14. Earning Our Keep

April and May have been our busiest months yet. It’s great to be really earning our keep and we love being busy, it seems to have flown by in a blur.

So what have we been up to? The boys are doing well – Reuben continues to be the outgoing, outspoken one, shouting ‘Good Morning’ as he enters his class each day and his latest phrase is ‘daddy, what ARE you doing?’. Daniel is learning all about the continents and the planets at school, and even more importantly can now make a cup of tea – next step is tea in bed for mummy and daddy – oh to dream.

 Jason has been involved in loads of stuff. At his desk he has been creating logos for each of the J-Life representative countries. He has also been out and about presenting the J-Life vision to pastors and church network leaders, working on the silo conversion (yes my friends it’s still going on) and remodelling the office here with Tina who is one of the other fabulous staff members. This involved 2 days of removing 20 years of varnish from  the floor with small orbital sanders, painting walls, remodelling desks, and setting up the IT network. All of this stuff is well within his comfort zone.
 

But what is way out of his comfort zone is managing a group of 14 year olds to do 2 days of service at a local pre-primary school. A group of kids from a school in Johannesburg came to the farm for 3 days, during which they had to live on $1 per day and undertake a service project in a local township. The aim is to get them see beyond their privileged four walls and get them serving in the community and have fun at the same time.

Jason and I were responsible for one of the service projects: renovating a garden at a local pre-primary school, taking the children of the school out for a ‘hike’, and doing a baking activity. The school was set up to provide quality education to orphans living on site and also welcomes fee paying children (the fee payers effectively pay for the staff) - it’s the school Daniel and Reuben go to and it’s massively diverse culturally. As an aside I don’t think there can be any education quite like it and I’m excited about how wide their horizons are being broadened.Today Daniel and Reuben were singing the SA national anthem which is in lots of different languages…of course they could have been singing complete gibberish, but it was pretty cool nonetheless.

 

Anyway back to the plot…working at a school is one thing for Jason, but being responsible for 15 teenagers whilst doing it was quite another. He pretty much broke out in a sweat every time we talked about it on the run up and admitted that he would rather give a presentation to a national board of directors than deal with a group of children. I’ll point out the obvious irony before anyone else does – yes we are working full time for an organisation focussed on youth!

The ‘hike’ was something else – the risk assessments in the UK would NEVER have allowed it to go ahead, but we didn’t lose or injure any children and lots of fun was had. In our group of teenagers there were a couple of ‘too cool for school’ type kids. It was really special seeing them engage with the toddlers – one particular guy called Dylan is apparently a real character at school, but with the littlies he was amazing – incredibly fun and interactive with them. The next week the children were all asking where he was (he’s the guy on the right with the child on his shoulders)!

As well as the projects there was chance for the students to open up to things going on in their lives, to ask questions about life and faith and just be real. It was such a privilege to be able to pray with some of the guys and be a general listening ear – it seems that 14 year olds in South Africa are no different to those in the UK, and boy am I glad I’m not 14 again.

After the event J admitted that it wasn’t nearly so difficult as he thought and would almost go so far as to say that he ‘enjoyed’ it – proof ladies and gentlemen that miracles do happen.

So what else has been happening? I have been working hard in the office revamping the core material and generating some new material for second generation training – a really enjoy that sort of work although pretty dull writing about it so I’ll not bore you with the details of my reformatting exercise.

We’ve also been involved in the annual strategic goal setting meetings for the international team. Despite the long meetings it was really good to be part of it, and to have real input into this process – it will also help as we move on. I also have work arising from this that will keep me going for a while yet – well into our time in Zambia.

Speaking of which… it’s only 2 months to go and we are beginning to get a little nervous. It’s not really the fact of moving to Zambia – it’s the thought of leaving here, where the community is real and we have developed hopefully lasting friendships.  For readers who are of a praying persuasion it would be great if you could put a word in for continued peace… and a suitable place to stay! On our move to Zambia it now looks like we will be making the move in mid-late August – will keep you posted but we will get there eventually.

Jason’s parents are currently here to see us for a couple of weeks – more about their visit and our exploits with them in the next blog post.