Mennonites in South Africa

This past week we went to a retreat, all of the Mennonite workers in Southern Africa were there. Everyone from SALTers to MC Canada Witness workers, to MCC Country Reps, IVEPers to us RJers to MMN workers. Now I know what youare thinking, none of these terms make sense, that's because we mennonites like Acronyms, so this entry will be about acquainting you with relevant Mennonite Groups, programs, people, and organizations that I like/ think are important.


ANISA- Anabaptist Network in South Africa, a network of Anabaptist minded groups in the beginning stages, currently a website getting 75-100 hits a day, with news, editorials, and a growing library of print and electronic resources. See: MC Canada

IVEP- International Visitors Exchange Program, a MCC program that allows people to come to Canada and the States and volunteer at various Mennonite organizations such as MCC thrift Stores, or Mennonite Schools (we once had an IVEPer at rockway). Think SALT, but reverse it. See: MCC, SALT

MCC- Mennonite Central Commitee, the development organization affiliated with the Mennonite Church. Founded after World War Two to help Russian Mennonite Refugees, and has since expanded all over the world doing various work such as helping Co-ops get started, and other cool stuff. The best thing about MCC is that they do not force themselves on people, they wait for other organizations to ask for help before entering an area. The family we know are the Altys, who like everyone else on this list are cool.

MC Canada- Mennonite Church Canada, their name speaks for themselves, it's basically all of the Mennonite Churches in Canada (hence the name) coming together and working alongside each other. I love going to their annual conferences, but have missed the last two.

MC Canada Witness- The missions arm of MC Canada, their work here in South Africa is in developing ANISA. The couple here doing this work is Karen and Andrew Suderman, a couple from my home town (kind of, they are also connected to Winkler). My team mates and I really like them because they are really cool and fun, and have had us over a couple times have an x-box, and teach the girls to knit/ crochet (we'd like them even if they didn't have an x-box, and couldn't knit)

MMN- Mennonite Missions Network, like MC Canada Witness, but American. Their mandate here in South Africa is to help their three church partners here develop Social Ministries. This is the organization that runs RJ. There are two families here with MMN, the Lindel-Detweilers (aka Phil and Christine) who live here in Pietermaritzburg, and are completely awesome people who invite us to their house, and help us wrestle with the things we are experiencing here. The Sawatzkys (I'm sorry if I'm spelling your name wrong) are the other couple, they live/ work in Mthatha, with Bethany Bible School, helping African Churches build a firm theological foundation, they've got 4 crazy boys who love sports.

RJ- Radical Journey, if you don't know what that is, start at the first entry of this blog, and you'll figure it out. See: MMN

SALT- Serving And Learning Together, a one year program By MCC, participants aged 18-30 (I think) work for a year internationally with various MCC Partners. A program close to my heart because both of my parents did it when they were close to my age. See: MCC, IVEP

I'll write about the Actual Retreat in my next couple entries.

If he is with me...

So immediately after explaining to you that I don't write because there is nothing to write about, I immediately have two entries that I want to write. How's that for irony?

I realised a couple of months ago (I think it was October), that I didn't feel called to go to the school that I had planned on attending next year (the University of Waterloo for Social Development Studies), and that I should go straight into a pastoral ministry program instead. This was partially because I was reading one of the books that we have to read for Radical Journey called Dangerous Wonder by Michael Yaconelli, which talks about childlike faith, but it's also been something that I've been struggling with for a while, I just don't see putting off studying about God, to be worth the effort. So I applied to Emmanuel Bible College, and Tyndale University College, and left it at that.
This past week I got accepted to EBC, and after several days of basking in my happiness of being able to go to College, and doing what I feel God's Calling me to do, I went back into my usual “6” state (see my entry about the Enneagram), and began worrying about anything and everything that could go wrong with this such as how I was going to pay for college, how I'd pay off the debt I've taken to go on Radical Journey, and how I'd overcome my speech impediment when I preach (I have a really heavy speech impediment which makes it hard to understand what I say some times, my brother has literally translated what I've said for his friends before). And everything seemed to be impossible
But then yesterday at the Picnic, there was a time of worship, and we sang Hossana by Hillsong, which is about God's great providence, and seeing his Glory revealed on this earth, then Pastor Russel told us a story about a young man who wanted to be a missionary in Mongolia, despite his parent's wish for him to take on the family dairy business, and how he went to Yale, Seminary, and went off to Egypt for a missionary training program before getting sick and dying, and how he was totally committed to his cause.
Because of these things, I feel that God reminded me of the very strange events that led me to even to get to Africa, how I applied 2 months late, how I was supposed to be going to sweden, and how I didn't get my passport/visa back untill the day before I was supposed to go to Chicago, and how God's hand was in me getting this far. Now I know that God is with me, and if he is for me, then how can anyone stand against me?


And if anyone is interested, I am still waiting on Tyndale, so any prayers in that regard would be greatly appreciated.

Albert falls times two and fun times

So on friday, we went to a retreat center in a place called Albert Falls in order to have a forcasting (read: planning) session for next year.

We got their friday night, and ate the best T-bone steaks I have ever eaten (maybe that's because I don't eat very many t-bone steaks). Then we played games that night. First I played thirty seconds (kind of like South African Taboo) and failed miserably at it. Then we played spoons, during one round, the last spoon flew off the table, and there were two of us still fighting for it, so I pushed the table towards the other guy, and then dived for the spoon on the ground (which was quite fun).

Then on Saturday (It was a sleepover), we had times of worship and planning for the next year, there they talked about the evangelism goals they have (5 new members/person), effective strategies for reaching those goals, and how the structure for the youth would change. One of my friends here, Wayne, (the guy I pushed the table at), was going to become a senior leader, my Mentor Hein, the guy in charge of the youth, will be taking a more supervisory role, and a bunch of the other leaders were moved between different parts of the town, to make up for one of them leaving for a YWAM Discipleship training school.

On sunday we returned to Albert Falls, but instead of being at a retreat center, we went to a park for an all Church Picnic, which was really fun. The youth set it up so that those senior leaders that could afford it would pay more, and those of us that couldn't could bring less expensive stuff, and everyone was really cool with it, and very gracious. I took a couple of pictures before my camera died again (don't worry, I'll steal pictures off other people's facebook accounts once they get posted), then I played Cheat, and then President before spending 2 hours Braai-ing.

Now this is probably the most important role that one can do at a south african gathering. Braai would be our Barbecue, but they don't have hamburgers and hotdogs, they have real meat- steaks and porck chops and chicken wings, etc, and they eat it in quantities far greater than what we do (in fact, literally one of the first things we were told when we got here was that South Africa is one of the few places that consider Meat to be a staple). So for me to Braai, made me feel deeply connected with south african culture. (The other great thing about being the braiier is that it is our right to sample the meat as we cook it).

Then when we got home I got an SMS (read:text) from a friend from youth inviting us to go to Fantasia, a carnival, with his friends, Connie and I were the only two up for it, but the two of us went anyways, going on incredibly sketchy rides (on the swinging ship, our side gate was kept attached using wire), then we drove to a restaurant to get take out, and went up to World's view.

Pietermaritzburg is literally in the middle of a bowl of mountains, which makes for lot's of pollution and popped ears and other such problems, but it also means that if you get to the top of the Bowl (at a place called World's view), you have an epic view of Pietermaritzburg, especially at 10 o'clock at night with all of the light's shining).

We spent the night talking, and bonding, sharing stories and telling jokes, and growing our relationships with the people of Pietermaritzburg.

Sorry

Yeah, sorry I don't blog more often, but I really don't have much to say because:

1. We don't do much, after work we sit around and watch a tv show on our laptops, and I don't think you want to read about what Jim and Pam are doing on the office in season 4 (btw, we finally got season 4, so that prolongs our watching of the office, yay!)

2. I don't hate everything about africa, while there would be plenty of things to complain about, I've decided to not let them bother me, so I won't say anything about it.

3. I'm not good about talking about my feelings (hey I'm a guy, what do you expect), so That throws that option out to

So here is my blog

Hard work, and a new friend.

A church with a property the size as Breakthru has a lot of garden refuse (lawn clippings, tree trimmings etc), and Breakthru hadn't done anything with theirs for two years, so there is this massive pile of compost, just sitting in the corner of their property, and at one area about one story tall, so what did Breakthru do?

if you guessed have the RJ team clean it up, then you win a million dollars*. So for tuesday and wednesday there was always a couple of us either loading it up onto the trailer, or ripping branches out of the pile and stacking them to go into the trailer (it's a lot easier that way). So after 2 days of work in hot weather, we had managed to make a dent in the pile, we would have made a bigger dent, but we were waiting for fuel money to come back to the church, anyways, during our wait for fuel, we started prepping for the next load, and I heard what I thought was a cat, but I couldn't see anything, so I went back to work, 5 minutes later, Kyle finds this half starved kitten under one of the branches.

Now remember, we'd been working on this pile for almost two days and and had moved 4 trailers worth of refuse by this point. so how this kitten got there, we don't know (we think a momma cat abandoned it while we were eating lunch).

so Meet Dwight, our new kitten, who will be staying with us for the next few months, and hopefully helps our mouse problem.

*payable in Tim Dollars

"You didn't tell him about the missing jedi" ~Neimodian

"No need to report that to him untill there is something to report" ~Nute Gunray

Star Wars the Phantom Menace

some of you may be wondering why I haven't posted anything in 2 weeks, well that's because there isn't anything really interesting to report in terms of what we've been doing.

However, last week kyle got a package from home, with a lot of cool stuff in it, there was gum, and tea, and books, and best of all Mice Traps! Now, we have mice traps here, but the bait platform on them is made of metal, and not that sensitive, so they don't catch anything. Kyle got traps with plastic bait platforms, that are really sensitive, so we set them up, and then had team time, and then started watching the office (the other really awesome thing that Kyle got), when I go into the kitchen to grab something, I decide to check the trap and there are TWO mice trapped in it facing each other. I yelled, others came over, and we took pictures, and laughed, etc (these mice have been bugging us since we got here, our bottom cupboards smell like mouse poop, they deserve to die), eventually the festivities die down, I reset the trap, and we continue watching The Office, when we hear a snap, and we run to the kitchen, and another mouse is dead, by the next morning we had caught 7 mice!

So that's really the only interesting thing that I want to blog about.

And now it's time for Gabby's Grammar:

"He probably just puts cookie drops in it to make it black"

This means food colouring, and was referring to Christian's Recipe that he claims he can make called "Black Sauce Chicken Geoorge" but we don't know what it is, or what makes the sauce black.

Hectic Weekends, and Relaxing mondays

Hectic Weekends, and relaxed Mondays!


Kyle and I have come up with a new rule, whenever we are asked to do something, we will wait 10 to 20 minutes before starting, that way we only have to redo everything twice and not three times. Because enevitably someone else will show up with another vision of the way things should be done, and we will have to redo it.
Friday morning, Kyle and I got to work early to help set up the tent for the events. They had set the tent up the day before, and had left a bunch of table that needed to be set up. We started to set them up staggered so that everyone could have a view of the front (The way I was taught to do it in school when I set up for countless events), but when the decorators came, they told us that they wanted the tables set up in rows. Being the servant hearted workers that we are (and humble to boot!), we moved the tables we had started to set up, into rows, the decorators then realized that there wasn't enough room for everyone, so they want us to move the tables, take a guess what pattern they wanted. If you guessed staggered, you are right! So we had to reorganize the tables again, the way I had wanted to in the first place! Once the tables were set up, we spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon hauling chairs from the sanctuary, the children's church, and the Balcony to the tent, and by the time we were done we were exhausted.
We wanted to take a rest, but then we had Kid's Klub in the afternoon, and Nathan, my group leader was sick so I had to lead his group, which is okay, except that they were 12 boys aged 10 to 12, all highly excited (having just played soccer), and not really interested in hearing about how God wants us to take care of the environment. So they were loud and squirmy throughout the lesson.
The next morning I got up early and went to the men's breakfast at the time it was supposed to start, which was a mistake because, everyone here runs on African time (if it happens today, great, if it happens tomorrow, even better), so we spent the next hour sitting around waiting for the food to cook, after we ate, we had some worship and speakers talk to us, and it was really good. Kyle and I then took home a whole lot of leftovers.
The girls went to a High Tea in the afternoon, when it was finished, Kyle and I started stacking chairs, and bringing them back to the sanctuary, after we had gotten most of the chairs returned and set up we were told that we had the chairs set up in the wrong order (we had realized that there were different chairs, and had put them in like groups, but didn't realize it matters where you put the different types of chairs. So kyle and I left, Lwandile (sound guy extraordinaire) behind to figure it out (because he knew what he was doing), and were finishing up moving the final chairs when we realized the tables were still set up in the tent and that there wouldn't be any parking on Sunday if we didn't take them down. So we worked until 8 at night stacking tables. After ward we bought pizza, which we had to pick up, because the Pizza Place wouldn't deliver to our street after dark, and watched a movie.
The next day we had to go to all three services to present a skit we had learned. Which went really well, and fit right in with Pastor Russel's Sermon (even though we hadn't planned on it). However, this meant being at church for 6 hours of service. That night we had to go to a leader's meeting, which consisted of watching a video and reading through some notes Pastor Russel had written. We could have saved about an hour by watching the video, and taking the notes home with us to read.
After a busy weekend, we were looking forward to a nice relaxing Monday Morning (our time that is specifically set aside as our sabbath), and having a debrief with Phil and Christine over coffee, when we found out that morning, that it was going to take up some time we were quite enthusiastic about it. We ended up spending the entire day there, and eating lunch and supper with them. I found out Nathan is “technologically informed” which is his way of calling himself a geek, and we had a long discussion of everything from hardware and software to Lord of the Rings. Before we left they let us ransack their movie and book collections, and we came home with over 20 books, and 7 movies which we are borrowing. Over all it was quite a nice day, and a really good sabbath.


And now time for Gabby Grammer

“You are fasting us up”
this sentence was uttered during the first week of orientation back in chicago, telling Kyle to slow down because he was walking to fast.