Tuesday at The Seed

Tuesday at the Seed

36 degrees degrees today!  Sorry everyone who is in the cold back home.

We got to The Seed for 9 this morning, and we were waiting on Dan for a few minutes.  I know we all love Stu's preaching, and the best thing every is having him here and he will just share these very profound teachings that come to him.  Spontaneous preachings are really the best!

When Dan meets with us in the mornings, he lets us talk through anything we are processing at the time.  It's really helpful because he has been through this culture shock himself. 

Kelly took us up to the local high school today to meet the principal there.  She is a phenomenal Christian lady who really has a heart for these kids.  Talk about budget issues in schools!  In the system here, most schools are technically public, but then charge expensive fees.  One high school we drive by looks very rich with track and soccer fields as well as outdoor pools on the property.  The high school here has 17 teachers for 552 students.  It is for grades 8-12.  They have less than 1000 rand that has to last them until next April.  That's roughly 120 Canadian dollars.  Each night they have to move any valuables into a vault on the property, including the photocopier and food.  They received a donation of some brand new computers about 3 years ago, but they haven't been able to even bring them to the property because they are table top computers and the vault isn't big enough to house eveything.  They started working on making another room safe enough to make a computer lab but they have so little money to work with, that it's taken them this long to get extra bars on the winows, a solid floor and razor wire in the roof.  They will still need to put in electrical outlets, and fans (because now they can't open the windows because of the security bars on the inside and outside of the windows) to keep a room full of computers cool enough to not wreck the computers.  The computers were a well meaning gift, but it's an example of how even a well intentioned gift can cost people money.
The principle finally won a battle to get a lunch program at the school.  The program pays 2 staff to prepare full warm lunches for all the students!  The principal said attendance was particularly good on the one day a week they are served fruit with their meals.  She said she has noticed a definite difference in the students ability to learn now that they have a good meal once a day.  Sounds very similar to lunch programs at home!

After lunch Gary and Jeff went on their home visit where one of the workers felt led to stop along the way to their appointment and talk to a man they met on the street.  She led him to Christ after a short conversation and will follow up with him this week.  There really is a strong spiritual awareness here if you take the time to look and listen to the Spirit.

Stu and I stayed at The Seed and helped Dan prep his garden to plant some maize.  It took the 3 of us 2 hours to lay out a 6 by 6 plot, hoe out little planting stations, fill the bottoms with compost and backfill it part way.  I got some blisters, and if you remember that it was 36 degrees out.  As soon as we finished, we went back to our place and jumped in the ocean for a cool down.  I think I might be ready to plant my own garden next year!

I am starting to feel frustrated by not having the option of jumping in the car and taking off to see the sights or go to the store on my own.  I'm not even supposed to walk around by myself.  It's very frustrating for me to be dependent on the guys.  I am gaining an appreciation for the frustration and helplessness some women in certain cultures feel when they don't have as many rights and freedoms as Canadian women do.

A new food for me: We were out of groceries the other morning so we went out for breakfast.  I ordered bacon and banana toast, and it came with chips (fries).  Bacon and banana is a very common sandwich and pizza topping here.  It's better than you may think!

One more interesting thing here:  there is a very large East Indian population, and a large number of them are Christians.  It was very different for me to see that!