Visitation Week

Actually, This Coming Week is Visitation Week

I often find myself a little bit amazed at how quickly this year is passing by. I'm already making plans for my vacation at the beginning of July, and by that time the year will be more than half over, which seems bizarre.

Election

The big news of the past couple weeks around here was the election. It was really interesting being a different part of the world for a national election, it sure gives you a different perspective on democracy. Even before the election, really, before even any of the campaigning, everyone knew who was going to win, The African National Congress (ANC). This is the party that Mandela was and still is a member of, this is that party that, in many ways, led the struggle against apartheid. They have a long history in South Africa and really, you can't blame the people for being attached to this party. However, from how I understand it (which really isn't well at all) democracy doesn't quite work with only one dominant party. This is evident here in that currently the ANC and their current leader, Jacob Zuma, are constantly plagued with corruption charges. Zuma himself just escaped trial under charges of accepting bribes, and most people aren't happy with the way in which the charges were dropped. Also, he has something like six wives, and a few years ago he was also very mysteriously acquitted of rape charges, and apparently he didn't graduate from high school, etc etc. But of course, most if not all of my information comes from The Western Cape, the province in South Africa that has the richest population and the whitest population, and could possibly be accused of being biased against black leaders in some cases. Let me just say that the political situation here is COMPLICATED. With all the propaganda and bias everywhere, often I find it's tough to get a solid grip on what is fact and what is rumour, it can be frustrating.

Election Day

So that was a pretty negative assessment, which perhaps is a little unreasonable of me. There was a lot of good to what happened on election day. There was almost no violence, and millions of people across the country voted in free and safe elections and were free to vote for the candidate of their choice without fear of repercussions. Compared to what elections have been in the past, or compared to what elections are in some of our neighbouring countries, things went off fairly well. Election day here is a national holiday as well, so everyone got the day off, which was nice (frankly, North America could take a lesson from that one). That night was also Bible Study for our Over 21's group at my house, so it was nice to discuss and reflect on the day. Beings that it was assured that the ANC would win, we were just hoping that they wouldn't get 66% of the vote, which means they would have the power to change the constitution. The provincial vote was also up that day, and in the Western Cape the dominant party is the DA (Democratic Alliance, I think). I'm not sure what to think of them, in the national elections they were also represented and ran on a campaign of 'Stop Zuma' which seems to almost be unnecessarily negative and polemic.

I'm very much still in the learning stages about the political situation of this country. The whole thing is very much wrapped up in historical and social dynamics that have been playing out in this country, really for the past 400 years. I suppose it's pretty much a given that the history and society will affect the politics of a country, but here those stories are so rich and diverse and tragic, it makes for a complicated and interesting political system.

But Yes, I Have Been Doing Work As Well

My past two weeks with the church have been dominated (at least in my mind) with the preparation of my next sermon, really getting back to the basics of sermon preparation. This has been a difficult but very beneficial exercise, I believe. I don't preach again until July, but I'm happy to have the time to work on it before then, to make it something really worthwhile, something that will convey the Word of God to the people. So in the past two weeks I've been doing a lot of reading a writing, pouring through Biblical commentaries as well as doing some of my own reading on the side, and then doing some writing exercises that Thomas recommended. I wrote 4500 words in two hours! I could quit my day job and become a scribe! Whatever the matter, I think the process is going well, we'll see what I come up with by July.

Church Fete

Just Saturday we had what we call a 'Church Fete', which is where we set up booths inside the church and sell various goods in an effort to raise a bit of money. It was a good time, I helped out with the used book sale, and we did pretty well. One man came by and haggled with us over a purchase of 34 books at one time, I think he bartered me down to R140, which is like, 20 dollars, so, he definitely won. We were also selling things like used clothes, odds and ends, some baking, as well as tea and coffee. I am told this was just a 'Mini Fete', so we'll see what a real Fete is like. We were also only open from 9-11am (which involved me getting up earlier than I have in about two months to help set up...not a good time), so it was a pretty brief ordeal, yet even the we raised a pretty good sum of money. What were we raising money for, you might ask?

We Were Raising Money for the Tax Man

If you get my prayer letter you may remember my appeal for funds in regards to a major tax bill we got recently. About two weeks ago now we got a letter in the mail telling us that (for the first time in 120 years) we were being taxed on our 'profits'. Being a non-profit organization this was a bit confusing. What we are being taxed on is the money we make by renting out some of our property to a doctor's office, but that simply goes towards paying our bills. Either way, it is a bit absurd to introduce this new taxation policy. Internationally speaking, almost no government taxes their churches in such a way, and even if they did, you would hope they would give you more than two weeks to pay the bill! If I'm remembering correctly the bill was equivalent to about 10% of our annual budget. And we're supposed to figure out how to pay that by yesterday. Right. So our accountant and properties manager and the gang are looking for loop holes, trying to figure out what we're going to do. Keep us in your prayers, unless we can get out of this bill, we're pretty much up a creek. Yet even then, we are faithful that God will provide. If God wants us to stick around, I'm sure we will.

So, Now It's Visitation Week

Maybe that's a bad title for it, 'Visitation' seems to imply funerals and such, and that's not really what we're doing, we're just meeting with people and doing some visiting that perhaps is a bit overdue. I'm looking forward to it, I like visiting people, it's a chance to catch up and really to get involved in people's lives and give them some support, or hope or maybe even conviction. Such as the week will decide I suppose.

OK, so, as usual I will update you again in a couple weeks. I'm sure the time will fly by as usual. It seems to be the way things go around here.

Until next time,