A Date in Dubai

We arrived in Dubai from Cape Town at 5 am last Thursday morning. The real reason for our being here is because of leadership changes that are taking place in the Dubai Church. Clive and Heather Cernic who have done a brilliant job over the last 4 years are moving on and Steve and Heather Oliver from South Africa are coming to take up the lead here. As Sue and I have the longest and most consistent relationship with the Dubai church we  were asked to be around at the present time. I spoke to the Leaders on Thursday evening and then on Friday morning Clive told the whole church of their intention to move on about Christmas. It felt a bit tense when I got up to preach immediately afterwards, but I spoke on standing firm in a time of change and by the end of the meeting people seemed really positive and faith filled about the future. We’re seeing people all this week and then I preach again this Friday after Steve Oliver has been introduced to the Church - though he has been here before and so is known by the congregation.

Is this the most amazing city in the world? In certain respects I think it is. The ‘can-do’ attitude here is quite remarkable. A few years back they decided to build a metro system and bear in mind that it has to be constructed on and under sand. It opened just 3 weeks ago at 9.9.09 on the 9th of the 9th month 09 - good job they aren’t all 6s! (Note the eschatological reference here).  It’s a great ride with an elevated view of Dubai’s stunning architecture and then plunging underground in the city centre. Clean, quiet but with the same 4 bars of music playing in the background all the time - a bit like listening to Windows opening up every few seconds. I was musing on the fact that in the time they’ve built this whole Metro system that in Brighton they haven’t even managed to remove the rubbish from the West Pier out of the sea! As for the handful of proposed building projects in Brighton - well as Brighton dithers, in the same time Dubai constructs the tallest building in the world. We went to view it the other evening and also saw what must be the most beautiful fountain in the world playing in front. This was quite astonishing. Every 20 minutes there is a kind of music, light and water show. The fountain erupts in time with the music (different pieces of music are used) and the effect is totally stunning. There was a major competition in Dubai to decide what to call their fountain. After all the suggestions had been considered the winner was declared to have come up with  the amazingly original title of: The Dubai Fountain!

My laptop has suddenly developed a need for a password that has never been required before in order for me to acess my Emails. Why should this happen in Dubai - is it something to do with the sand or do they perhaps require an amazingly original password like ‘password’? Anyway, this is something that I am sure only Chris Leversuch at CCK can supply me with so I email him via Webmail ( my computer skills are legendary) only to get a message back that he’s on honeymoon until Oct 12th. Where’s the sense of commitment these days? Here I am labouring in the desert in temperatures of 100 degrees, needing IT back up and the man is on honeymoon!

We are staying with our good friends Tim and Coral who live in a complex that gives us an access to a very nice swimming pool. Sitting by the pool the other day, under a Palm tree, we had the rather original experience of being rained on by dates. We fly back to Cape Town on Saturday after our date here in Dubai.

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