On exams.

Working with students is an awesome job, and I love it very, very much, but sometimes it makes me sad because I’m not a student anymore and occasionally I really wish I was. And then exams arrive and I am so very, very, very glad about the fact that that particular period of my life is over and done with.

Jacaranda flowers at Wits

 

In South Africa finals are on at the moment. At this time of year the jacaranda trees are in bloom and the students have a bizarre tradition that if one of the purple flowers falls on your head whilst you’re on the way to an exam then you’ll pass it. Cue large numbers of students walking backwards and forwards underneath the trees on campuses throughout Jo’burg and Pretoria.

Wits students are currently in the midst of that special time of year. Which means that my weekly schedule is rather different than it was during the rest of the year. As opposed to the four days a week that I was spending on campus during term-time I’m now only there for one day a week. I go in for the whole day, meet up with my three lovely one-to-one girls and some of the other SCO ladies, and drink lots and lots of coffee.

Andrea

Aba

Stacey

Which perhaps makes you wonder what on earth I’m doing with the rest of my time? Well, for the rest of November I’m going to be working on writing some Bible study resources for SCO staff to use next year. It means working from home, which requires me to have a little more ’self-discipline’, but so far I’m really enjoying it and just hoping that the finished product will be helpful.

In summary: glad to have a degree already.

 

On graduation

– Just to warn you. November is going to be noticeable for lots of posts about ‘last times’. Sorry, but that’s just how I roll. –

 

Last night was graduation at Johannesburg Bible College, and so was a last visit to the lovely buildings where I have spent most of my Tuesday and Thursday mornings for the last year.

I’m very glad that I got to go to JBC this year. Learned some stuff, made lots of friends and drank too much coffee, and I think being there twice a week and encouraged with some nice con-evo theology was instrumental in keeping me sane through some of the more ‘challenging’ moments of SCO life.

The Graduates

About ten of my fellow students graduated last night (having gone to college full-time for the past year). It was a lovely evening, a good chance to reflect on the year and pray for the future of the college and the graduates. Plus there was very nice food, and the college principal’s 9 year old daughter, Miriam, kept me entertained by doing a bit of impromptu Irish dancing.

And of course the inevitable moments of sadness, because in amongst last night’s crowd was another bunch of people to say goodbye too.

In summary: grateful and sentimental.

On IFES World Student Day

Today is the IFES world student prayer day (although since it’s actually 48 hours long I’m curious about their usage of the word ‘day’)

International Fellowship of Evangelical Students

Check out the funky interactive website thingy (esp. if you can understand and appreciate the French conversation tht appears to be ongoing at the mo) and/or have a glance at the prayer requests for the EPSA region below.

EPSA (English & Portuguese-Speaking Africa) consists of the following countries:

Angola, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia & Zimbabwe.

Some of the key issues in many of these countries include the HIV/AIDS pandemic, poverty and political instability. So please do be praying for the students involved in the movements across our region as they seek to speak the truth of the gospel into all of these difficult situations.

Also, there are plans taking shape currently to implement a gospel project across the region. The movements have access to thousands of copies of John’s Gospel (known as Africa Life) to distribute to students. Please pray for the finances needed to allow this project to work, for the enthusiasm of IFES students to share these gospels with their friends, and for God’s word to impact and change the region.

For more info on the EPSA region (or other IFES regions around the world) go to the IFES website and click on PRAY.

In summary: praying.

On staff conference in the bush.

After I returned from my brief but fun-filled trip home I spent a couple of days in bed sleeping it off and then re-packed my bags, headed back to the airport and flew down south for the SCO staff conference.

We stayed at a ‘campsite’ in the bush, just across the lagoon from Hermanus (a small town, about an hour and half from Cape Town, and South Africa’s ‘whale watching capital’).

I have stayed at many, many, many Christian conference centres and campsites in my 25 years of being alive, and I am unable to believe that there is a nicer one in the world than Wortelgat. Beautiful, new houses built by super-nice Christians and then handed over to the charity to be used for conferences. It was hot, and peaceful and safe and one day we walked down to the beach and saw whales! Really.

Also, the people and the teaching were awesome too!

We were studying Philippians in the morning – taken through it by Gideon Para-Mallam, who is the IFES Regional Secretary for our super EPSA (English & Portuguese-speaking Africa) region. We had staff business meetings, year reviews, advice and encouragement on support-raising and Papi (the STEM director) told us all about his sabbatical trip to England to see how UCCF does staff orientation, Relay training and Forum, plus lots more. And I saw a Baboon spider and a poisonous snake (which made the campsite seem a tad less like paradise!)

It was a very fun week. Wonderful to spend time with the rest of the staff, and a great encouragement to go into the final month with enthusiasm to ‘end well’.

In summary: ready to move to the bush (once all the snakes are gone).

On goodbyes.

The time is coming for goodbyes. There’s now less than a month till I leave Jo’burg and only 39 days till I leave the country, and whilst I am looking forward to many things about going home, leaving my lovely friends here is not one (of those things).

This week marked the beginning of that, as my lovely friend Cion packed up all of her stuff and headed back to America. So the last few days have been heavily influenced by spending lots of time before she left.

Cion cooking brunch

Eggs & Bacon

We had a braai for her last week and a brunch for her on Sunday morning, and besides that I’ve spent a great deal of time hanging out in her flat and helping her to pack up her life from the last two and half years, encouraging her to cull her wardobe and assisting in the weighing of luggage.

She flies this afternoon and I will miss her a lot. But also conscious of the fact that this is only the beginning of the many, many goodbyes that will be taking place over the next month, and really can’t believe that there’s so little time left here.

In summary: sad.

On English-country weddings

In the second week of October I had the great joy of a whistle-stop trip back home to my beloved homeland. I spent a lot of time on airplanes (and too much time in Dubai airport, where even the fish pond wasn’t enough to entertain me), spent brief but lovely time with my wonderful family, including meeting my newest niece, the delightful Lola, saw friends, and enjoyed walking safely and taking lots of forms of public transformatio.

However the actual reason for my trip home was to attend the wedding of my super-duper bff, Fiona.

And it was awesomeness personified.

Highlights included: helping to decorate the church and cater the reception, seeing a few lovely university friends, staying with Fi’s charming and hospitable family, playing the very English ‘Aunt Sally’ at the pub on the day before the wedding, bagpipes in Oxfordshire (and the fact that my accent has clearly morphed enough that the – Scottish – piper was convinced that I was a fellow countryperson) and the fact that my actual invitation to the wedding didn’t arrive in Jo’burg till a week after the happy couple were already hitched.

Rasmus with a spreadsheet (not an uncommon site!)

Catering a reception

Heather and Hearts

Mr & Mrs Rasmus Koefoed-Jespersen

Being home was lovely and coming back was hard (particularly due to the long journey, and the fact that one of the flight attendants on the trip from Dubai to Jo’burg kept stroking my hair, which was pretty creepy) but improved greatly after I got some sleep.

Enjoying the last month and a bit in Jozi though.

Much joy and many felicitations (which is a word I have never used before) to Mr and Mrs Koefoed-Jespersen.

In summary:  looking forward to December 13th

On failing to learn.

Okay, so check out the topic and date of my last post and recognise how lame I am at this blogging regularly malarky.

To be fair, I’m not as bad as some people (Mrs Reid, that means you) and admittedly October has been a bit of a hectic month, but nevertheless, apologies and expect a few posts in the next couple of days to catch y’all up on what I’ve been doing recently.

 

On being a better blogger.

It’s actually been an entire month and a day since I last blogged – shame on me. When I go visiting other blogs and the authors haven’t posted in a day or so I judge them for their failure to keep me entertained.

Hypocrite? Me? Never.

So, let me update you on what’s was ‘up’ in September.

I went to the SCO Associates (graduates) conference.

I started running an evangelism course for the Wits guys – and they started going out on campus and telling people the gospel (awesomeness!)

Home of the Wits SCO office

The new SCO Wits committee were elected.

I went to college and learnt lots of stuff about righteousness, sanctification and Hebrew poetry.

I continued to enjoy one to one gladness.

I did a great deal of crochet.

I enjoyed another of South Africa’s many public holidays – let’s hear it for Heritage Day.

I had some lovely time hanging out with lovely friends.

I started to get a little bit freaked out that the end of the year is fast approaching and so began to make vague attempts at looking for a j-o-b.

Joy of joys, my favourite older sister gave birth to her third daughter, and named her Lola.

And so for the final days of September, the following line was stuck on repeat in my head:

“Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl…“

At the Copa - Copacabana...

Good month.

Tomorrow is the great joy of Gauteng leadership training day, church on Sunday and then the almost unbearable excitement of Monday and a flight back to the northern hemisphere! Thrills.

In summary: surprised at how quick September came and went.

On Spring

Today is the first day of Spring – it’s official! And I have to say that I am pretty excited about the fact that spring weather here is hotter than a good summer day in the old country. Admittedly, in about two weeks I’ll probably start complaining about the heat and the fact that I’m melting. But right now, I’ve just got joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart (both because of the love of Jesus, and the fact that I get to start wearing summer skirts and flip-flops again!)

I spent this past weekend at the church camp, which was a great deal of fun. We had PJ Smyth (Pastor of the Jo’burg New Frontiers church – GodFirst) speaking on how and why we should love Jo’burg – a message that I definitely needed to hear after the events of the previous Monday – and just a generally lovely time of hanging out in the sunshine and getting to know new people. Very wonderful.

Then, yesterday and today have been spent with my lovely SCO Wits peeps, on a retreat. There were ten of us in total, studying God’s word, praying and just spending time with one another and it was certainly an encouraging time. A particular highlight came yesterday evening when we took a trip up Northcliff Hill (Jo’burg’s highest point) to watch the sunset, sing praises to God and pray over the city. Also very wonderful. [click on the photos to make them bigger!]

Beautiful sunset

Jozi lights

Me and my girls

The Wits Kids

And in other news – along with all of the many other people who are on strike here at the mo, it has recently come to my attention that the postal service have been in that gang for the last few weeks, so if you’ve sent me something recently and are wondering why I’ve been rude and not said thank you, that’s because it hasn’t been delivered.

However, if you sent me something a little longer ago and haven’t heard anything, it’s also not down to my rudeness, but most likely has been stolen somewhere between landing in South Africa and arriving at my house. The joy of living here.

Thanks for the thought though eh?

In summary: spring has sprung and I am happy.

On mission

This weekend the church that I am part of here in Jo’burg was hosting George Verwer (founder of the mission agency of awesomeness, Operation Mobilisation). I went to hear him speak last night and he was, as expected, great. Very encouraging chat, and so obviously very excited about mission (and excited about getting people excited about mission). At the end of the service they auctioned the jacket that he had been wearing and a guy in the church won with a bid of R30,000 (about £3200) – which was pretty cool, and made some of us wonder if that should be the church’s new policy towards fundraising.

But in general a very helpful talk, particularly as I put more thought into what I’m going to beyond December 13th this year.

In other news. Today a man attempted to mug me while I was waiting for the bus. He wanted my phone, but once he’d seen it decided that it was too rubbish to be worth bothering with and left with nothing. My first (and hopefully last) brush with Jo’burg crime: basically just weird and slightly amusing.

In summary: inspired, encouraged and glad to still have my phone.

George Verwer in the same type of jacket that was auctioned