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.

Camp

Breakthru runs these events called Encounter Camps, when people stay in the building next to us, for the weekend, and have praise and worship, and teaching sessions etc. This past weekend was Kids Kamp (yes that is the correct spelling), with what was supposed to be 30 kids, but ballooned to a total of 65 kids running around the church property.

I personally enjoyed the camp and found it a spiritually uplifting experience as a whole for both the campers and myself.

Interesting points of the weekend:

-Worship times-one of the coolest things I've ever experienced- 70 kids jumping around, praising God, defintiely a powerful experience.

-The Session about the Importance of the Cross- They showed 70 kids aged 10-14 years the crucifixion scene from The Passion of The Christ, which while it definitely helped the kids understand what Jesus Went through, probably traumatized at least a few of them. As well, there was a lot of focus on the Death of Jesus, without much focus on Jesus' Resurrection. If Jesus hadn't been resurrected, then his death would have been meaningless.

-One night, we had an alter call, then asked everyone who wanted to be closer to God could come up to the front, and we would pray for them, while I was praying that the one boy would be guided by the Holy Spirit, he fell over slain, It was amazing to be a part of what God was doing in his life.

-Kyle put the container of juice on one of the food tables (the one with all of the dishes, but none of the food), we didn't have any dishes after that

-I decided to bring out my harmonicas and the kids just couldn't get enough of them. I collected all of them after one of the breaks, but thought I was missing one. When kyle went to the pool after camp was over, he met one of the Kids, and the kid gave him back my harmonica.

And now for a new Feature: Gabby Grammer Where I'll share something that gabby has said-

today Gabby was talking about going to go to the Game Park tomorrow, and the animals that she'd see there, the animal she is most excited to see- Rhinosaurs

Holy Spirit Weekend

October 12, 2009.


This past weekend has been really important for my spiritual walk. For the last while I haven't really been able to connect with worship. I've been trying to figure out what I've been doing that's wrong, but I couldn't, then during Friday night Youth Celebration (once a month all of the youth cells come together for a joint worship service). They played the song Heart of Worship,

“I'm coming back to the heart of worship, It's all about you Jesus”

and that's when it clicked. It doesn't matter what I do, or how silly I look, it's not about me. The only thing that really matters is God. If I just focus on God then everything else just falls into place.
Later that evening, we split into areas, and we prated for the cell leaders, then Hein and his wife, prayed for all of the youth in our areas, and prophesied into our lives. When Hein prayed for me, he told me that God is saying “no excuses,” which really hit me, because I like to make excuses about why something goes wrong, I don't like to be accountable for my actions.
Hein also spoke into my life about my being here, and assured me that I am where God wants me to be, which was really reassuring because that is something that I have struggled with, I mean, I only have a highschool diploma, what good does that mean?
The Final thing Hein told me was that God is going to release into me a passion for the lost, which is good because I used to have a passion for that, but after six years in a school where everyone is either saved (the small minority), or are sick of religion (the vast majority) passion can die out.
The next night we went to prayer, and during it, they played a song which lyrics say

“The more I seek you, the more I find you,
The more I find you, the more I love you”

And that is so true, the more we seek God, the more we love him, and the more he works in our lives.
Then Sunday during Youth Service (there are three service at Breakthru: English, Zulu/English, and Youth), Pastor Russel (the head pastor) spoke about being on fire for christ, and afterwards asked people that haven't spoken in tongues before to come up to the front if they want to. I went up, and he prayed over us, and a lot of us started speaking in tongues which was really amazing. It's amazing because it's our spirits communicating directly with God, without our minds censuring what the spirit says. Then someone laid hands on me (I don't know who, my eyes were closed), and I instantly hit the ground, now I come from a charismatic church and I've felt the holy spirit before, but usually when I end up on the ground, I feel it coming, and I crumple to the ground , after trying to stay standing, this time I didn't have any warning, I was down on my back without warning!
During prayer that night, Pastor Russel again had people come up to the frond to be filled with the holy spirit, before going out this week to do evangelism, and again I went straight back again. But that wasn't the best part of of the prayer meeting, during the worship part, I felt a freedom to move like I've never felt before, and I just jumped, it was one of the most exhilirating feelings I've ever felt. I guess it's true what scripture says “Those who are free, are free indeed”.

Note to any current or former members of River of Life's Youth Ministry: Yes the title of this post was intentional

update

Sorry, that I haven't updated in a while, we only get 2 gigs of internet usage a month, and we ran out by the 8th. So I'm using the church's internet to write this.

After being at convention, we got home, and we bummed around the house for 2 weeks, waiting to find out what we would be doing. then last week, tuesday we had a meeting with Pastor Russel, Hein (The person in charge of the Youth Department), Thandi (runs Breakthru Community Action, Breakthru's NGO, I'll eventually tell you more about this in another post), and Christine (The Mennonite Mission Network worker here in Pietermaritzburg). Where we were given different areas of focus. We will work in the other areas, but these are our main areas)

Kyle and Gabbey are working in BCA
Anna and Connie are working with Missions, and Children's Church/ Catering


and I will be working in the Youth Department. I will be helping to lead a cell in Eastwood (one of the suburbs of Pietermaritzburg), as well as working in the youth office.


As a prayer request- I'm going out evangelising tonight for the first time, please pray that the people we share with have receptive hearts, and that Hein and I are able to communicate the gospel fairly.

convention

so this past weekend, I went to New Zion Ministry's (the group of churches that Breakthru is a part of) annual convention, I'd write a blog about it, but the other's on my team did such a great job, I'll just link to their posts

Connie's: http://conniesradicaljourney.blogspot.com/2009/09/convention.html

Kyle's: http://kyleberg1.blogspot.com/2009/09/sleep-is-my-worst-friend.html

Gabby's: http://gabby-southafrica.blogspot.com/2009/09/convention-at-bloumfontein.html

(yes I know I didn't link one of Anna's posts, but that's because she doesn't have one about convention)