Sunday, September 18, 2011

Do you love drama? Come to The Pines! Perhaps your Sunday began with a cup of coffee, a slice of toast, maybe an egg. You read your devotions, then listened to Christian music as you tied your tie. Oh, that's right. You don't do ties. Just before you walked out the door you checked the mirror to be sure your hair was in place, if you have hair, that is.

So, this morning at The Pines -- I fixed breakfast, then showered. Don sat with coffee. Dave got dressed for church. Pretty normal, eh? Except several somebodies in the neighborhood were shooting at each other. Then we heard the rapid fire of an automatic weapon. Within minutes many, many Zama Zamas were fleeing the mine shaft area and heading around The Pines, disappearing over the horizon. By the time the police arrived, not a one was in sight -- not a live one, that is. The security guards wildly motioned to the police, directing them where to go.

Although we have not heard confirmation, Phil feels certain that some Zama Zamas have now faced their Maker, been judged and found wanting. Pray that God will give someone an opening to share Jesus with them.

A short time later we left for worship at Thabong Baptist Church. The contrast cannot be greater than that between the rat-a-tat-tat of weapons and the rhythm of African believers praising God together. Greetings, testimonies, songs, special music, preaching, hugs -- fellowship across language and cultural divides is sweet. Perhaps we'll not see these brothers and sisters again in this life but we're making plans to hang out together in heaven.

While we worshiped, Johnny arrived home from St. Helena Hospital. His face is swollen and he sounds uncomfortable because of the packing in his nose. Because his dominant arm is broken, he's learning how to negotiate silverware with his left. And, being Johnny, he can't imagine what bed rest means. Please pray for continued healing and for a modicum of self control so he does not damage what the doctors have put in place.

Guess what...I packed three brownie mixes and plenty of candy bars so I could make Chery's famous brownies for everyone here. So, this afternoon I baked them up and we carried them to the activity room and had a story time and sweet treats. What fun!

Here at The Pines we have a budding storyteller. Gladys likes reading and music, important skills for a storyteller, plus she really wants to do it. I've been encouraging her while here and took a few minutes today to give her a private story telling lesson. I hope that next visit I'll get to listen to her read!

Mama Margaret was very happy this morning. Arnold got a ride from a friend and spent two nights here. This morning he returned to Johannesburg. His paper work rests on the desk of a bureaucrat. Please pray with us that the person reviewing his application to be legal in this country will view it favorably. Margaret gave her testimony in church, thanking the Lord for His care and provision, and for those at The Pines who have prayed with her, encouraged her, and challenged her to walk faithfully with God.

Tomorrow we leave for Johannesburg. Tuesday we get on the plane for Atlanta. Around noon on Wednesday we'll be home. Thank you for following our journey and for praying with us. In the last report, Don's sister Betty had a good time of fellowship with Dad. He also seemed to enjoy a visit from Mike and Elizabeth and the twins. We're thankful that God has preserved him during our time in Welkom.

Soon I'll be back in Michigan, the Lord willing. As we walk away, our hearts will be torn in two. We leave with a growing love for the people in this place, a concern for the immense need, a sense of the urgency to reach people for Jesus Christ in a place where guns and HIV/AIDS claim many lives daily. Pray that God will keep our hearts tender and our priorities in line with His.


Judy

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Take a trip with me, tonight. I’m not sure I’ve actually processed today, but I’ll give it a try. Fifteen year old Johnny and his friend headed out to the tailings mountain with the quad to have a ‘boys will be boys’ morning. Dave, Don, and Phil drove into Welkom to purchase more supplies for the project.

As Alana worked at getting her living room curtains re-hung, her phone rang. Johnny’s friend shouted a panicky and garbled message about opening the gate. Alana hurried out to open it. When it timed out and closed without them coming, she asked Franz if he knew which direction the boys went.

Suspecting trouble with the Zama Zamas, they drove the combie toward the mines. Seeing the boys coming on the quad and no one chasing them, they turned around to return to The Pines. With the boys waving wildly at them, Franz and then Alana looked closer, shocked to see blood covering Johnny’s face. The quad had flipped on the tailings pile, with Darrin jumping clear but Johnny trapped on the machine as it rolled.

I’ll skip the intervening details and just tell you that Darrin is unhurt. Johnny is in the hospital, having been through surgery to stitch his nose in a few places as well as a cut by his eye, had his nose plastered back in the direction it should point, and had the three breaks in his arm straightened and encased in a plaster cast. He looks puffy but is as snappy and sassy as ever. Praise the Lord.

Now I want to take you down the road. Slightly later than planned due to the hospital expedition, Dave, Don and I drove into Thabong with Pastor Manaka. We saw the shabeen (black township bar) from which Michelle T. was rescued on the verge of death four years ago.

One compound houses children who used to be at The Pines, but a relative wanted to ‘care’ for them, which means the relative gets a stipend from the government and the children live without love, adequate food, and security. Their smiles have disappeared, again.

Several neighborhoods consisted of many ramshackle and rusted corrugated steel shacks. Some have electrical service. Whole neighborhoods had ‘long drop toilets’ in the back, which I presume to be a kind of outhouse. Scattered throughout were a few decent homes.

Large areas have two room houses built by the gold mines as miner residences. However, if a man wanted to live in a house rather than the crowded hostels he needed a wife and a marriage. Because his wife lived far away, he found himself another ‘wife’ and live there with her. This and prostitution, facilitated by mine management to keep men pacified in this artificial community, fed the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Men became infected and infected their wives when they went home. Children contracted the virus at birth.

Then, because no one knew the truth, rumors about the cause and the cure spread wildly and irrationally. One popular solution involved having relations with a young virgin to cure the disease. And so we have children being raped and infected and bearing children.

Skip past the uniformed students walking to school this lovely Saturday morning because they are so far behind, due to teacher strikes and school materials being delivered late. Let’s go to the edge of town. Just past a new settlement of shacks, with no electricity or water we join a parade of cars heading to the cemetery.

Saturday means adult funeral day. Several funeral directors likely each buried fifty bodies today, a growing number, accelerating at an alarming rate. Welkom is at the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS cataclysm. Burials first took place in this cemetery in 2000. People who were middle aged or older in the 1980s probably lived out a somewhat normal life span. Today in the township, Pastor Manaka’s forty years are considered old.

Be careful as you work your way through the cemetery traffic jam. Don’t be distracted by the tents scattered around the horizon, crowded with mourners singing and clapping. Ride with me beyond them, to the children’s cemetery where you will see rows and rows of tightly placed tiny graves, mounded with fresh dirt, marked by a small sign. Someone has carefully placed a soda bottle, filled with water, its lid with a tiny hole poked into it and turned into the soil of the grave, believing that water is needed by the child’s body.

Other graves have cans of powdered infant formula, or full medicine bottles, or an empty whisky bottle with some elixir in it. A toddler’s sippy cup, a shoe, maybe a cross or plastic flowers…

So, how does Johnny’s accident come together with an infant graveyard? Johnny’s family feared the consequences of his accident and thanked God for his limited injuries. The Mamas came to the yard to pray for him. His parents and sister spent a long day hovering over him.

In the Thabongs of South Africa, death at any age has become common place leaving people calloused to it. In their misery they have given up hope, living for the moment. They mourn at the graveside. Then, as they leave, within sight of the grave stones their music blares, they laugh and joke and try to ignore their own mortality.

Pray. People need the Lord.

Judy

Townships and Philosophical Ramblings, September 16, 2011

My sisters keep me honest. Joy's question showed an area needing explanation. It's kind of hard to explain Thabong. It is called a township, but is like a small city. The roots are in Apartheid, when the ruling whites established separate areas where the black must live. The streets and housing are significantly lower in standards than the rest of Welkom. I think blacks can live in other parts of the city today, at least on the face of it. But, the Thabongs of this country have become their home place. Often black Africans with good jobs choose to live in the townships. It's where their culture and community are centered. Worship in the Thabong Baptist Church is distinctively black African.

You will seldom see the kind of poor living conditions elsewhere that you see in the townships. I know electricity must be prepaid. And, in much of the township there is only water at a common faucet. There are some nicer places where people keep a little yard, but certainly nothing is fancy. Most of the streets are dirt, potholed and dusty. All over South Africa, well Africa, but especially in the townships, a lot of people are walking everywhere. Odd little containers and shanties house shops. Men sit outside their shacks on stools, having a beer together. Women scrub their laundry in tubs outside the door, hanging things on a clothesline.

I've written from my memories of two years ago, as well as our drive to church last Sunday. Tomorrow we will see Thabong through Pastor Manaka's eyes. I may have to print a retraction. Then, too, Sally and the Carmichaels receive these updates. This may destroy my credibility in their eyes.

And then, sister Kathy's remarks about our strong interest in the ministry here in Welkom lead me to ramble a bit about our perspective on ministry and this place of love and hope. If you've had enough of my verbiage, hit delete. If you can tolerate a little more, read on.

Increasingly over the years I've been impressed with the application of the "To whom much is given, much is required" principle, knowing that we feel generous when we give 10% of our net income.

Went looking for a quote from R. G. LeTourneau and found this in a really good essay by Randy Alcorn. (http://www.surfinthespirit.com/finances/giving.html) He directs it pretty much at material goods and funds, but I've been impressed with the need to apply it to talents and education and time. "R.G. LeTourneau was an example of a man who understood God's purpose for blessing him financially. An inventor of earthmoving machines, LeTourneau reached the point of giving 90 percent of his income to the Lord. As he put it, "I shovel out the money, and God shovels it back to me - but God has a bigger shovel."

Don and I have wide ranging interests in missions around the world, which may be attributable in part to my wanderlust coupled with wonderlust, but this work is one that really moves and motivates us. Being fundamentally farmers and Dutch, we can see that the staff at The Pines use all they have as completely as possible and do an effective work on a bare bones budget. They are hard working and thrifty. Having ministered in a small, underfunded, and effective Christian school for decades, we realize the struggle it is to work faithfully when everything is always hard. There are no charismatic and high-profile people out there drumming up support -- just ordinary, decent people like you and me trying to do what is right before God. Our Lord does not need our abilities. If we make ourselves 'available', He supplies the 'able.' We appreciate the work of the ministry as we see it being accomplished in this place and consider it a privilege to come along side.

All the goals that Phil set for Don and Dave have been met. Of course, there are always add-ons, so they will try and get few more things finished tomorrow afternoon. We are excited to walk through those rooms and imagine the shouts of children echoing.

And, Dave fell in love with an African girl. Getting on that plane in Jo-burg for that epic trek home will be that much harder...

Judy

CUINHVN! (Thursday, September 15, 2011)

CUINHVN...

Try explaining that to a Zimbabwean national whose English lacks fluency! I spent time this afternoon with Mama Margaret, and reminded her that God's goal reaches through the trials of this life to eternity. Twenty year old Margaret's husband, Arnold, is in Johannesburg, attempting to get paperwork so he can live and work here legally. Tomorrow,Margaret and Arnold will spend their son Harry's second birthday apart. Complicating this is the fact that Harry has been having seizures. This young family needs to be together! Please pray for Arnold, Margaret and Harry.

And, while you're on your knees, pray for Sally Sefried. During this two week visit to The Pines, we are immersed in David and Sally Seefried's vision of ministry. After several years in the pastorate and in mission work in Germany and South Africa under the auspices of EBM, Sally and David grasped the urgency of the AIDS pandemic here and started Ambassadors International and The Pines. Just three and a half years ago, David went to be with the Lord and Sally has pushed ahead with their shared vision. Annually, she returns to the USA to connect with her children and grandchildren, and to do the work of the ministry. Eleven hours ago she left for Johannesburg. In about fourteen hours she'll land in Atlanta where, after a short lay over, she'll catch a flight to Denver. Pray for her safety and good health on this journey. Pray, too, that many will be motivated by her passion and join in the ministry.

We all should spend as much time on our knees as Don and David and Johnny did today! They worked their way all around the first flat, installing baseboard. Dave also did some serious trim work in the house parents' room. Tomorrow they hope to finish the trim in the second flat. Time is running out. We have a list of projects that could keep us going for weeks, plus a lot of mamas and kids who cannot imagine why we would come so far for such a short time!

For my sister Kathy, today I got to visit a little bakery in Welkom that shares our Dutch roots. The rolls were soft, the fat balls were fat balls -- no sugar or raisins or anything, and they don't have banket. It was fun, but don't worry too much about the competition. I told the owner's wife to check out Casey's Bakery on line :)

Judy

PS: Michigan license plate-- CUINHVN = See you in heaven!

Greenhouse Day, Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I hope you missed me last night! Lightning stole our internet access -- no rain, just one itty bitty lightning bolt. And, today copied yesterday. Sunny, warm, and dusty. Not bad for just coming out of winter. If you are curious about the Welkom weather, you can visit your favorite internet weather source, such as http://www.weather.com, and look up Johannesburg, South Africa and it will be very close to that in Welkom.

We packed a couple unnecessary flannel shirts for Don to use mornings. The weather is great, cooling to the upper fifties at night, and reaching a high of 75 or 80 in the daytime. Two things influence the weather here -- the dryness of the air so warmer temperatures do not feel oppressive, and a mile high Denverish altitude.

Pastor Manaka loves an old fashioned country garden. Someone donated a greenhouse so he can grow fresh vegetables year round. The hoops have been up for a bit, but some serious manpower was needed to get the plastic on. Today was the day. Pastor Manaka, Phil, grounds helper Leanard, Dave and Don spent the morning adjusting wire ties on various joints and protecting them with inner tube strips. After that, the four of them, using two tall and one short step ladder, started pulling the sheet of plastic across. It became evident that they would not reach the top of the hoops. Six feet plus is still short compared to a greenhouse, and only three of the five can claim six feet. Even five tall ladders would have been inadequate. And Lenard's sliding across the hoop supports, shimmying his ladder around from the top didn't quite do the job.

They tried using the Massey. Then they added the bakkie, putting the short ladder in the back. Maybe that would have worked if a piece of the hoop support had not dropped out when Pastor Franz grabbed it. So now, how do we hold the plastic half way up, while someone forces that support bar back in place?

At this point those of us with cameras put them aside and grabbed a piece of plastic -- not terribly helpful, but we felt good. However, we just had to let the plastic slide, put the bar back in, and try again to cover the hoops.

So, using the bakkie as scaffolding, a fence pole as the push, and the Massey as the force -- one man on the tractor seat, one at the base of the pole, and two at the top serving as clamps, the remaining man on the top pushing it into place, and four women giving advice, they tried again. Almost...but as they say, close is only good in horse shoes.

Finally, Phil got a rope to toss across the hoop. Putting him on one end and Don on the other, they were able to pull hard enough on the hoop so the others could get the bar in place and we could all work together to pull that plastic in place.

A truly African greenhouse...

Judy

PS: Back in the early 1900's, either Paul Kruger or General Joubert, rather than rejoicing at the discovery of gold, suggested South Africans should be weeping because it will "cause our land to be soaked in blood". Today, that prediction continues to be proven true.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Late this afternoon, Alana and I sat on the back step enjoying the damp breeze that came through the sprinklers. Pastor Franz loves to garden, so some new grass along with the requisite weeds, greens the space just below the steps. Beyond he's planted a large garden. A little to the side, there's a bed of strawberries. And, just toward the back of the property are the hoops of a donated greenhouse which he and Leonard will cover Wednesday.

And, if you look at the photo, just beyond the greenhouse hoops and across the fence, you'll see piles of rubble. Zama Zamas dug up the old railroad track and sold the scrap.

In Timbuktu, Carmichaels served at the Living Water Project, designed to provide Tuaregs a place to grow food for consumption and for profit, hoping this semi-nomadic people would settle in one spot long enough to hear of and yearn for Jesus. Seeing trees and gardens rise up out of the desert is an amazing thing.

The Pines, too, is an oasis in a very barren place. One drives past skeletal remains of mine shafts and buildings. Cattle roam through dry grass and across broken roads. Miles of mine tailings dominate the horizon. Then the car sweeps around the corner and enters the gate to life and vitality and laughter and shouts.

There are kids here at The Pines who were destined to die young, or become prostitutes, or get killed in the streets of Thabong, if they had not been rescued. But, they are just like other kids. They go to school, complain about and avoid homework, sneak extra fruit, skip doing their chores, need to be corrected for lying, and give great hugs.

And the Zama Zamas are no more unsaved than Michelle, who came here extremely small for her age, sick and malnourished but now is strong enough to argue with anyone and sings with some of the big girls in The Pines Choir. But, I don't know how you reach the Zama Zamas, who hold an automatic rifle between you and them. The kids we can get to. No matter how desperately men search for gold and pleasure just outside the fence, here, in this place, God is at work.

Today Alana and I shopped for groceries. Don and Dave finished the closets in the houseparents' rooms and started on cubbies for the kids. More summer clothes were handed out and winter things put back in the clothes storage safe. Sally took time to see the work that's been accomplished. And, all of that serves to draw these precious lambs into the fold.

Judy

Sunday, September 11, 2011

This morning's drive through the dusty streets of Thabong, dodging chuck holes, avoiding the walking multitudes, passing beer-drinking African men, ended at a neat little brick building surrounded by the usual fence -- a not-so-effective fence, I must say. Someone has been breaking a window panel to sleep inside.

Whatever misery permeated the alleys outside the walls, the joy of the Lord infused the family meeting within. Our worship, interlaced with exuberant songs in Sosotho and English and accompanied by rhythmic beating on a Bible, a tambourine, and a police whistle, began with corporate prayer, testimonies, and spontaneous solos.

Pastor Franz Manaka opened God's Word with fervor and truth, teaching from Romans 2:6-10. He preached in English, which a church member translated into Sosotho.

This afternoon Dave, Don, Phil and the boys toured the world outside our gates, looking at the mine dumps, the old shafts, the buildings being dismantled, and the evidence of the gold pirating that is increasingly a menace to the area.

I've attached a photo of a couple Zama Zamas. Thousands of unemployed migrants from Lesotho come into the area between Johannesburg and Welkom, risking their lives in the illegal gold trade.

At this time an fight between two rival syndicates has grabbed the attention of the police and the media. Fifteen men were executed, bodies thrown down a mine shaft. Follow this connection to a two-year-old article from the UK that clearly describes what is happening: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6850786.ece


This gold piracy represents another eruption of evil that continues to ooze from the gold mines -- unwed mothers, malnourished and abandoned children, HIV, pain...

How refreshing to drive through the gates of The Pines, walk the halls to the sound of laughter, see chubby, cheeky children who were expected to die, and see God at work through the hands of His people.

Judy Steenwyk