12. Bottle Rockets and Cactus Jam

They say that there's a fine line between genius and insanity. As I stood in our kitchen wearing welding gloves and peeling cactus fruit to make jam, I found myself wondering just which side of that line I was on. There's probably a reason you don't see much cactus jam in the shops. Personally I think this is because the world just isn't ready for it. Remember that Einstein's theories were initially rejected for being just too far out and wacky, and look where HE ended up. Yes, dear reader, one day you'll be in Spar buying your newspaper and jar of Stonier's Cactus Conserve, and you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Or maybe not. Sometimes it's good to do things simply because no one else is doing them, because they are far out, because they're cool, and because it's the school holidays, you've had the kids full time for three days, four hours, and seven minutes and you have completely run out of ideas.

The boys had almost three weeks off, and not only did we survive, we actually managed to have a good time as well. Claire, naturally, because she's SuperMum, spent weeks on the Internet looking at craft ideas for kids (Ed: No SuperMum here AT ALL, just an acute awareness that I would go mad without some form of entertainment that didn't involve iPad or DVDs). So during those two weeks we made hovercrafts out of old CDs, super strength bubble mixture, birthday cards for all and sundry, hand-and-foot print pictures, balloon whizzers, bottle rockets, a mini Mike Wachowski (Monsters Inc.), and we started a tree house.

The eponymous bottle rockets were the best. You take a 1L plastic drinks bottle, drill a hole in the lid to accept a valve cut off an old inner tube, then decorate it with fins, nose cone, whatever you think will make it fly further. Daniel gave his a superman cape, mine had spiral fins to make it spin and a long nose cone for stability. The other kids we had round did their own variations. To make them fly you fill the bottle a third full of water, put on the lid (now at the base), and attach a foot pump. At about 30psi the rocket shoots off leaving the valve in the foot pump. We were getting over 30 metres high with ours and we had competitions for furthest, highest, most attractive, and best crash. Just about the best fun you can have with 300ml of water in my opinion. http://tinyurl.com/dylumcc



We've been getting to know some of the other parents from school and we managed a couple of playdates over the holidays. Daniel has one particular friend, Ari, who has just come to South Africa from Greece with his parents who have re-immigrated due to the economic crisis in Europe. He and Daniel get on well despite the language barrier. His parents are pretty cool too - they run the local petrol station...we are still waiting for a discount. Another of the parents is a pastor of a local Afrikaans church and we had a good day at their place in town, which, amongst other things, has a super fast (for Africa) uncapped internet connection. That's not the main reason for developing a relationship but it sure is handy - especially when the iPad wants to do 65 major updates.

I really loved having the kids around - taking them swimming, building the tree house, having fun - and I'm missing them now they are back at school. They were ready to go back though, Daniel wanted to see his friends, and the house was starting to feel small. It was good to have some quality family time and to be reminded that we are here as a family, by design not by default: it's not Claire and I with the kids in tow, it's Family Stonier and we each have our place of value. None of us could do it without the others. God knew what he was on about when he got us here.




The last two weeks also saw us becoming fully fledged staff members. Our three months of training finished and we graduated to the team full time. Our pay went up by 300% (300% of zero is zero), and we can now use the binding machine. Exciting times. Our roles are rapidly falling into place now we have some space. My concern was that I would just be the maintenance guy because I know how to rewire a kettle, restart the borehole, and build a wardrobe, but that hasn't happened. I'm doing those things (I enjoy doing them, for one thing), but we're being given strategic ministry things to do as well: I'm working with one of the guys on recruiting people for the training, and Claire and I are revamping and helping to run an upcoming 6-week program which aims to mix short term mission training and practice with some training in the core J-Life leadership material...it's aimed at young adults from overseas and South Africa. Claire is working on some of the J-Life training documentation to harmonise style and format, and is developing some additional material. In between all this I am continuing with the build I have mentioned before.

It's quiet here on site with only the staff around, but it's also nice to be masters of our own clock: we can eat as a family early enough to get the kids to bed on time - the extra sleep is helping with their mood, and we can do our work pretty much to our own schedule which is nice.



I'm having a concerted push to get the building work finished this month, so myself and another guy, Meshek, are working together from around half eight in the morning until five at night. Meshek is great at rendering and knocking holes in walls, and is teaching me builder's Zulu. It's coming along nicely (the build, not the Zulu).









Being English, I am part of a culture that knows how to pack a lot into a small space, so we used the wasted area above the stairs to add some built-in wardrobes. It's worked well as you can see in the pictures.




So we're settling in here, which is both good and bad: we love the community, and feel very affirmed in our place here...but of course here is temporary and we will soon be moving to Zambia. I'm looking forward to a new challenge there, but leaving the community in South Africa will be tough. More and more as we integrate into J-Life, we find that its theology and understanding of Christianity matches our own: beautifully simple, inclusive, relational and, well, not that religious. What that means exactly will be the subject of the next blog.

For now here's a picture of a sunrise last week that I took from just behind our house.

11. The Bride Price

We've just had the J-Life global summit. All of J-Life's leaders from around Africa converged on us here for the annual conference - 21 countries represented, speaking a combined total of something like 40 languages and covering a huge range of cultures, from the gregarious Ghanaians and Nigerians, the quiet and self-assured french West Africans, the gentle and relational Central Africans, and the outgoing and friendly East Africans. You really can split people up by region, both in looks and in demeanor. For anyone who is interested, we'll ultimately be working with David Mulonga (gentle and relational) who is the black guy in the grey shirt in the middle of row two.

Being exposed to so many new cultures has been great. I realised that until now I have had this kind of un-thought-about innate assumption that there was an "African" culture, and I suppose by implication that the different countries were therefore in some way sub-cultures. Of course, that's ridiculous; just as ridiculous as it would be to claim there's a European culture and that the Finns are basically just English people in funny hats. So it has been nice to nip that train of thought off this week and get an insight into the diversity in Africa.

One day towards the end of the week, Jacob from DRC came over to our house unannounced and we had a really great chat about life and work and so forth. He has the distinction of being one of only a handful of men I have ever shaken hands with who is taller than me, and the only one with longer legs. He is 203cm tall to my 199, and has 38" inside legs to my 37". And, by-the-by, there's an insight into Tall Culture for all you vertically unremarkable people out there: when you're tall you just love sitting down with another tall person to compare vital statistics and amenable shopping destinations, certainly much more than you love people asking you what the weather is like up there, as if it was funny the first time you heard it, let alone the nine hundred and thirty seventh. Jacob is on row four in a grey shirt to your right of the white guy in the lurid orange jacket.

Jacob is engaged to be married to his girlfriend, and has been for some time. They can't get married until Jacob has raised the lobola, the Bride Price, to pay off the investment her family has made in raising her. The going rate depends on many things: how beautiful the girl is, the relative wealth of the two families, her age. Jacob needs to raise about $700 dollars so he can swap her for a cow. To clarify, he wants to take her home, and the agreed price is one cow, which gets left with her father. I didn't want anyone to think he is going to trade her in for livestock. I asked Jacob what the exchange rate of one cow said about his prospective wife. "Oh, it means she's very beautiful. Some women would only need a sheep or maybe a goat. Of course I'll need to buy some chickens for her aunts as well.". But of course.

With having so many people around for so much of the time, Daniel has really been growing in confidence and now will just go off and play on his own (within limits) on the farm. A couple of days ago I was at home when Daniel rushed in, "Daddy, I've just seen some boys I don't know, can I go and play with them?". That, in itself, was a real milestone, but what happened next was fantastic. I was trying to work out who the boys might be so I could set Daniel the appropriate boundaries - the kids of the predominantly Zulu farm workers quite often just go off into the woods on their own which is out of bounds for Daniel - so I asked him if they were white boys or black boys. He thought about if for a long time then eventually said "I can't remember. Does it matter?". A better illustration that kids are colour blind and prejudice-free will be hard to find.

Both the boys are changing lots at the moment: Daniel is becoming more confident and self assured, and getting much better at controlling his behaviour, while Reuben is starting to push the boundaries and is talking more, putting coherent sentences together (coherent to us, anyway). Daniel is learning to play chess, and has got pretty good at Risk. They say the saddest day in a kid's life is the day he realises he can beat his dad at most things. Daniel has experienced that at the age of five*.

You'll remember from a previous blog that the international trainees stay at the farm for three months of training, while the guys from South Africa come and go for a series of intensives interspersed with practical weeks implementing what they learned. The SA guys have just come back for the second of their intensives and it is really great to see them - there are some shining stars who we'll be staying in contact with as friends, and the boys love spending time with them all. Related to that, we've finally settled on a church (it's only taken two months), where one of the trainees is the youth and children's worker. It's small, friendly, well-led, and has good teaching and worship. And, good as those reasons are for going, there's another really big bonus: kids' group starts at 9am while the main church doesn't start until 10. This means all the parents get an hour off to sit and read and have coffee. It is so civilised that I may never again be completely satisfied with another church.

When we arrived in January we really hit the ground running, so the expression goes. We didn't have time to stop and think or to miss home. Friends here warned us that the homesickness would kick in during the third month. They were dead right: I am beginning to miss home and family and life back in the UK. I find myself worrying about the projects I left at work, about our house, about friends. I hit a problem with some DIY and go to the cupboard to get the correct tool only to remember that the tool is in a different cupboard, 12,000km away because for some reason it never occurred to me that I should pack a 14lb sledge hammer or a MIG welder. But really these are all small sacrifices. If the greatest challenges we face are homesickness and an inability to joint metal, then we'll be getting off lightly.

And so we return to the blog title: The Bride Price. The church is often referred to as the bride of Christ: it is his handmaiden, his love. It is how he is changing the world. But there is a price to pay: every one of the leaders in J-Life has sacrificed lots to follow the path they believe is right, as have we. They have given up comfort, and in some cases their safety and security, to spread a message of hope and love and to train others in the skills of making leaders to make disciples to spread that message. We know lawyers, financiers, businessmen, and college principles who have given those things up to be J-Life leaders. Nobody we have spoken to regrets the decision. We certainly don't.
So, like the lobola, the price may be high, but the return is worth the investment.


* Groening et al, Simpsons Season 1, Moaning Lisa

10. We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto

We had a tornado the other night. It felled a pine tree with a 30cm trunk within site of our house. I don't have a theological point to make about that, but thought it was cool enough to mention, and it made for a good link to that great title I've been waiting to use. As I write this there is a terrific thunderstorm starting, I think about the tenth since we have been here. The last big one took out our Internet connection for a week, so if you're reading this and it is not mid February you know why. Coming from the UK this has all been something of a surprise: one thing you can say for definite about the British weather is that there really isn't very much of it. Overcast, light drizzle, heavy drizzle, light rain, heavy rain. That's about it. In the UK you can safely go out of your door with only the tiniest chance of being electrocuted by a cloud or cast three hundred metres by an errant cyclone. Still, it is all quite exciting. Unless the bread maker is mid-cycle when the power goes out. Then it's just irritating. But the sudden, run-for-your-life rain storms that come from nowhere and five minutes later go back to nowhere have to be seen to be believed.

We've been here a month now, so apologies that we haven't put up more blogs; but honestly we just haven't had time. Our days have been really intense: here's a summary.

• 06:15 get up (anyone who knows me knows what that is doing to me)
• 07:15 pack the boys off to school with Auntie Tara
• 07:30 staff prayers
• 08:00 small group time with trainees
• 08:30 breakfast
• 09:15 lectures
• 11:30 short break
• 12:00 lectures
• 12:30 one of us goes to pick up the boys
• 13:30 lunch
• 14:30 lectures / one of us looking after boys
• 16:00 odd jobs / acts of service
• 17:00 exercise
• 18:00 break
• 18:30 dinner
• 19:00 one of us puts boys to bed
• 19:30 evening meeting (or free time)
• 20:30 finish
• 21:30 bed

We have another week of this level of work then it should calm down a fair bit; there are twelve trainees here plus us. The split is 50% South Africans and 50% Other, the Others being from South Sudan, Gabon, Rwanda, Nigeria, Mozabique, and of course the UK. The South Africans are all young guys (well, young to me, anyway) doing a month of training now as part of a full gap year program, while the others are doing the training in one block of three months before they head back home. We are slightly different as we have a foot in both camps: we are being trained in the JLife ethos and material for three months while also working as staff for JLife international. At the end of this week all the South Africans leave to go and put the training into practice in their own communities, while we and the others stay on for two more months of lectures.

The cultural mix is great, from the obsessively polite English guys, through the Nigerians who really really don't get queuing, to the interestingly gallic, French-speaking Gabonaise, and the Sudanese woman who catches giant grasshoppers to keep live in her pencil case and stick on people in class. All in, I think there are seven different first-languages spoken and many people speak at least three. I've really enjoyed conversing in French with the guys from Gabon and Rwanda, although I have come to realise the many limitations of learning a language solely by watching subtitled movies and reading Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers. Knowing how to say "quelle fantastique baguette magique!" has, I have discovered, limited utility when discussing the tragic drain by Chinese conglomerates of the natural resources of West Africa. It means "what a fabulous magic wand!", by the way.

One great thing is that the Africa Cup Of Nations is on at the moment, and if there's one activity that can unite any mix of cultures, it's football. The guys upstairs from us have a TV and so we all pile up there to watch games (I discovered they also have a porcupine in the fridge). Here's Daniel in his cherished Bafana Bafana shirt celebrating with Uncle Makgale. (sadly, shortly after this photo was taken, SA got comprehensively whipped by Mali and are no longer in the competition). Makgale is an awesome guy. Yesterday he gave me a small bag of biltong which cost him about half his week's budget, it really was a sacrificial gift for him. Nice biltong too.

Reuben has become something of a camp mascot, everyone loves him and he'll go to anyone for hugs and high-fives. His cheeky grin gets him a lot of attention, particulately from the girls. Last weekend, the boys and girls were split, with the boys heading off to a lake house for a couple of days of paintball, bromance, and talking about the things that have developed out of our past which hold us back from being Real Men (anger, resentment, insecurity). The girls made cookies, played with Reuben, and talked about the same stuff. Great weekend actually, and a lot of the guys had real deep-rooted stuff which came out and was dealt with. Here's Reuben helping out with the cookies.

Thembe, Dhombe, Funile, and Spiwe

It is awesome being here with our boys for so many reasons, but one big one is that children just don't recognise cultural barriers. Today we had a bit of a treat and went out for a coffee to a place with a little play centre. Daniel hooked up with an Afrikaans kid and they just played together, Daniel speaking English and this kid speaking Afrikaans, quite happily for an hour. What adults could do that? Then a couple of weeks ago I came home from a lecture to find eight Zulu kids in our house playing trains with Reuben. It was chaos, but it was awesome. There's one little girl, Thembe, who's six and is so sharp it is scary: we have a memory game, about fifty cards you lay face down then turn up one by one to find pairs. Once each card has been turned up once Thembe remembers every position and then just cleans up. She's unbeatable. It is heartbreaking that the school she goes to with her brother and sisters is pretty poor: she's not going to get a good education, she's unlikely to reach her potential in life, and the chances are that she's going to follow her parents and live in a shack on a farm. Not through any lack of love, but just through lack of opportunity. One of the JLife guys teaches her big sister maths, so she has a chance of passing her matriculation at sixteen, and, you know, maybe she'll get a scholarship to go to college and thereby break the cycle for her family. I really hope so.

Apart from lectures we have been doing bits and pieces for JLife: Claire getting to grips with some of the JLife documentation, while I have been building a set of spiral stairs around a grain silo which is being converted into habitable accommodation. I've done bits and pieces of building in the UK, but building in Africa is a whole different ball game. On the first day I asked where to get building sand and the answer was "you dig a hole, you'll find sand eventually". Then there's the bricks. In the UK bricks vary at worst up to 10% in size. Here I would say at best it's 10%, more like 25%. Add to that the mortar which, using sand dug out of the nearest field, tends to be full of twigs and the bones of assorted small animals, and the fact that I was at first given a plastering trowel, and you have an interesting challenge. It's going well though, and I am working with a Zulu guy who is teaching me his language. For anyone who is interested in building in a Zulu area, the Zulu for stairs is 'steppies', bricks are 'iBricki' and cement is 'cement'. Don't say this blog isn't educational.

So a month down and I think we are settling in, finding our identity here. We love the cultural mix and the community life, and the farm is a beautiful location with almost endless trails for hiking and biking. When we need a break from the camp we escape the hour's drive to Joburg to see our good friends from the UK who now pastor a church there and have kids the same age as ours (and, moreover, a nice pool belonging to their church). We have lots to do and are feeling inspired for the impact we can have in JLife. After settling in to the community here we're nervous about leaving for Zambia in five months, but are just trying every day to do what got us this far: trusting in the plans God has for us.

9. Angels carry fire arms

I know this to be true because I met two and saw their guns. Ok, I admit they were dressed as slightly overweight black guys in police uniforms but they were definitely angels. Probably on an exchange program or something.

The story started last Saturday morning. You'll recall from a previous blog post that we shipped a car into South Africa. Well it cleared customs quickly in the first week and was waiting for us to collect it from Durban, 500km down the road. After a number of plans to fetch it were made and changed over the weekend (and let me tell you, cheekily paraphrasing Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard Graf von Moltk, no plan survives contact with Africa for long), I headed down on Monday morning with one of the other J-Life guys who needed to be there to referee an argument about a field.

By four in the afternoon I had the car in my possession, no damage, nothing stolen, no additional customs charges. Amazing. In fact the shipping agent said it was the first car he had ever seen come out of clearing with a full tank of fuel: people usually ship them almost empty, and if they don't the fuel is almost always syphoned out and stolen in the docks. Well not ours, for which I was mightily glad. I decided not to stay the night in Durban but to head back up. I should have been home by nine.

The N3 Durban/Joburg is quite a beautiful road; first it climbs constantly for something like 200km out of Durban towards the Drakensburg mountains and the 1600m plateau on which Joburg and its surroundings sit, then you cross the Drakensburg at Van Reenen's pass, which is picturesque, and finally cruise through a lovely landscape surrounded by rolling hills punctuated by occasional dramatic mountains and escarpments left over from the last period of volcanicity in the area. I'm sure the Cape Garden Route is nicer, but the N3 from Durban to Joburg sure beats the M6 through the industrial wasteland of the English midlands.

Motorways in SA are restricted to 120kmh, and I generally don't speed, so I was cruising along at 120 when a cop stepped into the road ahead of me and waved me in. I had absolutely no idea what was wrong and assumed it was a spot check as I was driving a British car. I rolled down the window and said a cheery hello, in the most polite and quintessentially British accent I could muster.

"Sir could you step out of the car, please, and look at my speed gun. You were driving at 120, see, it says so right here". Fortunately the internal gatekeeper in charge of filtering my thoughts did its job for once, and I didn't say something dumb and sarcastic. "Yes sir", I said, "I see that. Is there a problem?". "Yes there is, you are in an 80 zone".

Ahh. That'll be it then. Doing a full 50% over the limit tends to attract the attention of the people given the task of catching speeders. Nuts.

Now the problem with the police in SA is that a lot of them are corrupt. They routinely take bribes, and actually it can be quite hard to avoid giving them a back-hander because of the clever way they pitch it as an on-the-spot fine. Paying the bribe is pretty much the most pragmatic way out of the situation, but not exactly the path of most integrity, so I decided I wasn't going to accept paying him off.

"Well, sir, you see we have a problem here. Your driver's licence is British so I can't process the fine here...". At this point he leafs through his cherished Big Book Of Fines to show me I am to pay R1500 (about £130). "...so what I must do is take you to the station. But you see, sir, that is 30km away, and I think your time is very precious so you probably don't want to do that...". Here it comes. "...so this gives me a problem.", "Yes, I can see the problem. It is a shame", I said. He continued, "Your family is probably waiting for you to get home. You want to be home quickly...". I'm now just waiting for the drop. "So I will tell you what I can do for you. Because I think you made a mistake and you don't want to pay the whole fine I can right here...", crunch time, "...well, sir I have decided I will give you a warning. Please drive carefully now."

Stunned silence for a moment. "Thank you sir, I appreciate your generosity of spirit, I will not let this happen again", I said meekly, and with that I was on my way. Answer to prayer there. Nice guy. Or more likely just too lazy to drive me to the station and back. Whatever the reason I was just glad to get away with it. However he is not one of the angels. No, the angels appear later, when, for the second time that day, I end up sat in a police car.

Picturesque the N3 may be, but the government seem to have given little thought to the fact that something like 100% of vehicles using it will, at some point, need fuel. As I passed a garage I glanced at my gauge and saw I was down to a quarter tank. It would have been a bit of a manoeuvre to get across to that station so I decided to keep going until the next one. Well it turned out later that the next one was over 150km away. After the fuel light had been on for about 50km, with the next garage on the N3 an unknown distance ahead, and fearful of running out of diesel alone in a strange country with no breakdown insurance, I looked on the SatNav for the nearest filling station on a provincial road away from the N3. It found one 30km away. Remember by this point I was sure I was running on fumes and it was dark.

Basically having run out of options I took the next exit and followed the SatNav. After 5km the tarmac ran out and I was on a network of sand roads, blindly following a computer in complete darkness for the remaining 25km. I was in a state of fairly constant prayer by this point, as you might imagine. I eventually pulled into the station, and the attendant told me they had run out of diesel. Oh My Goodness. The SatNav told me the next station was 5km away, so with no choice I headed for it. It was closed. The next one was another 10km away. It, too, was closed. The next was was 21km away. It was non-existent. By this point I had done nearly 120km with the fuel light on. In desperation I punched in the next station, a BP garage 30km away, and set off once more. All of this is on sand roads in the middle of nowhere, with no lights and no infrastructure of any kind, so I was pretty scared.

10km from the BP garage the car died. I prayed that miraculously I could get another few km, and the car burst into life. At 8km it died again, I prayed again, it revived for another km or so. This happened six times until it coasted to a stop about a km from where the computer said the BP garage was, on the edge of a tiny town built around a gas works. I locked up, got out to walk, and phoned the J-Life guys just so they would know where I was in case anything went wrong. All this time I was praying that this would end up as a cool story to tell on the blog and to laugh about for years to come. Obviously, since you are reading this, it did.

About ten seconds after I put down the phone a police car pulled up and asked if I was ok. I threw myself on their mercy and asked for help. The put me in the car, and drove me into town - it turned out the BP Garage was also closed but they knew of another which was open. They had diesel. The guys running it scampered around and found an old plastic watering can which they filled with fuel, and the police took me back to the car. They helped me push my car round so the fuel lines were facing down hill, held the torch while I searched round the engine bay for the manual priming pump, phoned the police mechanic in case we needed him, then cheered twenty minutes later when the car started.

After all that they even accompanied me back to the garage to make sure I didn't get robbed while filling up. Awesome guys. Short on wings, but big on hearts.

While this saga was unfolding, John from J-Life was phoning all his contacts to see if anyone knew anyone in the town where I was stranded. He conferenced-called his mechanic to help me find the priming pump. He even said he would drive out the 200km to pick me up, this at way past ten at night. Community in action.

The cynical among you might ask, if God really answers prayers, why did I coast to a halt 1km from the fuel station. To that I would say that God does not absolve you from the need to put fuel in you car, but he might just shorten the odds in your favour when you're stupid enough not to do so. I drove 150km with the fuel light on, at times at least 20km from the nearest civilisation. From the moment the car started dying, I limped another 10km before it coughed its last. Within a minute of stopping I was picked up by friendly and non-corrupt police officers who drove me to an open fuel station and back, helped me get the car started, and stayed with me until I was on my way home. I call that answered prayer.

I think I have mentioned before that part of the reason for doing what we're doing is so that we don't hit 70 without a story to tell. Well, I'll say it again, be careful what you wish for.

8. Arrivals

After twelve months of planning and ten hours of flying we landed at OR Tambo Airport, Johannesburg at 9.40am local time Saturday morning just over a week ago. The goodbyes were tough, and many tears were shed. As well as the burden of saying goodbye we had four large and heavy pieces of hand luggage, four heavy and full laptop bags and two small children to manhandle onto a plane. None of this was made any easier by Daniel asking hundreds of questions about how planes fly, how do jet engines work, why do planes sometimes land on water…I love the fact that he’s inquisitive, but seriously...sometimes you just need to get on the plane and not have to explain four times why daddy's bag of computer bits had to be unpacked so the man could check for bombs.

The flight itself was remarkably easy (especially as Reuben only wanted attention from Daddy), but getting through Passport control at the other end was a different story. Shattered after very little sleep we had a long walk to passport control (with no trolley for our 120 kilos of ‘hand’ luggage), and then in the queue through security both boys decided to be sick. Reuben was in a carrier on Jason’s back and wasn’t too bad (umm, bad for whom? – ed.), but Daniel looked like a ghost and decided enough was enough and laid down on the floor in a wretched fashion. We had no spare arms to pick him up and nobody took pity on us; they just got cross and told us to stop holding up the queue.

By hook or by crook we got through, collected our hold luggage and went through customs with ease to be greeted with a warm and welcome smile by the wonderful Garton and Abrahmse families. Such a relief! Daniel was sick in the car again on the way to J-Life, but by that stage he had a bit more sympathy from us, and at least he stopped asking questions for a few minutes.

The J-Life main centre sits on a farm about an hour and a half’s drive from the airport. To say that it is beautiful is an understatement, and we've had a couple of hikes through the mountains around the J-Life centre. We're looking forward to exploring more in the coming weeks, and there's a lot to explore: the farm is huge, a few km across in both directions at least. There are rumours of a leopard in the hills, and there are certainly porcupines and lots of buck and birds of prey.

We have our own little three bedroom pad which is the ground floor of a quad of converted grain silos. It’s small, simple, clean and comfortable; we are all very happy with it and the boys have taken to it well. 

Two days in, Reuben decided to dump the cot and go into a bed, which was not exactly how we would have worked the timing but he’s doing fine. The boys love being together in the same room at night, and it has left the spare room free as a playroom for them.

We’ve had the first week to settle in and get accustomed to the new surroundings. Daniel and Reuben have started school; Daniel is loving it, Reuben is taking a little more time, and we spent a great day with Clive and Clare Garton at their house in Jo-burg. We’ve checked out the local supermarket and hung out with the wonderful Abrahmses – John, Lorna, Jordan and Nathan; swimming in the pool, playing football, generally feeling welcome and loved. We’ve had a couple of BBQs (although here they call it a Braii), been for the aforementioned hikes through the mountains, got to know the other staff a little more, and found our bearings. Work started in earnest today and we are looking forward to really getting stuck in.

We haven’t had time to stop and miss the UK yet - the weather and people have put a hold on that for now because it’s still a little like being on holiday. There have however been real tinges of sadness especially when Daniel opened his birthday cards from people in the UK, and when Reuben asks often for their friend (and our God daughter) Annabel. Each time Reuben asks for her, Daniel says “I’m sorry Reuben Annabel’s not here but we’ll see her at Christmas”. Now we at last have a decent internet connection and phone we can start contacting people properly: we've really missed speaking to people this last week.

In the time we've been here we have had Daniel and my (Claire) birthdays – they were both suitably spoilt by the J-Life team but my extra ‘present’ was to be thrown into the pool by John A and a few others after dinner – apparently a ritual on the camp, just a shame we will be in Zambia by the time it comes to Jason's birthday.

All in all it has been a great start. We are definitely in ‘honeymoon’ phase but we think we are going to love being here.

7. An Exercise in Trust

If you ever want to know real trust, ship a car.

First you do a google search for shipping companies, phone a few at random, then contract the one with the nicest-sounding receptionist and/or the best price. Because they don't take credit cards, you transfer £900 quid from your bank account into theirs. In return for this you get an email of a scan of a photocopy of a shipping note, of which you must download and print out two copies.

Some time later you drive your car to a warehouse complex next to a harbour in Kent, where you follow a set of hand-written signs to 'export' past disused buildings, piles of rusting scrap, and burned-out cranes. When finally you go past the last sign you find yourself in a carpark next to a portacabin where a burly man in a ripped fluorescent coat waves you to the back of a disorderly queue of stationary vehicles. You hand him your illegible shipping note and he scribbles something equally illegible on the windscreen in dry-wipe marker.

You leave the keys in the ignition and go home. And that's it. If you remembered to take a spare copy of the shipping note/illegible smear then you can get one of them scribbled on by the man with the marker pen by way of a receipt.

You just have to pray that by some quirk of fate, your car accidentally finds itself on the right boat at the right time.

Then, once it is under way, you google for customs agents in the destination port, email a few at random, then pick one equally at random (because this time you can't even speak to the receptionist). You send them your bill of lading, which hopefully you have been emailed by now, followed by a transfer of £700 from your bank account because, naturally, they don't take credit cards.

So by this point you are down £1600 plus the cost of the car and the stuff in the boot. If it were a poker game you'd be throwing in your chips, finishing your drink, and going home with a worried expression. But you can't. You just have to hope for the best. This small part of your life is completely under the control of other people whose methods you don't understand and who aren't contactable in any meaningful way.

Now call me a control freak if you like but that is no where near my comfort zone. However it does make for a good metaphor.

Last week I did a presentation on the Africa project to thirty or so people at work; lots of people had asked why I was leaving so I thought it would be good to do a dinnertime PowerPoint. The presentation was ok, people asked good questions, I'm told I got the message across. Apparently two (non-Christian) colleagues were talking afterwards and one said "I had no idea they were self funding...I thought they were being paid. That takes real faith..."

I've been thinking about this a lot since. I never really considered that I had real faith, I've always just thought of my life as a bit like driving through fog: basically I see things when I hit them. Long term views are all very nice and so forth, but in my opinion you can't beat a bit of ignorance for improving your outlook. So I just haven't been worried about this stuff at all. What I have come to realise in the last few weeks is that I am faithful, in a very real and tangible sense.

I've heard faith described in terms of a devolution of self-reliance, of a weak and cowardly ceding of control and personal responsibility to a Higher Power. I don't recognise that definition of faith. For me faith is more like flying: I can't fly by myself, no matter how much resourceful self-belief and arm flapping I engage in. To fly I must step on to a plane, trusting in the engineers who designed it, the technicians who built it, the mechanics who service it, and the pilots who fly it. There comes a point in most things you do when you just have to accept that you can never be fully in control, and that you need to have faith in the people pulling the strings further up the tree. In no way is that cowardly: it's simply pragmatic.

For Christians, that higher power is, you won't be surprised to learn, God. We just accept that there are some things we can't do alone. I reckon with a following wind and a lot of free time I could have raised our budget in the six months, but I am absolutely sure that I couldn't do it alone, while working full time, and without directly asking people for money. Unless, that is, the wheels were being greased. You'll know from previous blog posts that we haven't asked anyone for sponsorship, yet we're now sitting at about 98% of budget.

There are generally quite valid naturalistic explanations for almost everything, but the confluence of things that have just happened perfectly in our preparations leave me feeling that we are being aided. There's no ceding of responsibility there, we've worked very hard: but, like flying, the pilot gets you to your destination but you get yourself to the airport.

It is that trust in the wingman that has enabled us to get where we are now.

Now the observant among you will note that it is six weeks since our last post. This tardiness is because in the last six weeks we've been unbelievably busy. In that time we have shipped a car, sold a car, wound up and left two jobs, organised two birthday parties, opened three bank accounts, redecorated the house, found tenants, chased and received our visas, packed stuff for storage, arranged medical insurance, got international driving licences, practiced for and sung in three choral concerts, closed down nine mobile phone contracts (long story), found fish-sitters (ten koi and eight tropical), and said goodbye to our friends in Poole, all the while maintaining perfect marital harmony (eh??? - ed.) and passable parenting. Christmas at the opposite end of the country alternating between two large families half an hour apart with thirty of our closest relatives was something of a welcome break.

For the first time in eleven years we're homeless and unemployed, and about to embark on a three year voyage of uncertainty.We fly in six days.

Apart from the odd twinge of recent anxiety, this all feels normal and right. Rationally, from a western capitalist viewpoint, it's an utterly bizarre thing to do, but we are so convinced about it that doubt doesn't feature. I guess you could call that faith.

Judaism has a concept of "places where the veil is thin": physical locations where the people felt they were closest to God. Personally I don't believe God is more in any particular physical location than in any other, but where we are, waiting for the next phase to start, the veil sure feels insubstantial.

All my adult life I believe I have been following God, but on a looping, chaotic trajectory; sometimes close, more often far. I feel that now, having taken the first steps, we're finally on the racing line. We're doing what we have been called to do. It feels indescribably like everything that has gone before has led up to this moment.

Just one more anecdote before I close. A few months ago we realised that our mortgage period was coming to the end. We searched around and found somewhere that offered great terms for people letting on a non-professional basis. The contract stipulated the mortgage should be held for six months before we could let out the house, and at the time that was fine. In the event the switch took longer to process than expected, leaving us with a month of no cover for our costs. To try and head things off, we went into a branch to talk to a mortgage advisor. He was great: sympathetic, personable, and helpful. He collated our evidence, submitted our application, and told us all would be well.

At the end of November we got an out-of-hand rejection. Not only were we not eligible to rent our house, we couldn't even APPLY for eligibility until we had been with them for six months. That would have killed the whole scheme for us, and remember that by this point we had both quit our jobs and were in the run down to finishing.

Claire phoned the company and talked to a call centre who reiterated the information in the letter ("I'm sorry, madam, that you have been given this misinformation and that it causes you a problem...", "PROBLEM, I have left my job on the basis of this INFORMATION..."). She phoned me at work in a panic. I grabbed a couple of guys to pray while Claire tried again.

Five minutes later she was through to a UK manager who was both sympathetic and apologetic, and moreover bypassed the whole system to give us permission to let from that moment. Just one more door opened for us.

And so here we are. Planning stage complete. The next post will be from Africa as the next phase of the adventure begins. Until then we're in limbo, but, standing here where the veil is thin, the view's awesome.

6. Feeling the pressure

A number of people have asked that Jason hands the baton for writing the blog to me [temporarily! - ed.], and for me to give insight into my thoughts and feelings of the next chapter in the story. I’ve been assured that this request is in no way a slur on Jason’s writing skills – just in case you were wondering. I confess I’ve procrastinated over writing this – I’m certainly feeling the pressure of following in his footsteps, although I have had minor, albeit crucial, editing rights to the posts; statements such as ‘you can’t possibly write that!’ have come from my lips on more than one occasion. 

So where am I at? To sum it up in a couple of words I would say I am ‘at peace’ with our decision. I’m also really excited about what we are going to be doing, about the positive impact we could make, the relationships we will develop, and also about allowing the very rough parts of my personality to be honed as we adapt to life in a new and very different culture. And I confess that I’m really not going to miss the English weather.

What am I nervous about? Well at the minute I am bizarrely daunted by the task of writing Christmas cards. We have so many good friends, and so many people to thank, that writing cards this year is going to be tough. The annual writing ritual in our household generally requires me strapping Jason down with a list of people and a large glass of wine, then feeding in more wine as appropriate until he stops moping with his head in his hands, declaring he can’t think of anything to write. 

What can we write? I wish I knew. There are those close friends who have walked with us, prayed with us, laughed with us, wondered with us, and cried with us since we were asked to work with J-Life. There are those who have given encouraging words when needed, there are those who have challenged us (in love), there are those in the foreground and background who we call our ‘3am friends’ – those rare and valuable people who you know you can call on at 3am when you need help, knowing they will be at your door at 3.10am. There are those who have helped practically in large and small ways, those who will be supporting us financially in the short term and the long term and those who have committed to pray for us regularly throughout the next 2.5 years. Of course I include family in this, especially our parents, who are truly wonderful. The list is long, and I confess I’m welling up as I write this even now, but it’s safe to say that we are going to miss a lot of people when we go and writing cards will not do justice to the love and respect we feel for them. Without their encouragement the journey would be much more difficult, and I am already dreading the 23^rd of December when we say goodbye to friends in Poole, and the 4^th of January when we leave our families.

But I’m definitely looking forward. The house is now on the market for rent, and whilst our visas haven’t yet arrived, we’ve been told they will be processed in December – so at least we haven’t been rejected yet. We’re still sorting out banking and lots of other bits and bobs, but it feels like things are coming together – we just need someone to rent our house and the visas to come and then we are on our way. And I shortlisted candidates and interviewed for my own job last week – now that was a weird one. Oh and for those following the 4x4 saga, Jason is now driving it around Poole ‘just to test it’ of course. 

As people have been praying for us, we’ve had a few encouraging verses of the bible sent to us to ponder, they will be important in the tough and potentially lonely times. 

That’s it really for this blog, no great philosophical ponderings, no great words of wisdom, no great wit, just and honest and heartfelt thanks – those who love and support us know who they are – thank you.