Three amigas together again!

I’ve had better weeks and it hasn’t been conducive to keeping up with the blog. I was truly enjoying my time of working at home, which also gave me time to shop, cook and generally organise my life. On Tuesday I got a call from Dr Woodrow, when I guess I should have checked with him already, confirming that work was indeed piling up and that I would have to go in on Wednesday. I was therefore “at the office” from Wednesday until Friday, and my latest juggling feat includes keeping track of the men who have registered to work on the hospital, brick layers, electricians, etc., of whom more will be registering on Monday; updating the information we got from the men on the Adopt a pastor project, getting new men registered and making sure my information is the same as Kevin Millard’s and Karl’s, as well as sending out books for July and August (I am so going to be behind on that); at some point I need to send out the latest edition of the Faith for Today magazine, which I sort of wish had arrived later; getting a final report ready of conference book sales, inventory levels and inventory discrepancies - there are a depressing amount of the latter; putting in a new order with Editora Fiel. This has been a fairly productive week and I need to remind myself to take one day at a time, but at times I get so down and just wish this backlog was over!

The highlight of this middling week was Allison’s return from Brazil on Thursday evening. Angie and I went over to our friends John and Susan Iseminger’s house, we had dinner and then all went to the airport to pick her up, returned to the house and had dessert while she had supper and we could get caught up a bit. It was already past my bedtime when we got home, and then we were still getting gifts (birthday and just because) - coffee, chocolate and a stunning beaded very Brazilian bag for me! I then struggled to sleep and mostly dragged my body through Friday. I had gone to SIL at 8h00 with Allison to see the school where Angie teaches have their Mini-Olympics - it was very cute! I stayed for an hour and then went to work. It was great to just watch a movie and have a girls’ chat last night with my two wonderful friends, and to have someone to talk to about how depressed I am about work. The Lord is good in the midst of troubles…

After some time to reflect

Though I couldn’t do nothing all week, it was a strangely wonderful week of afternoon naps and rest times that made me feel a lot better quite quickly. On Tuesday we could finally move all the bookshelves and books back to the bookshop - it was quite a pain that because of this new (?) regulation that nearly landed us with a fine, the driver had to park the big truck a few blocks from the bookshop, by the railroad, and then they had to put all the boxes and shelves in the Landrover, which could then drive to the bookshop. I think it took 7 trips to get everything there! Even though I wasn’t doing much, this whole convoluted process had finished my patience for the day, so I stretched the unpacking of the boxes, rearranging of the shelves and inventory out over several days, only finishing on Friday. By Thursday I started feeling like a thinking, feeling, normal person again and not just a bunch of exhausted nerves. Dr Woodrow was busy presenting his seminar on systematic theology all week - he had 19 students, and there were 30 in Gilson’s class on expository preaching, so this was quite exciting for us, it was the most students that had yet attended, in spite of moi messing up the publicity for these courses…

The next order of business seems to be how to face life after Fiel - how to balance the bookshop, the Projecto (distribution of books to pastors) and the admin of the hospital work. I hate it when I feel like I have at least 2 jobs, one done during the day at Dr Woodrow’s and one in the evening, catching up with bookshop/Projecto stuff. I also need to start seeing my Portuguese language helper again and studying - my vocabulary is pathetic! I need to read, to think, to write, to be intellectually creative again… I need a deeper, truer inner life than I do at the moment. And yet I am so afraid of all these resolutions flying out the window as soon as hospital construction starts. I need to pray for a lot of wisdom! But I realised again how privileged I am to be doing a job I love, with a ministry I am passionate about, that the Lord has somehow chosen to give me something to do that means a lot to me. May I manage not to lose this sense of wonder and gratitude when I am doing the jobs I don’t love quite so much!

More pictures to follow, this takes forever…

Less than a week to go!

It has been a fairly rough week so far, and yet the Lord is so faithful. On Monday I was quite frustrated, because I had this mountain in front of me of doing inventory and packing up the bookstore, and yet the whole morning slipped by with us getting the contents of the conference manual finalised. It was 14h00 by the time I got to the bookstore and naturally, I didn’t get done, but I did feel better organised than I normally am. Yesterday it me and two helpers about 5 1/2 hours to complete everything, which included reorganising our extra stock, which is kept in boxes in the back room for lack of other suitable space. I was sitting on the floor, counting books and putting them into the boxes, and altogether performing too many sideways-turning movements… when I got up from there my back really hurt! I was a bit worried about moving over to SIL today and quite discouraged when I got home. After lying down with some heat applied for a while I started feeling much better, though, praise the Lord. I got some work done late afternoon and early evening, but still the days just speed by with not enough being wrapped up - I will be very grateful once the bookshop is set up and I can focus on my other work.  We have reached about 205 registrants, and I am truly encouraged to see so many new men coming. May the Lord help us all, in spite of our frayed nerves, to strive to se Him glorified through this conference!

Fiel matters

Well, praise the Lord. after some more phone calls and impatient waiting yesterday morning, just before 11h00 the bank finally called and said we could go get the money we needed. It took us about 2 hours since we left the house to get the money from Standard Bank, go across the street and deposit it at another bank, drive to the house of our friends who work with MAF to go and fax the deposit slip to the customs office, and drive home. We accomplished so much more than during all that waiting on Tuesday! Now, Lord willing, the tent should be with us soon, depending on how many other stops the driver has to make, I suppose.

Today I ended up staying at home all day, because my regular handyman had made me a steel door/gate to replace the dinky door between the kitchen and veranda (where the burglar got in), and even though he first was late, even had he been on time it was unrealistic of me to think I would still go work at Woodrows or go to town, it took about 5 hours for 3 guys to get everything welded and what have you. Not that I was complaining - I had lots to do in town and so, but this gave me the opportunity to update the registrations we have so far for the Conference. We are currently at about 155 participants (I’m not sure how many staff members I put on the list already), and quite a number of these have never attended before. Additionally, many men on our mailing list didn’t receive any information, in quite a few cases because a whole church’s pastors share a mailbox and then somehow the mailbox wasn’t paid for and closed down. So we seem to be headed towards a good number even taking this into account! It is gratifying to see the Lord us word of mouth, or our efforts at promoting it, or something, draw more pastors to the Conference.

Now I am still waiting for my book order to arrive (please continue to pray with us!) and many, many administrative tasks lie ahead… Earlier this week I was a bit stressed because I was trying to deal with Conference matters, but also trying to calculate some figures for Dr Woodrow so that we can order some more building material as soon as possible. Lord willing I will finish that tomorrow, and quite a few nagging tasks would have been completed this week. The Lord is good to us!

Looking for a graphic designer

A few months ago we took the first step towards a more professional image for our ministries by hiring a graphic designer in South Africa to design a logo for the Biblioteca Fiel for us. We were pleased with her work and wanted her to go on to redesign a logo, letterhead etc. for Grace Missions - but sadly, she has gone to the UK for 2 years and isn’t available anymore to do work for us!

Therefore, I am hoping that someone out there knows a good designer who is available to do freelance work (I’m not sure what designers’ work arrangements normally are). It’s not a free job, don’t worry, we just want someone with creativity and ability - perhaps a Christian who would be happy to use their skill to help out a small corner of the world where the Lord’s Name is being proclaimed?

Security status, prayer update

Since our recent break-in, we have been trying to figure out how to best and perhaps least-expensively improve the security in our flat. While I was in SA I bought a motion-detector light, with the thinking that anybody who came close to the veranda would then be full in this bright light and hopefully scared off by it. So one of my friends was here the whole morning yesterday with a Mozambican from his church, they got all dirty and went to a lot of trouble, but the end result is that the lights work and can be used as normal lights, but the motion sensor doesn’t work for some reason. We keep going back and forth on whether we should get the burglar bars on our veranda completely redone, get stronger doors between the veranda and kitchen and living room, get burglar bars on those windows… And nothing can ever happen the next day, we are always dependent on some man who is able to help us out, on someone with transportation to go and get stuff, and the time that we ourselves have available to stay home while someone is working here. I am quite weary of all this delibaration!

This morning, Allison left for Maputo, from where she will go on to Brazil, Lord willing, and will only be back in August. She let us know that the plane had to make an emergency landing because of a fire - but nobody was harmed, praise the Lord! Angie came back from a Bible translation dedication this afternoon, but leaves for a break with another single missionary on Tuesday. so I will be by myself for up to two weeks. I don’t want to be fearful, and I know that our trust is in the Lord and not in any security measures, but I’m still not overjoyed at the thought.

I would appreciate your prayers for the following:

- the safety of us personally and our flat and possessions

- that all the preparations for the Fiel conference would go smoothly and that all our books would arrive in time!

- that I will have energy for all the different things I need to focus on in the weeks ahead, and will yet continue to seek the Lord’s face above anything else

Back home once again

For the present, I have done enough travelling! Since my last post, I left for South Africa on the 11th of June, and arrived at 18h30. A friend picked me up from the airport, and then we had to go to the house of some friends who stay in Silver Lakes - to pick up a car that they were kindly letting me borrow to use to drive down to Vryheid with. My sister went through a pothole on the way down the other day and didn’t fancy the idea of me driving with her car without a spare tyre. The Lord has really been spoiling me! I drove down to Vryheid the morning of the 12th, and came back on the 19th, so I had just about one solid week with my mom.

I had some work I thought I would get to - but I didn’t really… My mom’s two brothers were also there for the first few days, and so everyone was basically really busy in the house and garden, sorting out quite a lot of stuff for my mom. I mostly vegged in front of the television and tried to get my mom to watch “The lives of others” with me for more than 15 minutes at a time. I think I did realise my goal with the week though, namely to rest, to get some spiritual refreshment and to help my mom on the basic level of doing stuff in the house and in town for her so that she can relax a bit before going back to work.

The Friday after I got there, I received the sad news that a friend of mine from school - we were in  the same class since grade 5 - had died in a motorcycle accident. My grandmother gets to be 87 and undergoes suffering almost beyond the point of endurance before the Lord finally takes her home, and Jan Hendrik dies less than a month after turning 27 and just when life was really going well for him and he was more than ever his parents’ pride and joy. All this has reminded me how mysterious the doctrine of God’s sovereignty is, and how we can’t presume to know His ways and thoughts. And yet I believe the only way to greater insight is through embracing His sovereignty and resting in it, trusting Him to know best how to work for His glory and our joy.

Leaving my mom again was no fun, I really had to block out all thoughts of her being alone frome now on and force myself not to cry. And yet I know the Lord is looking after her and that none of us are ever truly alone. More than five hours’ driving brought me back to Pretoria, where I had a few precious hours with my sister Jacomien, who had gotten back from Italy just hours before. And then bright and early yesterday morning I was on my way to the airport again… Once again it was such a blessing to come home to somebody, this time Allison, and to be able to spend a bit of time with her before she leaves for Brazil for more than a month on Sunday. Now I can just trust the Lord to give me the energy and presence of mind to get back into working mode and get my mind around everything that needs to be done!

A gift from the Lord

The rest of the weekend passed quietly and without further incident (not that we were expecting anything). Everyone who hears the story thinks someone knew I had this money and came exclusively for that (we thought Allison’s phone had been on the table and was taken, but she found it at the office…), so even though it’s creepy in one way, it’s somewhat comforting to think that our place wasn’t being targeted by anyone who had a general intent of housebreaking. I didn’t want to go anywhere or really be left alone at home on Saturday evening, so two of the three Canadian linguistics interns who have been helping Allison and others at SIL came over with some food and we just watched a movie here. I didn’t go to church yesterday, since I was still feeling miserable from my cold, and it was actually nice to catch up on reading and a few small chores I haven’t gotten around to. I purposely didn’t go to Missionary Fellowship, because on Saturday Leah Preston, one of the soon-to-be-ex centre managers at SIL, asked me if I would still want to go to South Africa if I could, if money or getting on a flight were no object. She said they had contacts at LAM who could get me even on a “full” flight if it were necessary, and she would simply mention the matter at the missionary fellowship. I felt a little weird about all this, and once again worried about neglecting work, but I just decided that it was all out of my hands and that if the Lord wanted it to work out, He would. The end of the matter is that members of the missionary community generously contributed, my ticket was purchased this morning and I am flying on Wednesday, coming back next Friday. All I need to figure out is how I’m getting to Pretoria from the airport and then to Vryheid. To me this has been a wonderful instance of having the Lord “act for” me and take circumstances entirely out of my control. I also feel very loved and very much belonging to missionaries here! May I get back refreshed and emotionally ready to carry on with my responsibilities!

Enough drama to last us a while

This has been quite a week. It started out normally enough - I was quite obsessively busy with work, feeling that I was finally getting a grip on my responsibilities and busily adding items to my to-do list and coming home every evening after a day at Woodrows doing a bit more before winding down for the day. I was incredibly grateful that the Lord had pulled me together a bit and that I didn’t feel so overwhelmed by everything anymore! Then, about 4h30 on Thursday morning, my mom phoned to tell me that my grandmother had passed away. She was 87 and had had cancer of the lymph nodes for over 4 years, and most recently had been suffering terribly, so as far as she was concerned, I was very relieved. I did, however, very much want to be with my mom, as my sister has to leave for Italy on Monday evening and therefore can’t stay with her very long. Thus began two days of agonizing over the decision of going or not, especially as I couldn’t possibly get a flight in time to make it to the funeral, so then the question was whether it was “worthwhile” going down just for the opportunity to spend some good time with my mom, who will be all alone in the house from now on. I had already gone to the ATM and withdrawn a whole bunch of cash for the ticket, which I of course ended up not using straight away. Yesterday morning I got up with an awful cold to boot, so I was feeling quite discouraged at the blow my work momentum had taken, and still not one hundred percent certain whether I would just stay here, or maybe go down to SA later in the week.

On top of all this emotional turmoil, we got up to quite a shock this morning. It was sometime after 8h00 and I was looking for my wallet to give money to our Saturday guard (who has now more become our Saturday morning errand guy and doesn’t work all day). I couldn’t find my bag anywhere, which is usually slung over the back of the chair at my desk. Angie was even helping me look, and it just seemed ridiculous that I couldn’t see it anywhere. Finally she opened the door to the veranda and said “Here it is,” and it took us some seconds to realise that I hadn’t misplaced it there, happening to scatter its contents on the floor… someone had cut our screen, bent open some of the grates and crawled through this hole, came into my room and grabbed the bag. What an awful realisation! Negative: all those thousands of meticais were of course gone. And at first I freaked out and thought my bank card, credit card etc. were all gone too, because they were not in my wallet. And they took Allison’s phone from the table in the living room. Positive: they didn’t take anything else, not even perfume spray or my international driver’s license. And just this week I had taken my passport and ID out of my documents bag and put them in a drawer in my room, instead leaving just a certified copy of my passport. And nothing else was taken, not even my camera, slung over the other side of the same chair, or as much as a flashdisk. So it must have been a quick job done by hardly any light.

In spite of all the things to be thankful for, we were of course pretty upset and feeling, I believe the term usually used, “violated”. Thankfully the house was soon full of SIL people, someone to take Allison to the police station and others who put up some plywood to temporarily at least block the hole on the veranda screen, and others who just sat and talked with us and showed their support. Allison and Angie, who have been my pillars of strength since Thursday, praying with me and encouraging me and listening to me, were also kindness itself and completely willing to help absorb some of the financial loss, since they see it as “we had money stolen”, not “Salome had money stolen”. They are such a joy and blessing in my life! And we just praise the Lord that nothing happened to any of us and that the damage was limited.

We would all appreciate your prayers as we continue to deal with this situation - may the Lord’s Name be somehow glorified in all of this!

Another end of the month

Well, it was another humdinger of a month end. I went over to the Woodrows on Friday morning and had some other work to do before Dr Woodrow had had time to look over the workers’ timesheets and things and we could start doing the payslips. I was really in my element, getting confused and needing to re-do things. Finally by about 16h00 I left, but I still need to redo the social security documents tomorrow! This was rather discouraging, I start wondering why the Lord has given me the desire and opportunity to be here at all if I do my job so badly!

Yesterday I did the end of the month stuff for the bookshop - putting the sales data into the computer, printing the new documentation the workers need, etc. In the afternoon there was a big farewell and kitchen tea for Ione, the one Brazilian missionary who has been here for about 12 years. She’s going to Brazil to get married - at 40 something! - and then hopes to return with her husband in March 2009. Everyone from her church friends to all the guys she plays volleyball with on Saturdays were invited, so there was quite a lot of people - once again one of those occasions where I know a lot of people but still don’t really have anyone to talk to! The food was nice though, and I liked the fact that even though there was some fun and silliness, it wasn’t excessive, and it was also a laid-back atmosphere where I felt free to leave when I got tired and could make use of a ride back. At least I finished my work last night and can have a restful Sunday.

I went to church at Woodrows today, and it was nice seeing everyone again. I feel so convicted about the fact that I don’t speak to people about the gospel, and it takes so long to cultivate any kind of friendship, and yet there are all my responsibilities resting on me. I truly need wisdom in order to find the right balance in my life!