Digging holes, showing love and thankful parents

As we look forward to upcoming P2P campaigns in South Africa in 2009, here are some more blogs from youth reminiscing about P2P in July/August 2008

A particular experience in encountered during P2P wasn’t at all exciting, but it was very rewarding.

I dug a hole in the dirt for 3 hours! Even though this grafting hard work was meticulous, it was vital to one of our projects. We were at Dumisani’s school for the week – an underprivileged, under funded primary school. As a team, we undertook a few projects and the particular one I was working on was creating a “jungle gym” (playground) for the kids. We dug the holds to lay the foundation for the jungle gym to stand on.

Not all the jobs are as glamorous, but each and every one are important. As a team, we all had a role to play to show the love of Jesus in our work.

James Hughes, UK

“Love the Lord your god with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love your neighbour as yourself”. A well known verse for many, including myself, but in South Africa I have seen more fully the potential that we have as individuals and as a community in really living this verse.

P2P has given those of us who have been here a chance to love the Lord our God in our hearts, minds, soul and strength in study, discussion, prayer, worship and fellowship together and in through sharing the gospel with others. We have been enabled in many possibilities for showing love to our neighbours: in holiday clubs, crèche work, teaching and singing in schools, in maintenance work at these venues. Now the challenge is for us to take our experience, skills and hopefully enthusiasm back to our home countries and look for ways that we can use them there.

Katherine Noakes, UK

On the last day of our time spent at Emakheni Primary school up in the rural areas of KwaZulu Natal, Brother Dumisani asked me to meet with some of the parents of the students at the school. Although they spoke very little English and I can speak very little Zulu (I can say “hello”, “how are you”, “yes” and “thank you”, which doesn’t get you too far in a decent conversation!), it was such a touching experience for me.

There were 8 local mothers present, who all greeted me warmly with a hug. I then sat around a table and spoke with them through Dumisani, who translated our conversation. Although these ladies barely knew me, the sentiments they were expressing were just beautiful! They had been seeing and hearing, through their children, of the maintenance work we had been doing and the classes we had been running with the students during the week. They were so thankful for the work we were doing and the opportunities we were creating for their children and wanted me to know that they were praying and thanking God for sending us to help them.

This was just one about half a dozen meetings Dan and I had all week long at the school with various groups….from parents of students and (perhaps hopeful!?) Principals of other schools nearby….to journalists and members of parliament. Every person we met with shared the same message of thanks and praise for the simple things we were able to do for their community. It was so encouraging to see people of all walks of life responding to our efforts which we know were, in a small way, following the spirit of Jesus’ ministry; touching out to those less fortunate than us and sharing God’s love with them.

Leah Egginton, Australia

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