Two Funerals

It was a rough weekend for our church community in terms of health concerns. On Sunday I received news of the death or near-death of three people affiliated with our church: Margaret and Monty both passed away, and Johann fell very seriously ill.

Margaret was a long time member of our church, a well respected and well loved member of the community. Her death was not so surprising, and I think it was something of a release for her, but still not easy for the family and friend she leaves behind. We had a memorial service for her yesterday at the care center where she spent the last years of her life.

Monty was another adherent of our church, he owned a successful billtong (South Africa meat product) business in the area and was always a very generous and well liked guy. He only got word of his illness three weeks ago, and that quickly he is gone. His funeral is on Thursday.

And then Johann is another fellow who is affiliated with our church, his wife Juliet has been a core member of the church for a good while, and he might have been were he not confined to a wheelchair, making regular attendance quite difficult. This weekend he suffered some major brain damage, I'm not sure the actual medical diagnosis, but he's left with very limited brain capacity and he may very well be toward his end.

I received word of all this in the past four days! And then to top that off one of our deacon's mothers fell quite seriously ill as well. To give some relative comparison, I've only been involved with two other funerals that we've had all year, so to have this number of incidents happen in such a short time is unusual.

So that's life around here right now, not to mention my still trying to get my head around only three weeks left here. Still unbelievable.