A curate's egg of a weekend!

This last week has been one of highs and lows, of the mundane and the exhilarating. Much of my time was spent at my computer completing the service sheet for Family Day. With the Bishop’s permission I have reformatted it, and the hymns are now in the place where they will be sung rather than all together at the end, which meant constant flicking back and forth. There was a cover to design and the whole thing contains elements in English, Setswana, Sotho, Afrikaans, Xhosa and even a sentence in Venda. In all there are 12 hymns, some of which I had to type out in the other languages. Things that in England take seconds, like working out the appropriate place for a line break, were major exercises here, by the time I’d managed to get someone to understand what I wanted to know. Proof reading involved everyone in the office – Philip did the Setswana, Ruth the Afrikaans, Sophie the other languages and +Steve the rubrics. Oh, and of course, I did the English and the layout. But it is now finished, the Bishop is very happy with the end product and should be going to the printers today. It has been a real collaborative effort. I said ‘very happy’ – in fact he’s now asked me to format 2 other services so that ‘they look professional’ too. Someone else has typed them and he is going to proof read them, but the question of where to break a sentence if necessary still remains!

The traditional Friday night Pieterse family braai
Megan's under the blanket!

Friday I went to Potch for the weekend to stay with Jacques and Melinda Pieterse and their children Megan and Quinton. Jacques is Rector of St Mary’s, the ‘white’ church, which will celebrate 150 years of life and witness next year. Melinda works in Klerksdorp, which means a lot of travelling for her, which is expensive and tiring. Megan was starved of oxygen at birth and, though now a full grown 16 year old, has the mental age of 6. She is a lovely girl and was confirmed last year. Quinton is 15, fishing mad, and a very personable young man. He is the one who lent his guitar to the group who did the Sunday School training at Easter. We had a brilliant time together. Friday evening was just a getting to know you time – Jacques and I talked till midnight: Melinda, having been up since 4.45am called it a day at 10. Saturday morning he shared some of the frustration and difficulties of life in his parish, and then I was taken out by his curate Magda for lunch. She was one of the deacons on the ordination retreat last year and it was good to catch up with her. Her son, a 21(?) year old theology student was at home and is usually very quiet apparently. A main area of interest for him is languages – Hebrew, Latin and Greek – so we had interests in common and we had a very good talk about the problems of balancing academic study with faith. Magda was over the moon that he had been so open with me, and at one point disappeared into the kitchen to give us space. A definite ‘Thank you God’ time.

After that it was back to the Rectory to be shown how to make the Afrikaans delicacy ‘Milk Tart’. I got the job of ‘stirrer’! Then it was the all-important job of the day – watching South Africa play Wales in the Rugby World Cup! There was much leg pulling, cheering and shouting as the match went back and fore, much to the consternation of the dogs, who were disconcerted by all the noise. Jacques is half welsh, so had a little toe in the Welsh camp, but would not have watched it if I had not been there. However, his verdict was that it was a great game, which he had thoroughly enjoyed: that it had been very therapeutic: and that it had awoken a desire to know more of Wales. Amen to that!! Our evening meal was a mutton curry, followed by our milk tart, which was delicious.

Sunday I was to preach and preside at the Cathedral. Normally that is a high point of my visit: this time the less said the better! Suffice it to say that of the 4¾ hour service 3 hours was spent collecting money. I felt like walking out at one point it was so bad. I certainly was in no frame of mind to preside at the Eucharistic Prayer. However, God is good. As I was censing the altar, I stopped to look up at the figure of the crucified Christ and sent up a plea for him to sort me out – which of course he duly did.

Lunch was back at St Mary’s Rectory. Father Horace McBride and his wife Loraine – see my sabbatical post on the Bikers! - were there for a Braai lunch. It was a time of much fun and laughter and a much needed antidote to the morning’s experiences.

 

There are other things to say, but this long already, and they'll keep for tomorrow or Wednesday.