A Month of Adventures

Hello, friends! Long time no blog. I couldn't possibly tell you all that has happened in the past month, so I'll just share some of the highlights with you. If you're reading this, thanks for taking such an interest in my summer! OK, some highlights:

I've visited the eastern province of Kwazulu-Natal several times. It's about a 4-6 hour drive, depending on where you're going. One of these trips was to Durban, which is a coastal city right on the Indian Ocean. I could hear the waves from my bedroom in the flat where we were staying. The Indian Ocean is beautiful in a subtle, gentle way. The evening light casts a soft pink glow over the warm, deep blue water. It invites quiet appreciation and reflection. Here's a picture taken from the beach.


I've preached a sermon really, really well, and struggled through the cockiness which that produced. I've run a service and preached a sermon really, really badly, and struggled through the humiliation which that produced. I've run a service and preached a sermon not perfectly but reasonably well--and I think God may be teaching me to find the balanced center! As Paul says, I rejoice the same in plenty and in want... : )

I've survived running my first Holiday Fun Club--that's VBS, for you Americans. Our theme was the 2008 Beijing Olympics (the Chinese consulate even donated a bunch of stuff and stopped by to visit--with their kids!). Organizing and running a week of activities for forty kids is the most exhausting thing I've done in a very long time. It was a lot of fun, though. We made tons of crafts (Chinese lanterns, Olympic torches, gold medals, etc.) and spent a lot of time in the park outside. We played pick-a-box, in which the minister tried to tempt the kids from choosing an unknown prize with candy. On the right is a picture of a Tibetan prayer flag we made--the kids wrote down anything they wanted on a cloth, and we clipped them to a rope.

I was amazed at how easily children give their affection away. It's a huge lesson--kids just want someone to care about them and for them. I spent the week yelling at them to be quiet, and yet at the end they wanted to come and say goodbye, give me hug, tell me that they had a great time. Kids are amazing. For something less pagan than a Tibetan prayer flag, see me on the left being wrapped in newspaper.

I've visited Soweto, the black township in Johannesburg where Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu grew up. It's an amazing place: beautiful, vital, impoverished, dangerous. I was told that 95% of people my age in Soweto have HIV/AIDS. I'm not sure that's an accurate number, but even half that is a number far too big. There is widespread access to anti-retroviral drugs, which helps a great deal. But it staggers the mind to consider a whole generation brought to its knees by this disease. If you want to get involved in the frontlines of Christian service for others, I'm telling you, I'm not sure it gets much more urgent than fighting HIV/AIDS.

I've dug a memorial grave for a stillborn baby. We did a little service in the church garden, and I had to dig a little hole. The family put in a baby bottle, and then I covered it up again. There was nothing else to bury--that's how badly the hospital had messed things up, even misplacing the baby's remains. That was the most emotionally intense thing I've done in a very long time. This poor family...they were sent back and forth between various hospitals for the birth, and by the time they were taken care of, it was too late. It is harsh. So harsh, so extremely unfair. And what can you do, but be there as best you can for them, and dig a hole when the minister tells you to? It makes you learn very quickly that the real work of ministry--the work that earns you the right to be heard on a Sunday morning--happens mostly within people's deep pain. Ministers are granted a sort of privileged access into people's intimate pain, and it is their job to walk within that pain alongside those who are suffering. It is not an easy job. But I'm glad that there those who are called to it, and who do it well. I respect them immensely.

I've learned to drive a manual car on the wrong side of the road! Zipping around on the left in my little silver car, smashing abruptly from one gear to another by the sheer force of my will, spinning my tyres (sorry, tires) on steep hill-starts, speeding down the highways (which all have cool names like "M1" and "N2") at a blazing 130 kilometers-per-hour (which is slower than it sounds)--it's great fun! I wish you could be my passenger, sitting over there in the left-hand seat where the steering wheel should be, and witness my sumptuous skills. I just won't tell you about the sideview mirror I knocked off trying to back out of the garage one morning... ; )

So many adventures I can't tell you about! So many I can't even remember at the moment! Next week I'm off to Cape Town, which is on the southwestern coast and is the second most populous city in the country (thanks, Wikipedia), to chill with some other Americans from Princeton Seminary. I'll tell you all about it soon. As always, feel free to email me--I'd love to hear how you are and what you're doing, and I'd of course be happy to share more about whatever topic you like. Except about my mirror. It's nothing. Really. No story there. Nothing to see (well, not anymore). Just move along. Thanks. That'll be all.

Hello from Johannesburg!

Hello friends!

I've been in Johannesburg for a week now, in a rawtha splendid and upscale housing complex in the neighborhood of Melrose Estates. I'm being hosted by a very hospitable gay couple from the church at which I'm working. It's only been a week--and an interesting time already!

South Africa, I am finding, is a place of many contrasts. My experiences have been all over the map: visits to elderly house-bound ladies who love playing hostess, a safari drive on which I saw a herd of elephants just outside the jeep (see photo), a brilliant one-man comedy performance poking fun at South African life, about six church services, lots of nice dinners, heavy first-hand stories of apartheid's awful hand at work, a driving moment in which I lapsed into American mode and turned into the same lane as an oncoming SUV, many moments in which the gay-to-straight ratio has been 3 to 1 (i.e. me), liberal sermons, conservative worship styles, a church office in which three languages are spoken (English, Zulu, Afrikaans), a welcome speech in which I kept referring to "this summer" when it's actually winter here, and a lot of instant coffee.


It's a country that seems Western and African at the same time, both first-world and third-world. My experience thus far has been mostly on the first-world, Western, white side of things. I've spent my time primarily with well-off folks in nice houses in decent parts of town. On a cursory glance, you might as well be in the US--except that just about every house or housing complex is surrounded by high walls with electric fencing around the top. Big gates that open electronically are commonplace. It's comfort surrounded by poverty that's hidden well enough I haven't even seen much of it yet. Contrasts, contrasts--South Africa has so much going on all at once, all sorts of various elements and strains that together make up one nation. Rich and poor, black and white, present and past, eleven official national languages, all together in one country. The Rainbow Nation, indeed! Even the South African flag is vibrant with different colors.

Contrast makes for good and interesting art, they say. All told, I'm thinking it should make for a pretty good and interesting summer, too!