Week 9: In which we are undisciplined about blogging.

Well, it's Wednesday. You had a cheeky blog fix on Saturday, but I really should have done a full update before now. I'd blame the internet - it's intermittent, at best - but it's really just indiscipline. I'm sorry.

Last week was a long one. We went to church on Sunday in a township some distance away - it was an early start and a chaotic journey that ended in a church service that started at 10:30 and finished at 2. It was a full day out and by the end we were exhausted, but we had fun and learnt some important lessons about African timekeeping.

Our topic in classes last week was 'Relationships', and our speakers were a lovely married couple who spoke with incredible honesty about all areas of relationship, both romantic and non-romantic, and how to make sure that we have integrity, purity and love and the centre of all our interactions. It was a really interesting and engaging week with lots to think about, and it ended in the whole class going to their house to spend a relaxed evening on Friday asking questions, eating crisps and splitting into single-sex groups to carry on chatting until reasonably late.

On Wednesday we went back into Masi, this time with a particular goal in mind. Our local outreach leader, Siya, knew of a man in Masi who was quite seriously ill, so we went to go and pray for his healing. We had an amazing afternoon of prayer, with some of us staying at another house to pray, and others going to the man to worship and pray with him. He was not a Christian and had rejected the opportunity to go to church, but he said that he felt something significant happen that he couldn't describe when the team prayed for him. He has had to go back to hospital for a check up - the nature of his illness meant he couldn't tell immediately if he'd been healed - but there is no doubt that he experienced God in some way, and he made a commitment to go to church. We're looking forward to the results of his next hospital visit! As ever, there are more details that we'll happily share if you have questions, but that's as brief a summary as I can manage in a blog.

Plans for outreach are going really well. There's not a huge about I can say - we're going to a closed country and, although we'll be quite safe, we need to protect the people we'll be working with - but we have our specific locations pretty much set. As it stands, we're not going to Israel. The political situation there has made things a little tricky, and I suspect we were all too excited about Christmas in Bethlehem and not focused enough on what we're actually going to do, so it's probably a good thing. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be collecting email addresses from people who would like a more formal, newsy, prayer-requesty update once we're on outreach. There's no guarantee it'll be regular, but it's good to be prepared just in case. If that interests you, please email sam_lee@hotmail.co.uk and we'll sort it out.

Stef, MJ, Sam and Rik with Korean food.

We continue to have all kinds of fun in our spare time. On Saturday we went into Cape Town with MJ and a few others and enjoyed genuine Korean food at a South African/Korean restaurant. It was quite remarkable. There's a general feeling around that things are starting to wind down, so we're just enjoying everybody's company and trying to make sure we've properly invested in friendships before we all get on planes to different parts of the world.

That's pretty much it. As the weeks go on I take fewer and fewer photos, pretty much because we're not really doing anything new at the moment. That's fine for us, but it makes the blog a bit dull. Apologies.

Lots of love!

Sam and Heather

xx

MJ News: Myoung Jae means 'Brilliant Minister' in Korean. He's eating a grilled chicken sandwich.

A side note.

Hi readers, it's Heather here. 

I know Sam has mentioned further down this blog that we are fundraising for the whole team to be sent to four different locations around the world. Here's your chance to support the team if you feel like you can. Please click on this link which will take you to the fundraising website that one of our group have set up and follow the instructions that will appear. 

If any of our friends who would usually give us a Christmas card/ gift would be able to donate it to this cause instead, we would greatly appreciate it! It could literally just be £1 or £2 but if lots of people think like that then, well, lots of money will be raised.

Please send me an email or facebook message if you would like to know more about what Sam and I will be doing, or any of the other teams for that matter. 

Thank you so much for reading, we miss you all and look forward to many coffee dates and catch ups upon our return in March next year!

Week 8: In which we are encouraged.

'Sup.

This week's blog is brought to you a few days late, courtesy of a sudden and alarming disappearance of The Internet on Sunday afternoon. The blackout ended this morning. Hallelujah!

 

Last week was great though, and there was much to be encouraged about.

In our classes, we were looking at 'Spiritual Warfare'. It sounds very much like it could have been a most unusual week, but it was actually mostly about having confidence in our identity and authority in Christ and being obedient to him. It was a really good week, and we learnt some really interesting and very important things. Success.

We've started talking about raising funds for the outreach part of the DTS (we leave in just under a month). It had been suggested that, as a class, we have an evening of giving, and on Tuesday we did just that. We were encouraged to give not just money, but to spend the afternoon in prayer and then give anything we thought was appropriate. What followed was an incredible evening of outrageous generosity and incredible sacrifice, and it brought a lot of unity to the group. Money, fruit, jewellery, clothes, a guitar and all manner of other things were given away. God spoke to a lot of people in really powerful ways, and a lot of needs were met both financially and spiritually. If you want specific testimonies from that evening then drop us an email and we'll be happy to encourage you with what went on (with permission from the people involved), but I don't want to go into too much detail on here, in the interests of protecting people's privacy. It was really good though.

We didn't go to Masi last week, but on Thursday morning we did a 'Treasure Hunt' in Muizenberg. Basically, that's where you ask God to show you somebody to talk to, and then you go out and find them. I'm terrified of that sort of thing, but it was a really good morning. We went out looking for a man in his 30s wearing white, and, when I eventually saw him (on a few different occasions over about fifteen minutes), I was too nervous to say anything. When I finally spoke up and we went back to where I'd last seen him, he was gone. We prayed, as a group, that if he was somebody we were supposed to talk to then he would come back. After a couple of minutes, he came strolling down the hill towards us. Siya, who is staffing the DTS and was leading our group, took me over to talk to him. We got chatting, and as we were talking God told Siya that the man had a daughter, that He loved her, and that He wanted to bring unity to the family. As it turned out, the man did have a young daughter, but she was in Malawi with her mother, and the man had been having a stressful time over the last six months with his extended family, who were scattered all over southern Africa. We asked if we could pray for him, and he agreed. As we stood in the supermarket car park praying, two ladies came over and stood behind us. I thought we were stood in the way of their car, or they had come over to inflict some sort of religious persecution, so we stopped praying and looked at them.

"Hello." (That's us).

"Hello. I don't know if you were praying just now, but if you were, I'd like you to pray for me please."

So we got chatting to her, and prayed for her. There we were, stood in the middle of a supermarket car park having a prayer meeting with three complete strangers, each one of them hearing from God and going on their way feeling loved and protected by Mr God. Hallelujah.

This pretty little alley was in Kalk Bay, where we spent Saturday afternoon having a bit of an amble.

In other news, Heather went to a lovely big market full of crafts and coffee on Saturday, and I went surfing and had breakfast with MJ. Summer has arrived and it's really hot, Heather and some others have started making and selling cards to raise some money for outreach, and we've been watching Downton Abbey, as promised.

That's basically it. Quite word-heavy this week, many apologies.

Much love!

Sam and Heather

MJ News: We've taught him about "knock knock" jokes. It's quite brilliant.

Week 7: In which we have mixed success.

Hello all.

This week has been one of mixed success, as the title of this blog suggests.

In our lectures we've been learning about the Holy Spirit, which has been good fun and occasionally a little unusual. I don't want to frighten anybody, so I'll just say that we've seen God at work and leave it at that. It's been good.

Local outreach continued in Masiphumelele, and this week we started with a trip to a place that cooks and sells 'Masi Meat'. I don't want to call it a restaurant, for that is most certainly not what it was, but we did sit down and eat marinated pork off plastic trays. It was an experience we approached with no little prayer and anxiety, but it turned out to be delicious and tasty, with no unpleasant consequences. Success.

The group also had some excellent opportunities to talk to some of the people we met in and around Masi, with a couple of people receiving prayer for healing and a few more told a bit about Jesus. The time we've spent in Masi has been really encouraging, and it's becoming a high point of each week.

Steffen, MJ and I climbed Muizenberg Mountain. They are both much fitter than I am.

There have, however, been parts of the week that have not gone so well. I made a misguided attempt to grow a beard - it garnered mixed reviews around the base - but I realised on Friday that it seems my facial hair growth is inversely proportionate to my levels of self esteem. It is no more.

We had an excellent day yesterday, though. In the morning we went to the beach and had a proper crack at surfing, with, again, mixed success. I came close to managing to almost stand up, but mostly perfected a move I think is best described as 'dog on a skateboard'. We both came out feeling a little bit bruised and battered, but I think we stopped at the right time: when we got out I identified a bleeding graze on my torso. It was fine, but I keep remembering frightening statistics about how many gallons of water a shark can smell a drop of blood in. Nice Norwegian Steffen waited until we were out of the water to tell us that the Muizenberg bay apparently has the highest population density of great white sharks anywhere in the world. What larks.

This was on Chapman's Peak Drive. Beautiful stuff.

After surfing, Steffen and Kristina (his wife) took us to Chapman's Peak. I'm still not completely sure what part of which hill Chapman's Peak is, but we drove along Chapman's Peak Drive and had a refreshing drink at the end. Then, on the way back, we indulged in a spot of wine tasting in a nearby winery. Perfect.

Wine tasting. We hid the spitoon for this photo.

That's it for this week! Apart from that we've been given a few episodes of the current series of Downton Abbey to enjoy, so the blog next week might be a little light on content.

Lots of love to you all,

Sam and Heather

xx

MJ News: He will be going to India on his outreach. We will not. We're struggling to come to terms with our impending loss.

Week 6: In which we are a little bit poorly.

Hello all. 

I have some bad news: I'm a little bit poorly.

Not really poorly, but just a bit. I'll soldier on, but I did think it was worth mentioning.

This week's been a bit more of the same, really. We've been looking at 'The Freedom Manual', which involved a lot of learning about exactly who God created us to be and then being it. I've heavily abridged the week's teaching but that was certainly the gist. It's been another encouraging week, probably more spiritual than intellectual. Once we'd established God's 'original design' for us, we looked at the things that stop us from being the people God created. Things like anger, rejection, apathy and unforgiveness, that can develop into mindsets that stop us from stepping out in faith and embracing everything God has planned.

On Wednesday we went to Masi again, and we played with some children in a nursery-type environment. It was a little bit manic, but we turned up, sang some songs about Jesus, played some games and then just played with the kids. They were mostly probably about 4 or 5, and they were very sweet. We had some wild times.

Rik (Dutch) and a girl child.

As I mentioned last week, we've started planning for our outreach, and we're going to need to do a bit of fundraising over the next few weeks. We don't want to make a massive deal of it, but if you'd like more information or feel like you would like to support us please get in touch.

The other thing that happened this week is that we went to the beach today and missed out on a shark sighting by about half an hour. We were very sad about that, but we sat by the sea and had a coffee and a sandwich and, Lo! In the distance we saw a murky, sharky shape scything through the water, a bit beyond where people were surfing. Nobody else really noticed it and we didn't want to disturb anyone, so we watched it for a bit and then went away. I think that was the right thing to do.

Proof of shark action.

That's it for this week. Please do get in touch with us - we miss you all (if you're reading this from England and not just having a cheeky peep from another part of Muizenberg. If that's you, we don't miss you so much. We probably only saw you today), and we'd like to hear about your lives.

Lots of love!

Sam and Heather

MJ News: We taught him about air quotes. He spent most of this week shopping online for a new pen. Whenever he buys cake, he buys enough to share, even if he doesn't know who he's going to share it with. I have benefited from this policy.