From Kathy Johnson:
Charming garden flat available in Hayfields from 1 December 2009, suitable for single person. Rate R1600 per month; includes water, electricity, and cleaning and laundry once a week. Please contact Kathy on 083-3578726.

Elizabeth McMahon is a missionary visiting us from Dubai. We look forward to hearing more about her ministry in a place that is particularly strategic for the spread of the gospel to various parts of our world.

She has recommended these talks delivered by Don Carson recently in Dubai.

Pierre

It looks like our up-and-coming journalist, Sarah Groves, and her husband Sam have finally worked out how to set up a blog. I’m sure you’ll find their insights and stories most refreshing.

Pierre

Read Raymond Brown’s challenging talk on Work from the book of Proverbs here.

I consider it one of God’s greatest gifts that I have had the privilege of knowing Louise. I’m not much of a people person, and when she first came to our Bible study group her input was muted by some of the more exuberant voices in the group (you know who you are!). But as time passed and I got to know Lou I discovered a remarkable person. Not perfect, but remarkable. I discovered someone whose default mood was always positive. I discovered a great sense of humour. I discovered someone intelligent, thoughtful and engaging. I discovered a friend.

Lou could be tough and then in the next breath be gentle and caring. Among the memories I will treasure one is of a particular visit to Lou during one of her many stays in hospital. We chatted for a while, and then she noticed the small plaster on my arm where I’d given a blood sample earlier that day. She commiserated with me, and expressed sympathy for my discomfort. There she was, lying in a hospital bed with multiple tubes going into and out of her body, and she was commiserating with MY discomfort! She took me by surprise, but then she tended to do that.

Louise’s drive and courage have touched me deeply. I don’t know of anyone else who could have gone through all she did and handled it all as bravely as she did. Impressive, remarkable, special … the words don’t quite live up to her.

What struck me most of all about Louise was her faith in God. My own tendancy is for my faith to be something of an intellectual exercise, all about getting the theology right. It wasn’t like that for Lou. Not that she wasn’t interested in the theology, far from it. But as she faced her death her faith had a reality and grittyness that made it far bigger than my own. It must have been tempting to Louise to see God as a means to escape from her suffering. It must have been tempting to demand that He heal her, and then to be angry when He did not. But she refused to go down that road. Instead she just trusted in God. And kept on trusting in Him. All of us will miss Louise deeply, and the gap she has left in our lives will not be healed this side of heaven. But I for one take great comfort from the fact that the God who Louise so steadfastly and courageously trusted is the God who keeps His promises.

Our love and prayers are with you all.

Deane, Polly, Jemimah, Keziah and Amelia

(Search tags: Louise Roodt)

The following article by Sarah Groves first appeared in The Witness on Christmas Eve of 2008:

Donné, Bethany, Sandy, Marceline and Sarah

That morning, when I met Marceline she was smiling. A mutual friend had phoned her to ask if she had been a victim of the recent xenophobic attacks. We laughed together. Although it wasn’t a misplaced concern. She was Rwandan and she was living in Pietermaritzburg.

So why did it seem so strange to me that someone would want to harm her?

Because she spoke softly. Because her eyes always shone brighter than her neatly gelled and parted hair. Because her face was as fresh as her newly ironed clothes.

Because when you said you would pick her up, she walked halfway to your house before you could get there. Because she finished her assignments two weeks before their due date. She was gentleness, cheerfulness, thoughtfulness and diligence.

Who would ever want to hurt her?

Who could ever see her as the enemy?

“I remember everything,” she answered me, smiling as though I had just asked a guide if he could remember his way home. “I remember when I was seven years old my teachers asked the Tutsis to stand up in class. I had to go home and check with my dad what tribe we were from. We were Tutsis.”

The decision was made long ago. Not so much on the way you looked, because all looked the same. Not so much on the way you spoke, because all spoke the same. Not so much on the area in which you lived, because all lived together. But just on the principle of division. There had to be a divide. And you had to know which side you were on. So you asked someone. And they always knew. You were either Hutu or Tutsi.

“The day after the president died, the first Tutsi house in our street was burnt down. The family was killed and we could see the smoke rising. My grandfather was wealthy. He had been a political leader and he owned three houses, a field and many cows. He had had eight children and had raised an orphan boy as his ninth. This boy was a Hutu. He had played with my father and my uncles. But now he was determined to kill them. To kill all of my grandfather’s family. He started with my grandfather. Leading a gang, he found my grandfather on the street and began to beat him. My grandfather offered them money if they would just shoot him. They took the money and then hacked him to death with pangas.

“We lived in a house belonging to my grandfather and this Hutu boy said that it was his. He wanted to kill, and claim, everything that belonged to my grandfather. So my mum packed her Bible and her hymn book and we moved to a church compound. It was a school with a girls’ dormitory that we and three other families lived in. We knew we would be safe there because it belonged to the Anglican church.

“During that first week, my mum’s friend came to take me to her home. She liked me. She said that I looked like her. Five minutes after I left, the compound gates opened and the army trucks drove in. The church’s priest had told the Hutu army that we were there. He had shown them where we were living. He had given them permission to come in and to take us.

“I was not there but my older sister was. There was a bunk-bed piled high with mattresses. She was very slim and so she squeezed between the mattresses and the bed. From there she watched. No one saw her. But she saw them.

“They beat my four-year-old sister. My brother watched them shove a spear through my father. It came out the back of him. He was dead by the time they were all pushed into the trucks. My brother jumped out of the truck as they drove. A soldier chased him into the forest. As he ran, he fell and didn’t move. This is what saved him. The soldier could not find him and returned to the truck. When they got to where they were going, they stood them in front of a deep hole. They killed them. With pangas. Then rolled them into the grave.

“The lady I was staying with was married to a Hutu man. He asked her if he could kill me. She said no. He didn’t ask again. And there I stayed until the genocide was over.

“It was a few months and then my aunt came and found me. She told me that my parents, two sisters and one brother were dead. I was quiet. I was quiet for a few weeks. And sometimes I didn’t believe her. I hadn’t seen the bodies. But I knew it was real when I saw my brother on video, explaining what had happened.

“From there I had to move. From this friend to my aunt. From my aunt to my married sister. But now I was an outsider. This is natural. My parents should have been raising me. But they couldn’t. I did not feel a part of another family. That is right. I was not part of another family. It was no one’s fault. Except the priests. They had taken my family away.

“And I was angry that they were gone. I had lost my family and I did not belong. When I saw a priest in the street I thought: ‘Hypocrite. I hate you.’
“And now I am an outsider.
“It was nine years later that I moved to South Africa, to Pietermaritzburg. I did my last year of schooling at Alexandra High. Once I’d finished, through a series of mistakes, instead of registering to study education at university, I found myself registered to study theology at a local seminary.”

To study with the enemy.

“I was angry.” Marceline laughed, sincerely, politely. As though she was laughing to comfort a friend who had just told a joke that wasn’t funny.

Then, Marceline explained that this final, poor joke turned out to be her rescue.

“I met a new community and it was not what I was expecting. Here the people were different. They did not click their tongue when you answered their Zulu with English. They did not borrow your pen and suggest that you might not see it again. They acted differently from what I had seen before. They listened. They talked. They shared. They shared their community.

“We ate together. We spoke. We laughed. I began to feel that I belonged. That these people were mine. I had lost my one family and here, finally, I had found another. A new family that could give back what had been taken away years ago.”

Marceline told us this story in our home one night. We had spent the evening together, around a meal, talking. Jacob had shared how his father had worked for the Zimbabwean military. How he had to follow orders during the day. But every night he had to explain to his family that what he was doing was not what he believed.

Margaux was concerned about her work. She was sending paraplegics home with no wheelchairs. There had been a budget cut and she needed another 40 wheelchairs. She interspersed her concerns with long Afrikaans expressions that she forgot to translate.

We discussed what family ritual you could replace bedtime reading with when your children could read alone. Lael, aged five, was warning us that she had just learnt to read her seventh book and that she would be independent soon. Anna was surfing her highchair, like a classic seventies longboarder, smiling at Marceline, anxious to get a bit of applause.

Our son, egged on by his dad, was explaining to Marceline how he could wheelie his black plastic motorbike. He thought with a bit of coaching that she could learn to do it on her bicycle too.

Laughing at our baby, reading with our toddler, eating chocolate. Marceline and her friends. This is Marceline’s world now. Her family is from Standerton and Swaziland, Pietermaritzburg and Zimbabwe. They are accountants and mechanics. They are students and teachers.

The people who she had hated for taking her family from her have become the people that she loves as a family now.

Because in Marceline’s world there is neither Jew nor Greek, Zulu nor English, Hutu nor Tutsi.

http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=17716

The Dedication of Bethany Thembelihle Queripel
14 December 2008

Father,
We come to You in Jesus’ Name
With true sincerity
To thank You for Your gift to us
We have called her Bethany
We promise, Lord, to raise her
And do the best we can
Telling her about the Saviour
And of God’s salvation plan
We will read the scriptures to her
And teach her how to pray
As soon as she is able
Encouraging her every day.

Yet Lord, we know and understand
We only do a part
It’s You who performs the miracle
In giving a new heart.
And so Lord, we ask and pray
As we dedicate her to you
To take the reins of her life
And lead as only You can do -
Allowing godly instruction
To be part of our Bethany
So she too may find salvation
And know the Christ of Calvary.

By Grandpa Jerry Reineke

By Sarah Groves

We played “Pass the Parcel” in the garden, my sister, my husband and I.  The present
was my 19 month old daughter, Anna, wrapped in pink but turning blue then purple.
She had been sitting on my lap at the lunch table when suddenly she grabbed my
shoulders, shook her head and “hoohoooed”.  Annie is prone to joking. She can rival
Rowan Atkinson for funny faces.  So by the time I was certain that she wasn’t laughing,
she had already stopped breathing.  Eyes white, face like an unconscious Buddha, we
passed her.  Hoping one of us would know what to do.  Hoping one of us knew a
Heimlich manoeuvre that the others hadn’t yet tried.

My husband screamed, “Don’t leave us Annie, don’t leave us.”  As though she was
being thoroughly disobedient. And I thought: “This is what its like when your child dies.
They drop through a hole, suddenly, and then life goes on in a deformed way. “

We broke the game to rush for the car.  Her body hung on my arm.  Dead, I thought.  But
then she was breathing.  And as she sat on me again her eyeballs flickered.  I began to
sing: “Lovely pop a dooo pop, Annie pop a dooo pop.”  While my husband flashed
lights with one hand, hooted with the other and signalled to cars with the third. We
entered the car park like James Bond.  Stand arounders scattered.  I fled down the
hallways and swing doors, delivering Anna up with a burst, to the safe world of green
sheets and white towels.

Their plain faces and slow feet were so reassuring: “A febrile convulsion, high fever,
admit her.”

Now Anna lies in the bed next to me, snoring and muttering, as though nothing has
changed. But I am making all sorts of promises: “I’ll never snap at her again, I’ll stop
rushing and start playing more, I’ll always be grateful for her company.”

I know that in one week scar tissue will have grown over this panic.  And life will resume
on the surface of this dead skin – broken promises and all.  But still, something has
changed. Something there is that wasn’t there before.  Is it that I’ve moved into a new
subset of people?  The ones who realise that the gap between life and death is a turn of
the page, one step, a few seconds.  The grandfather who watched his granddaughter
going blue, arms at his side, remembering his own baby’s last sigh. The grandmother
who came to see me red-eyed.  The father who couldn’t get his 6 year old son to
hospital in time as he laughed and choked on an apple.  The old lady in the emergency
room who gave me a pained thumbs up as I covered Annie’s chest with a wet towel.

“There can be nothing worse”, my dad explained slowly and softly.  I know.
I almost know.

Do I really believe that, prior to the return of Christ, the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea?  Do I really believe that all the nations of men will stream to their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Do I really believe that Jesus Christ is the desire of nations?  I really do.  And I hope by the time we are done with this short book, the unconvinced reader will at least be able to say, ‘One hopes.’

This is the introduction to Douglas Wilson’s new book, Heaven Misplaced: Christ’s Kingdom on Earth.  Avoiding the really poor joke, and excuse, that everything pans out in the end, Wilson makes a convincing case for what he calls “Historical Optimism. “  Others call it Post-Millenialism.  I didn’t have all my hermeneutical guns cocked whilst reading this book, but he seemed to make a good biblical argument for this view.  Using many Old and New Testament Scriptures he reasoned that the gospel would win the
world.  For example commenting on 1 John 4:14 , “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world,” he says this:

Jesus did not come in order to try and save the world if the uncooperative world would only let him…the fact that Christ will save the world does not mean that He will save every last individual who ever lived in it .  But it does mean that He will save the world and we need to take the word world in such a way that encompasses more than a tiny huddled band of the elect, consisting of no more than thirteen or fourteen people.

But even if you are not convinced by Historic Optimism, you will still find this book encouraging.  Wilson evocatively reminds us of what Jesus’ death and resurrection actually accomplished.  He really is the Lord of all nations.  He really has been given authority over all powers.  All we have to do is declare the authority and power that Jesus already has.  If you are serving in what looks like a fruitless situation, these reminders are timely and life-giving.

There are two weaknesses in this book, in my opinion.  Firstly, it was sometimes unclear where each chapter was heading until it ended.  This is unlike Wilson’s other books, which I have found to be very easy to follow. Secondly, he mainly quotes from the AV, which in South Africa is pretty challenging for most people to understand.  Otherwise I think you should read it.  Even if it’s just to remind yourself that

Christ is not the Lord of some invisible heavenly place; He is the Lord and Master of the town where you live – and of course everywhere else.  He purchased this world and it’s inhabitants with His blood and no impudent magistrate is going to successfully deny Him.  He will have it.  Fix it in your minds: Christ rules here.

Reviewer:  Sarah Groves

As a practical follow-on from my post on Xenophobia, Jana Müller has got our church involved in buying food packs for displaced foreign nationals in and around Pietermaritzburg.

Any financial contributions towards this cause can be handed to Jana in person, as she is buying the packs on our behalf and delivering them to Project Gateway.  If you are not part of our church, or if you prefer, you can donate to Project Gateway directly.

Pierre