A Lapse

Sorry chaps.

I haven't blogged for a while, i'm not sure anyone will hear this even...

So, the reason is this... Having had my life changed by South Africa I want to carry on the spirit i was doing things there, in England, but it's not as easy (it's harder to see the need that people have...)

But... I have been given a one off, donation of 100 pounds! to use! how should I best use it in England to touch and teach???!!!

A Stolen Idea...

Morning all, yesterday was a bit of a restful day, A beautiful lie in and then just hoovering out the cars because they were a bit of a state.

I also managed to fit in a trip to the woodcutters (the pub!) with Phil which is always rather nice.

On Monday we had study group and a few simple questions were posed which someone else had posted on their blog... I thought I'd see if any of you oaks could come up with some good answers to the question!

Simple Question, Profound answer... (quotes please)

Why did Jesus have to die? Does that limit God's power?

X

Easter Feast

It's Easter Sunday in the morning, Mary and the other ladies will have already found the empty tomb!

The privelege is mine this morning to lead the bread and wine service at Mariannhill this morning, I woke up early to read through some passages, I think I'm just about ready, God really answers your call for help if you trust in him, he will have something wonderful to say through me today i'm sure.

Yesterday was a lovely day, sharing a Braii with my Brothers and Sisters at Mariannhill, in a place called Shongweni, half an hour from the M-Hill... We would love to start a Good News Centre there, and interest was shown from a number of people when we invited them to our Braii and chatted with them, praised with them and prayed with them.

It's great to have a couple more people here with us at for the week, Simon and Anna James arrived yesterday and we all enjoyed a meal at Moyo's restaurant by the Beach in Durban Centre. Lovely. We then shared the days God moments on the beach :D

X

Saffer-phile

It seems British Airways will finally let me fly today... So after an emotional roller-coaster of enjoyment back in the UK, great to see family and friends, I'm back off to the second hemisphere to begin all over again. A P2P week starts on friday, they're usually fantastic so ace man.

I'll get back to blogging when I'm there. I didn't think you'd want to hear about what I was doing in England (today I visited my mate, we had a beer... etc.) but as it happened it was really quite fun so maybe I should have done :D

x

Thinking, Waiting, Drinking, Stateing

This blog is brought to you by my dear friend coffee. Just woken up for the first (and last for the moment) day in Durban, and found we now have Internet what a lovely system. smooth, fast, uninterrupted and two metres from where I sleep and where I brew my coffee. In 8 hours time, I'll be hopping on the plane to London baby, It will take a while. I have grown an "Africa beard" so that I surprise my family and make them think I've turned into a wild animal whilst I've been over here. It is actually partly true.

Bye Bye Jo Bo

10.20 Thursday morning, I've just packed ready to head back to Durban... then tomorrow I'll catch a flight back to England :D Excitement!

My time in Johannesburg has been fantastic as always, for me the stand out moment was finishing painting a Mural on the new community centre at Thembisa, it's a sort of symmetrical design of pairs of animals, all rather abstract, but meant in some way to represent God's Ark that Noah built. Phil designed the template and we all set to painting, we worked well as a team, the paint was the perfect ammount, the day was awesomely hot for the paint to dry, and the time we had to complete it was exactly the right time, so I have a feeling we were helped to finish it!

See you soon England.

What are we promoting? Fun!

We’ve had a great time in Johannesburg so far, yesterday we did the third installment of “street fun” in Esselen Park, it mainly involves organised chaos! With about 60 children turning up, we played football, sack races, singing and water balloon competitions!

It’s really a great thing to be able to liven up the days of these poor kids, we give them sweets and apples, so they receive a bit more nourishment than normal, and they sing praises to God too.

A little saying I heard today that I thought was fun “if the weather man says there is a 60% chance of rain, what he really means is that there’s a 40% chance of sun!”

Anyway, I am really excited to be coming back to England, even if it’s only for a week, it’s still going to be great to see family and friends, and to finally try my own home made beer out at last!

By the way if anyone has been trying to call or text then it hasn’t worked because my phone got stolen… If you want my new number then email me and I’ll reply, don’t really want to put it on the net…

God Bless x

Catch, step back, throw, repeat.


What you looking at?



He's so tall

Durban - Johannesburg - and Snoek

Doosh... A follow up on last times blog, we didn't go to the rugby, instead we had a great evening with the teenagers of Mariannhill, discussing Genesis, and then having a dance party and singing session! They are a lovely bunch, Mlu really seems to be coming along and participating more frequently :) whoever he is you ask...

On Sunday Phil Ashcroft gave the exhortation, he gave a really clear talk on the sabbath- coining the phrase Kingdom Day, which in essence is what the sabbath was meant to be about (follow up references and hopefully you'll find the same thing!)

Then Phil, Naomi Midgely, Laura, Christy and Myself travelled to Johannesburg (Kempton Park to be exact) to meet with the wonderful Scheepers family (my family from abroad!) where we are concentrating our efforts on helping prepare a new good news centre in a township called Tembisa, it's looking fantastic.

We've had two days of creche help (cuddle project - helping poor creches with new paint, shelves, plaster the walls etc) and we've just ended today with a relaxing Braai, where a Snoek fish was Barbequed! tasted delicious, it's a very meaty fish typical of the Cape region (Jo-berg is far away from that in Gauteng) Where Hendri is from, so he was tonights chef! We also had a laugh with some sparklers and my camera, so I'll post some of those pictures up for you now.

Tommorow is really more of the same, with an emphasis on trying to finish the renovations at one creche in particular (Kalina's if you must know) I'll try and remember to get some pictures of that as well, but that's for tommorow.

Great news to hear that the James's have had their Jabs and can join us soon! There's plenty of work to do, also Simon, be prepared to do a talk at the drop of a hat :D

Love, Hugs and mushy Kisses. Matthew



Llewelyn and Christy play with fire...


Laura, Liezl and Hendri Try their hand.


Johan sorts the Braai out for us.


We are in Africa after all...

Rugby?

Sawbona!

The weather has righted itself, and we're back to singeingly hot, we're also back to friday which means its concert day! at the BEC in Durban we have a singing session to draw in the crowds at 11 every friday, calling it a concert is a bit steep but... we aim high... The Zulu songs are the biggest 'crowd' pleasers. It gets results as well, last week 3 people signed up for bible courses on friday, compared to 6 or 7 on a normal day. We also got a standing ovation from some nearby hairdressers :) good times, God works some wonders through us sometimes.

After that at 4.00 we start a new youth program at Mariannhill, an hour study then fun and games after, pool, table tennis etc, and snacks galore... I hope...

If it finishes up in time, and we somehow manage to be back in durban for 6.00 then i really want to go watch the sharks play the cheetahs at kings park (rugby) the super 14 rugby series, RSA, OZ and NZ is awesome! really fast and frantic, better attacking play than in England but worse defence, so it's really entertaining.... But that looks a bit unlikely at the moment!

Thanks for Birthday messages. The meal at 'nourish' did not dissapoint, the food is awesome, the steak is tender, the beer is cold, enough said.

Boldly striding into 24

In keeping with my new resolution, i'm writing more :D

Today is a day of renovation, we are going to mason lincoln (happys) school, to continue refurbishing their bathrooms, because they are disgusting... new paint, new tiles, new taps and new windows, it's not much but it's making a difference.

It's a bizarrely cold (20ish) and wet day today after yesterday which was incredibly baking all day and then at 6.00 it clouded over and we had the most incredible display of God's power, huge lightning storm and flashfloods which flooded the road in front of westville hall, which i was then able to swim down!!! EESH!

I've just finished my coffee, and if I don't leave now i'll hold up the others, so have a good day, God Bless...

Quite glad it's not my birthday anymore, one day is just about the right length for it!

xxx

African Birthdays

A nice tree in Westville

Durban gets busy man! This is near enough the city centre

Another Durban centre shot Mcd's have made it here (obviously)


Today is my first birthday out of England, It's rather strange to be sat in an air conditioned cafe with sweat pouring off me from the walk here on the 16th February...

The other volunteers got me some awesome presents this morning the best was a street surfer, a cross between a skateboard, snowboard, surfboard thing that goes along hard surfaces rather well! It is tres bien.

God willing at twelve today (in an hours time) I'm visiting a brother Marcus (member of marrianhill) who is in hospital in Durban for bone cancer, he keeps miraculously staying alive! So wer'e popping in to visit, sing him some songs, read him a bit of the bible, and just generally entertain him!

Later on today we're going to a restraunt called Nourish in Westville which I have heard very good things about from a number of people. And just hopefully we'll have a nice birthday meal.

In Durban, life's a beach :D



Just outside westville mall, didn't get my sunglasses on in time for the self timer shot... This is so fresh it's almost like looking at a webcam.

Sunday 2:31 and baking like an oven

Heyall,

Happy Valentines everyone!

Just got a few spare minutes round the Bealers home, thought I'd let you know what I'd been up to today and at the same time break a record and blog two days in a row...

Today has been awesome, for me it started at 5.30 when i got up to play tennis with some guys at westville tennis club (zazz Mahen and Ronnie) They were all very good especially in the serve area, and i was quite rusty having not played since august! but i got a bit looser after a couple of drubbings, and started to play a few shots... Next week will be a different story!

We went to westville meeting today for the service and it was two awesome talks by craig Blewett and Tim Genders, both really about taking Jesus into your life in a real way, not just in a technical or legalistic way or theoretical but really living a life of Jesus in you. It was reinforced by some cool visual aids (weetabix and violins!) and also by a baptism! Togo was baptised and it was really moving and special occasion :)

Then Katie and Me whizzed over to Durban hall to give a sunday school class, heavily based on netball and comparisions with life!! Honestly there were some really cool lessons in it. Next we played it with chalk home circles on the floor... and ate spaghetti bolognaise which was delicious.

Were about to go back to westville hall (Bethel) for a slide show on the Kili trip that mark, cam, zazz and me are hosting... Should be fantastic.

All for now, Much Love every one Mathevus x

Klimbing Kili For Kids

Well Well Well....

God gets me to do the most amazing things...

Firstly sorry that it's been ages since i Blogged.

About 3 weeks ago I found out that I was going to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro! and I only had a week to prepare, so I spent some frantic time trying to prepare myself and get the right gear and then it was off to Tanzania to climb the giant of Africa!!

Mount Kili From the Plane.

I was part of a team of 6 and the reason for going was to raise awareness that the COPT (community outreach program trust) is running low on funds and needs to gain more donations to keep running, especially to help Kids in really really poor impoverished areas to get free food and free pre school education. It's really important and 100% of donations go to the children because everyone who works for the COPT (including me) is a volunteer.

So... we spent 5 days climbing and 1.5 coming down. It was a climb that involved everything, all emotions from joy and extreme happiness to stress, pain and giving up, I gave up 3 times on the climb, and each time God made things happen to get me back going and to climb the mountain.

I started suffering altitude sickness from day two, mainly in the form of mind numbing headaches throbbing away and pounding from the inside of my skull...

The mountain is beautiful though and sunrise over kili makes it all worth the pain, the rainforest is also such an incredible sight, the many shades of green, the intricate vine workings holding everything together and the diversity of tree specie, shape and form. It was a real blessing to be able to go, because it was a climb full of personal lessons, mainly that I cannot do anything from my own strength, but I need to rely on others, especially on God. This was shown mostly when I Gave up climbing 100 metres away from the top of the Mountain... I had thrown up, I had a headache, I was dizzy, I couldn't concentrate on one thought, and I just had a lot of pain, I sat down and every part of me said go down the mountain, I pleaded with the guide to let me retreat and get to lower altitude, but the guide grabbed one arm and my teammate grabbed the other and they hauled me up the last bit so that I made it to the crater rim of the mountain! I was dazed and unaware, but at least I was there!

Me shattered at the top (trying to smile!)

I quickly raced/tumbled down the mountain and soon got better when there was a better amount of Oxygen in my lungs at the lower altitude. It was a lesson in suffering as well, but for me it finished after a few days, for the kids in south africa it lasts a lifetime... so..... to help out you can donate money and make there lives a bit less full of suffering. any amount is appreciated

www.coptrust.org.za/getinvolved.aspx

This is the sight to donate at.

http://www.klimbingkiliforkids.blogspot.com/

This is the blog that was updated as we went along.

The View from the top of the crater.

A huge Mountain (from halfway up!)