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...