Sinnfull, but Unrepentant

I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, so here’s an outline of the past week; which has been a fairly typical week here in Cape Town. Last Tuesday afternoon we had an Elder’s meeting from 4-6pm, this being a new slot for the Elders time together. But this was a week of prayer so later that evening we met in prayer hotspots in various homes around the city. All the congregation were given a prayer booklet for the week full of good suggestions on what to pray for each day. Wednesday was a regular study day but with a church prayer meeting at the Jubilee building in the evening. This was an excellent time; a good turnout, fervent prayer and a lot of intercession for student work and the launch of a new church plant at Port Elizabeth. On Thursday afternon we had a staff meeting - also in a new time slot. This is when all the full time staff come together for about an hour to agree the details of the church programme for the next couple of weeks. This particular meeting seemed to be rather dominated by anxieties about how much cake we should serve, especially to the students at the close of the Sunday meetings!

On Friday mornings we have a an Elders prayer time beginning at 10.30 but again a new development means we are now bringing in other full time staff with pastoral responsibility and the Elder’s wives - we had a great time together as we focussed on the weekend. In the evening we went to dinner with our good friends Rob and Christine whose company we have enjoyed many times on our visits here. On Saturday we were invited to the student team lunch. This is the group currently working on campus and welcoming new students and helping to carry their bags. There were about 25 - 30 of us and lunch was followed by me leading a time of prayer before the team went on campus for the afternoon.

We’d noticed that just a couple of  hundred yards from where we stay there is what looks like a very popular pizza restaurant. To be honest, from the outside, it looks a bit seedy and I’m not a tremendous lover of pizza, but with so many people pouring in we thought, on Saturday evening, that  it must be worth a visit.  It proved to be a great discovery. It looks even more seedy inside, but it was absolutely packed. Every table and chair is individual and it looks as though everything has been rescued from bottom level junk shops and also everything could probably do with a good scrub, including the menus. But the pizzas were cheap and really superb. When I saw ice cream and chocolate sauce on the menu for $1.35 it seemed almost cheaper to have one than not to have one. Sue felt I definitely shouldn’t have one, but when it arrived with 2 spoons I noticed that the far half of the ice cream was disappearing as fast as my half. So we have discovered the Cape Town equivalent of Donatellos in Brighton, though I submit that the latter is more scrubbed.

On Sunday we had lots of student guests at Jubilee and we had Sam and Sheralyn the new, full time, student leaders to lunch. They are a dynamic young couple, full of energy and ideas, and for dessert we had ice cream and chocolate sauce. Lex preached, at our repeat morning and evening meetings, the first in a new series under the heading, ‘Right or Wrong?’ and did and excellent job on dealing with doubts about the truth and authority of the Bible. I’m due, myself, to preach 3 messages in this series.

Monday was a day off and we went to Fish Hoek, a rather drab little town just south of Cape Town, but with a magnificent beach. It’s the Worthing of South Africa and people retire there, including, so I am told, many Baptist ministers.  No, we weren’t looking for a property for ourselves, but we did witness the landing of a a huge catch of Yellow-tail fish; very popular here in South Africa. Apparently the local fishermen haven’t caught much for a long time, but suddenly yesterday morning the Yellow-tail were running and they landed hundreds. These are serious fish, each 2-3 feet long. People were buying them straight off the beach and others were  immediately being shipped off to restaurants and hotels.

From there we drove back towards Cape Town and stopped at Muizenburg which has a bit of a Bognor Regis seaside feel about it. Here they sell superb ice cream under the brand name of ‘Sinnfull’. I felt that I had been a bit short of ice cream in the previous few days so I considered a scoop of chocolate and one of honeycomb. I was tempted, yes it was sinnfull, but I ate and was entirely unrepentant. We wandered across to the beach at a furious lick only to see large numbers of sad looking surfers in their wet suits and holding their boards at the edge of the water, but none of them in the sea. Then we noticed the flag up warning of great white sharks off the coast. This is a serious issue here; in fact a tourist was killed by a shark off this beach just a few weeks ago. What they don’t tell you in the guide books about Cape Town is that on one side of the peninsular there are some of the most stunning beaches in the world, but the water is ice cold. On the other side the water is warmer, good for surfing, but you risk being eaten by a shark. As for me, I prefer to be sinnfull. That reminds me - another Elders meeting this afternoon.

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