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.

 

13. Jesus Called: He Wants His Church Back

A pastor I know here in South Africa set up a meeting with another church leader in our area. He wanted to talk to him about sharing resources between their two churches so that they could have a greater impact in the community.

As our friend sat down to start the meeting, the other pastor said, "Tell me, when you baptise people what do you say?". Taken aback, he said, "umm, I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen...".


"I thought so.", said the other guy, "You see, that's a big problem and why I don't think we'll be able to work together. You can't baptise in the name of anyone but Jesus."

I have my own theology of baptism, of course, but that's not the point. And I don't know who is right, and that's not the point either. The point is that a potentially powerful community initiative stalled because of a difference of theology. Sometimes we fail so bad even Jesus facepalms.



The thing is, as a Church we've been doing this for 2000 years. Right back at the start of it all, 50 years after Jesus's death, Peter and the early believers held a council in Jerusalem (cunningly called the Council Of Jerusalem, if you're enthusiastic and want to google it) to decide whether Christians were bound by Mosaic Law or not (it was decided that some things could be dropped which is why, dear male Christian reader, you most likely avoided a certain operation when you were 8 days old).

Now I am being facetious there: that was a huge socio-political issue at the time and it was an important decision to get right. Of similar importance was Martin Luther's opinion that people were forgiven through, and only through, the grace of God which set him in opposition to the Catholic Church, in which he was a priest, and eventually got him excommunicated. Out of that grew the Protestant Reformation which held, amongst other things, that people could have a direct relationship with God through Jesus Christ with no need of an intermediary.

Luther never intended to start a new religion, but he wanted to Catholic Church to re-examine some of its theology.

Similarly John Wesley didn't want to start Methodism: it only became called that after his death. Wesley simply held that ordinary people were capable of teaching and ministering, and therefore should be given the authority and opportunity to do so. He started a movement within the Anglican Church doing just that, and it became one of the most influential movements the denomination has ever seen, getting involved with all the driving social and political issues of the day such as the abolition of slavery. It also got him into trouble with the Anglican establishment, who held that ministers should be formally trained in theology before they could work for the church.

Time and time again we see disagreements on theological points blow up into disunity, disagreement, and division.

Now don't get me wrong: I absolutely believe in the truth contained in the bible. I just as absolutely believe that I don't fully know what it is, that my ideas and opinions are at best a shadow of the truth, and that I am likely very wrong on a number of issues. I think scriptures need to be interpreted and that different interpretations are possible. I certainly don't believe my interpretation is fundamentally correct: when I stand in front of Christ I really want to hear him say "Well done, my good and faithful servant" but I am pretty sure what I'm going to hear is "Well...you tried hard. You'd better come in, there're a few things I need to talk to you about...".

Christianity is not about assent to a set of rules or propositions. It is not, as Lewis Carroll so deftly wrote and Richard Dawkins so appositely paraphrased, belief in six impossible things before breakfast. It is about belief in a couple of improbable, yet nonetheless true, things and a willingness to sacrifice your own way of life to serve a loving God and improve the lives of the people around you.

People who know me might be surprised to hear this, but I really don't mind if you believe the universe was created 6000 years ago or 13.7 billion years ago. I don't mind if you believe in the validity of infant baptism or the requirement for adult baptism. I don't mind if you think spiritual gifts are alive now or if they ceased at Pentecost. I don't mind a lot of differences in theology.

But what I really, really, do mind is when people make any those things a reason for division. It's the No True Scotsman philosophy: every Scotsman who says he's a true Scotsman will always be trumped by some other Scotsman who claims to be even more truly Scots. We fall into the N.T.S. fallacy because we tend to believe that we, and we alone, truly understand God. At our best we hold the gracious view that other people are entitled to their interpretation. At worst we excommunicate them. No, scratch that. At worst we burn them at the stake.

In that respect Christianity is its own worst enemy: our scriptures are open to interpretation, and so we interpret. Combine that with our tendency towards thinking we're right, and you have this whole splintered church. At least in Judaism the 613 devolved commandments were well defined.

But, here's the thing: Jesus didn't come to start a religion. He came to start a movement, and they are two very different things. Jesus was a faithful Jew until the day of his death. His first followers were all faithful Jews. They never wanted to split off and form an opposition religion. Christ himself said that he came to fulfil the law: that he had come to take the whole of Mosaic law and distill it into one exemplar life that others could follow more easily, and more successfully, than they could hope to fulfil 613 commandments. He called the law beautiful, but also accused the Church of using it as a rod to beat people with.

When a Pharisee (a member of the Jewish religious lawyer caste) asked Jesus what the most important commandment was, he said that we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He followed by saying that we must love people likewise. This was in complete agreement with Mosaic Law, indeed the Pharisee agreed that the whole of Mosaic law flowed out of these two commandments.

Here we had an incredible point in history, when the whole of the religious law was funnelled down into the example set by one man, Jesus, a man whose example was easy to follow. Jesus promised for the first time in the story of religion that man could have direct access to God, through the Holy Spirit, in order to change to world. Then he told his disciples to drop what they were doing and go and actually change the world.

2000 years later a third of the world is recorded as being Christian, so the strategy is working. But alongside this grass-roots disciple-making movement there sprang up structures and systems and laws. And with the laws came law-breaking. And with the law-breaking came schisms. So from that glorious point when the whole of Mosaic Law became a singularity in Jesus, it has since been expanding back outwards into just another rule set.

In his letter to the Roman church, Paul (a former Pharisee and torturer of Christians) says this:


"God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us." (Romans 8:3, 4 Message Translation)

Christianity was never meant to be a religion. It was meant to be a movement. A movement which would see ordinary people brought into relationship with the only man who is historically, incontrovertibly, known to have died and got over it. A movement meant to release people from the darkness of not knowing God into the light of His continued presence. A movement whose founding purpose was to go out into communities and share that awesome gift with other people.


Jonathan Swift, the political satirist and writer of Gulliver's Travels, said that we have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love. How right he was back then in the 1700s, and how right he still is now.


I once got into an argument with another Christian. I was excited by the approaching baptism of our first child and I told him so. He said "Oh, you're not really baptising him though, because you can't baptise infants. Baptism is just for believers. If you read your bible more you'll see that.". I have to say I wasn't altogether loving in my response, and so I fell into the exact trap he did of failing to be gracious.


You see the point of Christianity is not to be right: it is to be loving. Of course we need to tell people the truth as we see it, but we must do it with grace. Even Christ, the only man who we can be absolutely sure wasn't wrong when it came to theology, because, well, he's the very Theos that we -ology about, only spoke the truth with grace.


When confronted by a prostitute about to be executed by a crowd of people with rocks, Jesus didn't tell them she was innocent: no, he took a different route. He told the people that they could throw their rock, as the law allowed them to do, but only if they were themselves innocent of every sin proscribed by the law. One by one the people walked away until only Jesus and the woman were left. At that point he tells her that he doesn't condemn her, but that she has to take this opportunity to change her life. It is thought that that woman could have been Mary Magdalene, who became one of Jesus's disciples and was with him until his death.


Love is the key to Christianity. Love is the centre of Christianity. Love is everything in Christianity. Love God. Love people.


I don't want anyone to think I don't love the Church: I do. I truly love the Church. I truly love my kids: doesn't stop me from wanting to slap them occasionally. I believe the Christian church, as a community of believers, has been, and can continue to be, the most powerful force this world has ever seen. I believe the Church can affect social change on the biggest scale, be just where there is no justice, bring equality where there is division, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, bring hope to the hopeless. We can do all that and more, but we have to stop pushing other Christians away with our Big Stick Of Doctrine.


Saint Augustine wrote of doctrine, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in everything charity".

That's why I say that Jesus wants his Church back. He wants it back where it started: as a movement of people dedicated to fanatically loving others and sharing with them the incredible news that God loves them and that they can share their lives with Him.


The most important point is that Christ is God incarnate, and the most important things He said were these: Love God. Love people. Go and make disciples.


The rest we can discuss.


"So let's agree to use all our energy in getting along with each other. Help others with encouraging words; don't drag them down by finding fault. You're certainly not going to permit an argument over what is served or not served at supper to wreck God's work among you, are you? I said it before and I'll say it again: All food is good, but it can turn bad if you use it to trip others up and send them sprawling. When you sit down to a meal, your primary concern should not be to feed your own face but to share the life of Jesus." (Romans 14:19-21 Message Translation)

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.