had maintained the apartheid system.

Yet the slave bell standing in the grounds of one of the best hotels in the world still speaks a parable of the inequalities of  present day South Africa. Obviously, and in many ways, there have been huge improvements and progress in the country. Yet in what I believe is probably the most stunningly beautiful country in the world you can look at breathtaking mountain or coastal views and a few minutes later be looking at windswept sandy acres where thousands live in miserable conditions. You can view absolutely fabulous homes built in positions with the most breathtaking views and again, really only minutes later, be viewing the squalid insubstanial hovels in which so many tens of thousands live on the outskirts of the city of Cape Town. AIDs and TB remain huge health challenges for vast numbers and decent education and employment an impossible dream for many who live within a few brief miles of some of the best schools and University education in the whole of Africa.

How we love this wonderful country;  no wonder we have come back so often, and we wonder how so many deperate thousands will ever obtain a better life. It’s why we must build the church, for its message and actions are helping to meet the deepest needs in this country.

We may now say that there are no longer slaves in South Africa; though those working to reach those being trafficked for prostitution might well question that. But alongside the fabulous beauty and wealth and progress of South Africa there is ugliness, terrible poverty and lack of opportunity. For me it is symbolised by a slave bell that I saw again today and which stands in the grounds of one of the best hotels in the world.

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As I reflect upon the past week, last Thursday was quite a significant and memorable day. I had been asked to go and teach on the subject of grace to one of our smaller churches in the Western Cape. I was told that it would be hosted in the building belonging to another church and got the impression that some people from the host church might attend. When I arrived I discovered it was quite a large ‘faith’ church  with a very significant number of the congregation actually preseent. The worship really pumped and I certainly enjoyed being there, but I must confess I don’t really know what they made of my rather theologically Reformed message on Romans 8:28-30 as I spoke on the golden chain of salvation - foreknown; predestined; called; justified; and glorified. When I reached home Sue asked me how it went to which I replied, ‘I don’t really know.’ I guess I was just predestined to give that message!

And this was also the day of the first election debate on TV. Fortunately our fairly generous TV package gives us good coverage of the election build up. I wasn’t to know, nor was anyone else I guess, that the result of this first debate would be so sensational. I’ve been trying to explain to some of the South Africans the implications of a ‘hung parliament’ (which a number of them obviously believe may be the result for some of the MPs implicated in the expenses scandal), and even though this looks increasingly likely it would certainly be somewhat difficult to predict what the outcome would really be for our parliamentary structures. I’m beginning to think that not only I will be glued to the screen on election night but a number of South Africans might be joining me to make it a party  (social, not political).

But Thursday was also the day when the airspace over Europe began to close. Ever since then, in the days following, we have been hearing of people we know stuck in different parts of the world, or unable to move from their part of the world. Our own son, David, was due to make his first visit back from Chicago to the UK in about 18 months and was pretty gutted to find he couldn’t fly. Nick Chatreth and his wife, from Oxford, are here on holiday in South Africa and discovering that they are having a rather longer holiday in Cape Town than they expected. As I write there does seem to be some genuine hope at last that the UK airports will begin to open tomorrow but of course nothing is certain as volcanoes don’t stop when you ask them to. If this travel crisis continues, even in intermittent form, it begins to raise worries for us as we are due to travel home in less that 6 weeks time. Here in South Africa they have this wonderful expression; ‘we’ll make a plan’. This is one of the most useful expressions I’ve ever come across. If you are discussing some possible arrangement with someone else, e.g. shall we have dinner together, it almost always concludes with  ‘we’ll make a plan’. The great advantage of this statement is that it allows a cooling off period to consider the arrangement. As far as I can tell it actually signifies definite intent rather than a way out of having to carry out the suggestion. So it is not in the same league as, ‘you must come around for dinner sometime,’ which actually means there is no chance of me ever asking you round for dinner but I’m going to put it to you politely. No, ‘we’ll make a plan’ seems to mean we will have dinner but let’s take a bit of time to think about it so we can fix the best evening for doing it.

The threat of volcanic ash is certainly making  us wonder if we need to ‘make a plan’. Could we for instance fly to Madrid and get a train from there? Perhaps we could land in Gibralter and then hitch a lift with the Royal Navy. Maybe we could fly to Egypt, cross the Mediterranean in a fishing boat, hitch a lift through Greece, catch a train in Italy to Paris, board Eurostar there in France, breakdown in the tunnel and go back to Calais. Then we could get a ferry to Dover, hire a car to Brighton and arrive in time for the 3rd service at CCK.

If you have any better plans you can suggest please let us know and if it works we’ll have you round to dinner sometime. No, really.

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The church we have spent the most time with (outside the UK) is definitely Jubilee Community Church here in Cape Town. Indeed when we return from here in a few weeks time we will have spent more than 10% of the last 21 years in South Africa. The Church that we have visited most times, however, in the one in Dubai. So last Sunday proved to be a very interesting day in terms of bringing people together from different nations. Evan and Tracy Rogers from here in Cape Town have spent the last 18 months (approx) in  Dubai. Indeed the last time that we were in Dubai Evan led the worship and I preached. On Sunday I was preaching here at Jubilee and Evan was leading the worship! The Rogers are en route to a new appointment in the UK and presently resting back here in Cape Town. Also friends of many years - Harold and Pixie - he from India and she from Pakistan; were also in Cape Town visiting from Dubai. So one of the joys of being part of a family of churches known as NewFrontiers is that it certainly brings peoples together from across the nations.

Television is of course a media that also shrinks the world. We have a rather larger screeen than we would choose in our lounge here plus a pretty comprehensive TV package with a whole number of news channels. So we are not short of up to date UK Election news. I’m rather bored by the whole election process; something which is probably true for a large percentage of the nation and which may be the big challenge for our politicians at present; but I really love election night. So although we won’t be voting in this election I certainly intend to be up into the wee small hours after polling closes and watch the drama unfold. We are just one hour ahead of the UK at present so I guess I’ll have to wait until about midnight before that first result comes in and the experts predict the outcome of the whole election as a result. In fact I seem to remember that in recent elections the exit polls have been fairly accurate and they often seem able to predict the result fairly accurartely even as the polls close. Right now there is the possibility of a hung parliament which really could produce an exciting election night - who might have the largest number of seats - would the LibDems be prepared to go into coalition? Anyway the modern media ensures that we will know everything here just as quickly as everyone in Britain does 6000 miles away.

I remember once being in India just ahead of their General Election and reading an Indian magazine with articles about some of the parliamentary candidates. One gentleman who was standing again had never previously taken his seat in Delhi as he didn’t like the food. One prospective MP came from a very lawless part of India and was himself  likely to face court action for over 20 alleged murders! A prospective woman MP was a Bollywood film star and frankly so beautiful you couldn’t imagine anyone not voting for her - well among the men anyway. Somehow Indian politics seemed rather more exciting than ours.

And if you do get thoroughly bored with the whole run up to the election, then as I was preaching about heaven last Sunday I was reminded of something that Mother Theresa once said which was  that if we do remember earth from heaven then it will just seem like one bad night in a second rate motel.

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Returning for the Easter weekend we had just spent 3 weeks visiting churches and leaders mostly in the Durban area. In fact our first ‘church stop’ was Port Elizabeth where we had an excellent time with Alistair and Suzanne Buchanan who have recently planted a church in South Africa’s 5th biggest city. So good to spend time with them personally and also to preach at their church on Sunday afternoon which is meeting in a small theatre.

After a couple of hard day’s driving we reached Amanzimtoti, just south of Durban to spend time with Gareth and Nadine Bowley. Really great to be with them again, to see the foundations of their new church building being poured and to witness Nadine’s great skill and talent for making beautiful cupcakes. They’d be good enough to sell - in fact that ’s what she does! Had several meetings in the Durban area before spending a wonderful couple of days in St Lucia where we saw crocs, hippos, and most exciting of all, a leopard. The latter is a very rare sighting and usually people see them for no more than 2 seconds. We saw this one walking along a river bank for about a minute. Did you know that hippos eat grass, kill more people in Africa than any other animal and can easily outrun a human, which is impressive considering the size of their stomachs!

Took part with Terry at a Newfrontiers Conference in Durban - the second time we’ve seen Terry and Wendy in South Africa on this trip and followed this with a visit to our old friends Craig and Shannon Botha in Pietermaritzberg. Had a really excellent morning in their church, before driving about 4 - 5 hours to Clarens in the Free State where I preached at an evening meeting and where we also had time with Steve Oliver who was visiting back from Dubai. So that led to a late evening as we discusssed the encouraging start that he and Heather have made there.

Eventually, and via some natural hot springs - which are just wonderful in South Africa if you like getting into hot water - we made it back to Cape Town, to the Easter Sunday Services and to Sue’s birthday on the same day.

21 years ago when we were here for 4 `months we needed to extend our visa. South Africa wasn’t a very popular country in those days because of apartheid and one got the impression that they were glad to have any visitors. To extend our visa took a quick visit to the apropriate office and an instant permission to add 3 months to our stay. These days getting an extension is a lot more demanding and expensive! Last Thursday we made our 5th visit to the Home Affairs Department to be told yet again that our application had still not been processed. This Friday our current visa runs out and we become illegal aliens; so we are hoping that we are not deported on Saturday! But then of course we are only strangers and aliens in this world.

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My last post described our rather drawn out attempt to obtain a 2 month extension to our visas from the Department of Home Affairs. All this was meant to come to a happy conclusion last Friday as we returned to collect them. But no, we were told they were still being processed. So we make a fourth attempt to settle the issue this Thursday though, presently, faith levels are not high!

On Saturday I attended the Jubilee Joining Course with about 40 others to see how those looking at membership of  the church here were taught about the Vision and Values of Jubilee. From mid morning there was an increasing and uncomfortable pain in my stomach. Long story short, as they say here in Cape Town, but I was to discover that I had picked up the office bug as a number of staff have been suffering the same way. The unfortunate thing for me was that on Saturday evening we went to a 50th birthday party for one of the staff members and I really was not in a state to eat or dance, but I did manage to open the proceedings in prayer!

Sunday morning and I was preaching on the Power of God at Jubilee. It was extremely hot, but we had a really good morning. By the time we got to the repeat meeting in the evening, after a day of constant sunshine and very high temperatures, the building really was feeling like a furnace. Cape Town gets perhaps 3 or 4 days each summer of really high temperatures so it’s not worth the very high cost of installing A/C and one hopes that a Sunday is not one of the really scorching days. But this last Sunday it was. I don’t think I have ever felt so hot in a Sunday meeting in all of my life. A student fainted because of the heat and by the time I stood up to preach  I felt so overwhelmed with the heat that I really had some difficulty keeping focus for the first few minutes - possibly because I was talking about waterfalls - if only!

But Monday was even worse. Debates rage about the exact temperature reached, but it certainly registered into the 40s on our car thermometer and there are claims that it was the hottest day in Cape Town for 40 years. It was hot, hot, hot with a searing wind, just like we have sometimes known in Dubai, but no A/C.

Fortunately by Tuesday it had cooled down a bit, which was just as well as we had the first day of a 2 day Conference with Mark Driscoll. Mark was challenging, provocative  and, by his own admission, at times aggressive! In the evening men’s meeting he said he would give us all a kick in the batteries; which is what I think he probably did. A second day with Mark today and the promise of good things to come in the future with 74 Cape Town churches sending leaders to this event.

This will probably be my last blog until the week after Easter as from this Friday we are travelling for about 3 weeks up to and around the Durban area. It’s going to be a kind of church crawl, as compared to a pub crawl, as we visit various churches, meet up with a lot of old friends, teach and preach a lot, including  joining in a Conference that Terry Virgo is speaking at in Durban and where I am also teaching at a seminar. We hope to get a few clear days as well and to enjoy the drive which will probably be at least 6,000 kilometers.

All being well we will be back in Cape Town in time for the Easter Services - but will we have that extension to our visas? As I was told recently, if anyone can sort out the Department of Home Affairs then they’ll leave a bigger legacy in South Africa than Nelson Mandela.

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Despite all the travelling that we have done over the years; we’ve had very minimal trouble over paperwork. Some people seem to have real difficulties obtaining visas, but I think with a British Passport we are in a fairly priveleged position and usually there are no hitches. I remember being in Singapore on the first occasion that we were flying to Australia and being told that we would need a visa to enter the country. ‘No we don’t I somewhat arrogantly protested, we’re British.’  ’Oh yes you do,’ said the patient lady behind the desk and of course she was right. But even there we were fortunate. It was a Saturday and she told us that if we weren’t British then we would have had to wait until Monday morning to go to an office for the visa, but as we did have British passports she could apply for us online. I’ve been a bit more careful since then. When we arrived in Australia and they checked our passports I was taken aside and asked to wait. This could be an alarming experience at immigration, but I was assuming it was due to our late application for the visa. As it happened the immigration computer had thrown up some match against my name which raised questions about my identity altogether. Perhaps I was an international terrorist. However after some time I was told that they’d checked me out and I as free to proceed.

Here in South Africa we are issued automatically with a visa on entry to the country and which is valid for 3 months. If you want to extend your stay, which you can do once, for up to another 3 months, then you have to apply for an extension at least 30 days before the original visa runs out. This brings us to the South African Department of Home Affairs which does seem to have achieved legendary status here in Cape Town. Various horror stories are told of complex administration systems and hours of queuing, which as regular followers of this blog will have learned is something I do have views on and have even preached about!

Anyway at the present time we are, as South Africans like to say, on a mission. Some told us we could renew our visa at a local office in an area known as Wynberg, while others said that we couldn’t do that and would need to go to the city centre office. A friend actually rung the Wynberg office for us and was told we could indeed apply locally. Joining the queue about 7.15 we surged into Home Affairs at 7.30 and after a few false starts found the correct office. A wait of only 15 minutes and we were in. Yes, we could apply there, but they would need to take our passports for up to 6 weeks. We didn’t really fancy that, but our journey wasn’t wasted as we were given application forms and then to our surprise a list of other documents that we would have to supply. This included confirmed air tickets proving that we would return to the UK - that’s certainly fair enough, and you’d think would suffice. But no, also bank statements, a letter from someone who would guarantee to pay our fares if Home Affairs wants to deport us, a letter from us stating how long and why we want to stay longer (despite already putting this on the application form) and 70 pounds in cash please.

So on Monday we were down at the city centre office with all the documentation, at the earlier time of 7am and in a much longer queue (these are becoming deeply sanctifying experiences). The slightly worrying feature about this queue was not simply its length, but the way people were carrying books to read, packed lunches, portable loos and camp beds….well slight exaggeration. Once again at the magic hour of 7.30 we surge into the office, up flights of stairs and into a room where people went confidently left or right. Being new to this it took us some time to work out we needed to go left and having lost several positions as people charged past us we sat in a row of chairs waiting our turn. Severe notices attracted our attention with warnings not to throw our chewing gum on the carpet or action would be taken. To be perfectly honest chewing gum would have improved the carpet. Also the staff could be heard behind closed doors loudly laughing as no doubt they planned administrative pitfalls for the customers. Eventually staff began to emerge like champions ready for battle and each time someone was called to the counter we shuffled up the row of chairs - not I might add without a few disputes. But we made it to the counter pretty quickly, our papers were stamped with a machine the size and ferocity of a guillotine, we paid our 70 pounds and whispered to each other - ‘this is going to be easy’. However the lady then told us that we needed a receipt for the money and she wouldcall us when ready. 45 minutes elapsed before we were called to the counter again to recieve the receipt which she had written 45 minutes earlier; but no matter we were about to get our visa extended. Then the fatal words; ‘You can come back next Friday for the result of your application’.

In Ephesians 3 Paul speaks of the ‘administration of this mystery.’ Was this prophetic of the Home Affairs Department? Anyway as yet, we don’t have the visa; we are still on a mission.

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Where we stay at the present time in Cape Town is within a complex of appartments built along 3 sides of a rectangle, just 2 stories in height and enclosing a pleasant communal garden. A number of the flats seem empty most of the time and we assume that people have them as holiday appartments, visiting just occasionally during the year. So we don’t see a lot of neighbours, nor have we had much communication with many of them with just a couple of exceptions. But a few days ago we received a community letter which went out to all the appartment residents with some reasonably helpful peices of news and information. Included was a warning about rats which we are told are somewhat endemic in the area and have a number of runs from the school opposite straight into our property. This, it is suggested, is because children drop food in the school playground, which the rats enjoy and then they come into the grounds around the flats looking for more food. Well, we’d never seen a rat in all the months we’ve been here, but on reading this news sheet I felt it was inevitable that we would. Sure enough on Monday we were sitting on our patio enjoying a cup of coffee only to be joined by a rat - a fairly small one I grant you - but nevertheless a rat. As I (bravely) stood guard to stop it entering our flat, Sue ran off to find the caretaker who returned barehanded, with no weapon of any kind, gave the rat a karate chop on the back of its neck and, holding it by the tail, removed it far from us. I felt this was educational but not an example I particularly want to follow!

On the whole we aren’t really aware of any more bugs or insects than we tend to have  around in the UK. But now being high summer we do have some nights when we battle with a mosquito. There is that nasty high pitched whine followed by an even nastier silence when you wonder where the thing has landed and how much blood is it withdrawing? In fact I have squashed a couple of mosquitos here that have left sizeable blobs of blood on the wall - my blood I’m assuming. My worst encounter with mosquitos was on a ministry trip to Sri Lanka some years ago when as the sun went down I sat in the home of a couple that I was visiting, with the windows wide open, to be attacked by really vicious insects who, and I am not exaggerating, drilled their way through my trousers. I returned to Dubai the following day covered with bites and feeling quite ill. The worst of it was that someone then told me that they not only had malaria in Sri Lanka but also that the mosquitos there could  carry dengue fever. Anyway, I have lived to tell the tale.

One of the Elders here, Dave Adams, is about to begin a 3 month sabbatical which will take him and his wife Herma to South America. Dave reckons he is a slow adapter to new technology. However we have been trying to persuade him to write a blog while he is away so that we can follow their every move. Steve van Rhyn even prayed that Dave would have a blogworthy visit to South America, so we’re only trying to apply slight pressure!

It reminded me of my tirade 2 or 3 years back when I started to hear of all these people who were regularly posting blogs. ‘What an egocentric thing to do,’ I cried, the idea that other people would want to read about the small inconsequential details of your life. So, I stand condemned out of my own mouth, as I now write this weekly blog, but we really would like to know the details of Dave and Herma doing carnival in Rio and whether or not they get bitten by insects or even have to tackle an Anaconda while having coffee on the patio.

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Last Sunday was Valentine’s Day; so Steve, the Lead Elder here in Jubilee was preaching on hell! This is part of our Right or Wrong series. Steve did point out that this wasn’t deliberately planned but the date was made clear to him after the series had been decided. The sermon was preceeded by some brief video interviews with students at Cape Town University. What did they think about hell? - the answers were frankly rather predictable. Asked the question what they felt about preaching on hell on Valentine’s Day one earnest student thought the Pastor ought definitely to postpone his message and another that possibly Valentine’s day was hell - indeed perhaps it is for some -  depending on expectations that might not be fulfilled! But then as I tell my wife, every day is Valentine’s Day with me - I won’t print her reply.

Valentine’s Day might be thought of as a special day, which allows me to observe that South Africa goes in for quite a number of special days which are public holidays alongside the regualar ones at Christmas and Easter. So we have Human Rights Day, Family Day, Freedom Day, Workers Day (when we don’t work), Youth Day, National Womens Day, Heritage Day, Day of Reconciliation, Day of Goodwill and I suppose there are also a few days when people actually have to go to work! But who’s complaining about all these public holidays?

Last week there was a very special day - though sadly not a public holiday - which celebrated the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison after 27 years. It’s amazing that he has lived on another 20 years after such a long and fairly brutal prison sentence. President Zuma gave a special speech in Parliament and Mandela, looking frail now at 91 was present and greeted with rapture by the MPs. I well remember the day of his release as we had returned only a few months earlier  from our first 4 month stay here in South Africa which was the first time we were involved with Jubilee Church and which I had led during that period. Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, was, within a few years  really to bring about the rebirth of this nation with the first genuine democratic elections. So it was a day to celebrate and remember and when Mandela is gone I really wonder if they will turn the day into another public holiday.

But there is another special day this coming Saturday and that is Terry Virgo’s 70 birthday, and so the very warmest of congratulations to him. I suggested to Steve that as this was such a special day it ought to be properly marked by giving all the staff a day off to celebrate in the spirit and tradition of South Africa having so many public holidays. Steve said the staff could have the Saturday off as this is Terry’s actual birthday. But as the majority of the staff are off anyway on that day I felt it lacked a certain generosity of spirit! As for myself I will be teaching on Eternal Security on Saturday, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY TERRY VIRGO.

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