"Goose bump" stuff

We'll put up a few posts over the next week or so of some of the things that touched the P2P volunteers lives during the preaching work they have been in South Africa.


Waterfalls...beautiful waterfalls

Going up to Graskop we stopped at a waterfall. All the children were amazed at the waterfalls and kept saying how beautiful it was and how it made them feel so good inside, how it was the BEST thing they ha ever seen (this was the first waterfall they had seen). Just made me so much more excited every time we saw another waterfall, just remember the sparkles in their eyes when they see a waterfall. (Liezl Scheepers)

From the mouths of....

The breaking of bread service at Mariannhill was a memorable experience. Lots of children from Sunday School stayed for the service and sat as good as gold through the quite lengthy (!) exhortation. At the end, we sang “Father, God I wonder” and taught it to the congregation. The children loved the chorus: “I will sing your praises” and wouldn’t let us stop singing. They kept on shouting “again” and “more”! So we sang the song about six times! (Ruth Andrews)

"But why?

In the last week of July, Dan, Amy and I went to Margate for the week to do maintenance and run the crèche teacher course. We had 13 very keen ladies come to the four days of the course; from both close to the Margate Hall and from as far a field as Port Shepstone! We had a wonderful time sharing experiences, discussing teaching strategies, “experimenting” with the three Margate crèche children and making teaching resources in a flurry of coloured paper and sticky fingers! Not only could I see the course would directly benefit the ladies, there were many outreach opportunities where we were able to discuss our church, beliefs, the purpose of the Bible Education Centre in that hall and the community work we are involved in. The ladies would chat with Nelson and Cecilia and some of them even signed up for the correspondence course and asked to be notified when other things were running at the church. We even had a joint prayer to start the session one morning on request for someone who had lost a close friend.

However, the moment that touched me the most was on the last day, when Octavia (one of the more elderly ladies completing the course) interrupted me in the middle of explaining a concept and wanted to know if she could ask a question “unrelated” to what we were talking about. Of course I said that this was fine and she went on to say, “Why are you doing this? You come here, you don’t know us, but you love us. You spend your time and money here with us teaching us these wonderful things. We have all been talking about this and want to know why you do these things."

It took my breath away and I was speechless for a moment! We can say all we like and “preach” to people as much as we can, but toget them to ask a question like this of their own accord is pretty special. This was a direct response to us running a simple week-long course seemingly unrelated to spiritual matters. Yet it gave me the most wonderful opportunity to speak in front of these 13 ladies, who we now had a relationship with, about the love of God.

To feel that people are seeing God’s love through our actions is absolute goose bump stuff! (Leah Egginton)

Print this post