GrOuP hUgS!

This morning the trains were running super late because a train failed at Plumstead station. Failed is the nice word Metrorail uses instead of "broken down".  Anyway, when a train fails it means that the trains are going to be super full and today was one of those. The full trains meant that I couldn't sit in my usual place, I'm a creature of habit, or sit with my friends.

Zee and I were messaging each other throughout the train trip to work and had planned to meet on the platform to say hello.  Once we were off the train, we met and walked from the platform to the station.  We stood chitter-chatting in the middle of the Cape Town Station for a minute or two before Will walked up to us. We were all on the same train.  We stood talking for a bit and then we had to go or be late for work.  As we turn to leave, Will opened his arms wide and said, "Group Hug".  I then called Zee back, she had started to walk away already. She came back and we had a random, once in a lifetime group hug in the middle of the station. 

IT WAS AWESOME!

The name of God

This last week my devotional has been on "The Name", as in Gods name.  When I saw that this was the topic for the week I was a little bit confused because God has many names.  What my book, "Praying the names of God" by Ann Spangler was referring to was when we pray, "in Gods name." 

The bible tells us of the temple that Solomon built and then it tells us that in this temple God would dwell, it would be a place where His people would pray and be heard. In 1 Kings 8: 22 -  9:3 Solomon prays to God and asks Him to hear the prays of his people and the foreigners of the land. He prays for healing and forgiveness and he prays that the people who come and pray there know that it bears Gods name. God responds and says that his heart and eyes will always be there and I will put my name there.



What does God mean when He says that He's put His name there? It means so much more that just writing, "God" on a wall.  When we refer to Gods name we are referring to everything that we associate God with.  We associate Gods name with power, Glory, faithfulness, holiness, trust, honest etc.  So when then people went to the temple to pray to God it meant that God was there in His fullness, he was there as healer, father, faithful one, powerful one.



We all know that the temple that Solomon no longer stands in Jerusalem, it was bashed down and destroyed years ago.  So the question is how is this applicable now if there is no temple for us to go to where Gods name is. It's very applicable, in the new testament Paul reminds us that our bodies are the temple of the Lord. This means that God has written His name on us. (I was totally blown away by this).  

From what I understand from this is that, God has written His name on us, meaning that He is in us, (the Holy Spirit), so therefore all of Gods power, authority, holiness etc is in us.  God fills us with all of this, because He is it.  When we pray to His name we are praying to Him, when we call on His name we are calling his presence, when we act in His name we act with His authority and when we fight in His name we fight with His power.  We need to do this in faith, we need to believing all of those things when we pray and God will totally rock and blow our minds away.

God is with us ALL the time, when we pray to Him we are praying to the God who is dwelling in us and around us, the God who hears our prayers and answers them.

Fish on the fire

On Saturday evening Noo and I were drinking tea after a looooong shopping trip to Canal Walk. As I sipped my tea, I looked at him and I was like, "A biscuit would be nice." He jumped up like a gazelle, went to the cupboard and return with a packet marshmallow fish. 



While we were eating the fish, Dave's dad walked through the room as was like,  "Why don't you make a fire?" I looked at Noo, and said, "We can put the fish on the fire." His response get's a million points... "Yes, it's the caveman in me and the Katherine in you coming out"  

I was super excited at the thought of sticking marshmallow fish into the fire.  I've only ever braaied marshmallows on a braai fire or bonfire but never in a house fire... a fire in a fireplace inside the house.  It was also exciting because they were fish marshmallows and not the normal kind of marshmallows.  The possibility of a great discovery was set into motion.


So... Noo made a fire. While waited for the fire to be at the right temperature and to form coals for our fish, we didn't want BLACK BURNT fish, we watched Anna Karenina, a beautifully put together movie about a warped sense of love. It's pretty "arty", but a very good movie. 


Once the movie was finished and the coals were ready, we got the fish ready for the fire. This took all of 5 minutes, all we had to do was stick a fork through the fish. We then huddled by the fire to cook our marshmallow fishies.

After we had munched our fish, I came to the conclusion that real marshmallows - the pink and white ones are my preferred type of marshmallows for a fire.




I saw this quote now, "Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly." and I thought, "YES!"  Noo and I can be intense, deep and pretty passionate but we can also be silly, very silly and it's SUPER awesome!

A little bit of community

Last night was the first cell group of the term. I was like super EXCITED for it last night.

Dave and I had been speaking about community and what it means to us and then somehow we got the idea to do a thing at cell group where we can build community, share about community/fellowship and get people to be real and to share a bit with each other.  We then thought communion would be something awesome to include in the evening, because not only does communion represent the last supper and what Jesus did for us on the cross but it also represents community and fellowship.

I got the "Messy Questions" as I call them from Mel, they're actually called "Honest to God questions".  At the start of the evening everyone chose a question form the bag and we all had to answer it.  Some of the questions are light hearted questions and others are pretty deep.. by some random chance we all ended up choosing the deeper questions. It was pretty funny. 

One of the questions that we had to answer was; "I wish people my age were more..." It was pretty interesting how everyone who is in my age group, 25 - 30 all had the same answer.  We are all very different, in different friendship circles and from different lifestyles, but we all said that we wish that our friends were more focused on building real friendships with their close friends, spending quality time with them.  We all agreed that we live busy full lives focused on everything else that after a while we reach a point of, "I haven't seen my friends in a while". We also agreed that we don't really hang out as much as we used to, and that we don't have deep, real conversations with our friends anymore.

.... It was somehow pretty epic that this question came up during "Messy Questions" because it links to the topic.


Dave gave a short talk on communion, why we do it and how it was done back in the bible times before we ate bread, cheese and drank grape juice.  While we were eating and drinking we had a small amount of discussion of fellowship. 

The thing about communion that is blowing my brain at the moment is that back in the day the disciples not only broke bread to remember what Jesus did for them. They also came together as a community with friends, family and fellow Christians and shared a meal with them. During this time they spoke about the things that were going on in their lives, they were real with each other, they encouraged each other and prayed for one another. 

It blows my mind that the simple act of communion can mean more that just remembering Jesus, it also serves as a reminder of how we need to be living like Jesus.  We need to be loving and accepting of everyone - being willing to share a meal, opening up "our homes" to people and getting real with them and allowing them to be real with you.

This is HUGE in my head at the moment! It also challenges me to be more real and it gives me a desire to want realness from my friends and the people I encounter in life.  I want real community and fellowship with people.

We ended the evening with everyone sharing where they're at, what happened during the holidays and gave prayer requests if there were any before we went into a time of prayer.

Last night was really awesome, God was awesome. He just showed up and filled the room with his presence and created a space for the evening to be a success.  Dave lead the group really well and his talk on communion kind of blew me a way a little.  It was also really cool how everyone opened up and was willing to be vulnerable and share during the Messy questions and during the prayer requests. It really feel like last night was fundamental in the building of a safe place for our cell group to share things with each other without feeling like they are being judged or rejected.

xKx

Gap kids and anger...

Last night was the first Gap of the term and it was A LOT of fun.

The evening started off with musical chairs/jump on each other. This is their own version of our normal musical chairs game.  We explain how musical chairs works, we play the music, they run around the chairs and when we stop the music for some reason they all have to jump on each other to sit down.  We don't understand why, but this is what they do. They also think they're all out, but there's usually a few chairs still open.

We just kind of go with it...


After the game came worship and then the talk. The topic at Gap last night was anger.  I focused on how we get angry because people hurt us and how it's not okay to explode and just "klap" someone.  I thought that, that would work best with the Gap kids because they come from a community where it's okay to just "klap" someone, stab them or do any type of harm to someone who makes them angry.

I started off the talk by sharing a story of where a friend once made me really angry and how I exploded.  During the story I used an illustration of adding bicarbonate of soda to a mixture of vinegar and water to show how I was only a little bit angry and to show I was super angry and then exploded by raising my voice at my friend,  I added a spoon of bicarbonate of soda to neat vinegar. The mixture bubbles over like mad, (I had  put a tray under the glasses to catch the water to prevent a mess).

From that story I went on to explain how in life people hurt you  and often we express that hurt by getting angry. When I asked the kids what they do when they're angry because someone hurt them they all responded by saying they would smack the person.  We even had some role play where I thought I was going to really get a "klap" for telling someone I never liked their shoes. After she had stood up and I had screamed and ran away, she said she was getting into the example and thought she would act it out. 

I then told the story of how David had the perfect chance to kill Saul, when he came into the cave to relieve himself.  David chose not kill Saul in the end, but cuts off a piece of his robe. He then goes to Saul and tells him that he isn't going to kill him because he's gods anointed one.   The story is in 1 Samuel 24:1-13.  The point I used from the story was how David could have acted out in anger towards Saul, who didn't like him and wanted to kill him, but chose not to. We then discussed how you can't just go and get revenge just because people do wrong to you.

In small groups, I asked my girls what they learnt from the story and they all gave good answers, "Not to hit people, not to take revenge, not to take your anger out on someone else, etc"  I then asked them if they are going to do all those things and they all said no and told me that they are still going to hit someone or beat them up if they hurt them or talk badly about them.

While I was driving back to the church after I had dropped some of the kids at home last night I started thinking about the kids and where they live. I came to the conclusion that in their immediate community in IY that's how they deal with things.  Their parents, friends, extended family etc, all react to hurt and anger with violence. It's the only way they know how to deal with things.  They some how have a culture built up in them of this is the way to deal with things.  When we come along and present an alternative solution it takes harder to change or for them to even fully grasp.  They understand the theory behind it but when it comes to practice they still think to hit someone is better that walking away or talking to them. 

I think this is our biggest challenge at Gap.  How do we teach them about living as a Christian and how Jesus wants us to live our lives, when so much of it is the opposite of how their world tells them to live. It's a way that is different to the way their community models dealing with things and living life.  How do we minister cross culturally and teach them to live a cross cultural life where they don't do the "bad" things but still embrace their culture. 

So many questions... but they are all questions that only God can answer and reveal to us as we continue to minister to the kids at Gap.

 

xKx

I was reading this story earlier to day and it got me thinking...

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev used to tell of a time when there was a wave of petty theft in the Soviet Union. To curtail this, the authorities put guards up around the factories.

At a timber-works in Leningrad, one guard knew the workers in the factory very well. The first evening, out came Pyotr Petrovich with a wheelbarrow containing a great bulky sack with a suspicious-looking object inside. "All right, Petrovich," said the guard, "What have you got there?" "Oh, just sawdust and shavings," Petrovich replied. "Come on," the guard said, "I wasn’t born yesterday. Tip it out."

The worker tipped and nothing came out but sawdust and shavings. So he was allowed to put it all back again and go home. When the same thing happened every night of the week the guard became frustrated. Finally, his curiosity overcame his frustration. "Petrovich," he said, "I know you. Tell me what you’re smuggling out of here, and I’ll let you go."

"Wheelbarrows, my friend, " said Petrovich, "wheelbarrows."

I'm easily distracted. Any and anything can distract me from something I'm doing and even more so when I'm doing something that is boring or I have no interest in doing. I think that, that could be true to many people.  The type of distractions I was thinking about were ones that distract me from God. 

The devil LOVES to distract us from God. He likes to interrupt when we're having a quiet time, prayer or talking to a friend.  He'll come along and cause you to think about other things or change our mood.  Our phone may ring or beep, someone will need our attention etc and then our prayer time is over.  What happens most often in the evenings is that I'll be tired, so I say... "I'll sleep now and have a quiet time tomorrow." That never happens, because I always end up doing other things.  If I pray at night now, I force myself to push through the tiredness. 

Other ways that the devil distracts me from doing what God wants is by making me feel like crap. I'll start feeling insecure, stupid and like a failure when it comes to doing things like leading Gap or talking to people.  I have started to realise that this is just the devil trying to get me to chicken out from what God wants me to and preventing Gods work from getting done.

Sometimes I just feel bored with praying, or sitting still and listening to God. This is when my mind wonders the most and I start thinking of the most RANDOMEST stuff ever.

2 Corinthians 2:11 says Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his (Satan's) devices. 

I think it's important that we know how the devil tries to distract us so that we can recognise the distractions and then ignore him. I also think that it's important that we learn to recognise that the devil doesn't want us to move forward with God and will do anything to distract us.  He even does it in small ways so that we don't realise that it's him. It's like the guy in the story stealing wheelbarrows, he distracted the guard and only when it was a little bit too late did he realise.  We also generally only realise when it's too late that something is missing and that we've been distracted.  BUT the most awesome thing about God is he'll still be there trying to get our attention.  

Things you shouldn't do when you're feeling sick

This morning I woke up and I was feeling STAX better.... or so I thought until I ate my breakfast.  My stomach decided to reject the notion of real food and start cramping. Other then the insanely sore stomach, I was really feeling better, only my lower back was still sore and NOT my whole body and I had a slight headache and ear ache.

I thought it would be okay to attempt to concur the world today.... I got up showered and decided to clean my bedroom.  Now that is a challenge all in itself even when I'm well, so after some dusting and vacuuming I felt rather ill and wanted to vomit. I gave that notion up and climbed back into bed for a 2 hour nap.  When I woke up I was feeling better and because I'm stubborn and DON'T learn from previous mistakes I decided to take the dog to the vet.

WHAT A MISTAKE!!!

Champ is a big and strong Labrador and he doesn't ALWAYS listen. Well... mostly never listens and to top it off he wants to say hello to EVERY single dog he sees, whether they're vicious or not.  Taking him to the vet can be SUPER stressful.  After about 30 minutes of waiting and trying to control him, I gave in and got my mom to go and buy a box of dog biscuits so I could bribe him to sit still and it worked.

After waiting for like forever, (about 2 hours), I had started to feel uber sick again and all I wanted to go  home when they eventually called Champ to see the vet.  They shaved him and told us that the absis had cleared up so all we have to do wash it with savlon and keep it clean.

After the vet episode I came home and got back into bed.  I have learnt that when you don't feel well... bed is the place to stay and that you shouldn't try to conquer the world when you start feeling better.  That results in you feeling yucky again!

xKx

Faith

I watched "Faith Like Potato's" today.  I read the book a while ago and the movie has been sitting on my desk for a while, so after the longest sleep ever, I decided to watch the movie.  I cried throughout the WHOLE movie. I blame my emotional state on the fact that I'm sick and that my whole body hurts.

Angus Buchan says, "The conditon for a miracle is difficulty, for a great miracle - impossibility" This statement is soooooo true. He goes out on a whim and plants potatoes becasue he believes that God told him to plant them.  The ground is dry, they're living in a dought and everyone thinks that he's a bit crazy.  At the end of the season and it's time to dig up the potoatos they are completely blown away buy the size and amount of potoatos.  God performed a great miracle that day - everything was against a great cropof potatos but God did it and they had an abunant crop.

So..... this got me thinking about faith and how strong my faith is, especially in the area of becoming a full time missionary.  I totatally understand that being a missionary is a full time thing where ever you - we are called to shine out light to everyone.  The thing I've been struggling with over the past few weeks, is wondeing if I'll ever get to be a full time missionary.  I had to lay the whole Africa thing down at Gods feet and walk away from it.  It's tempting to go back and pick it up and be like, "I'm going to be a missionary in Africa" but that's not for me to say. God's going to send me... well Dave and I where he wants to send us. For now it's Cape Town, so I need to be here and not wishing to be in Africa. Lately I've been feeling that I don;t have enough faith to believe that God's still calling me to be a missionary... but after a few moments of talking to my self firmly today, I realised I wouldn't have the heart I have if God wasn't calling me to this.  I also reminded myself that God is still growing me and preparing me for full time missionary work. He's not done yet, even though it doesn't feel like he's doing anything - he is.

It's kind of like the pototos.  God was growing them, but Angus couldn't see them or what was going on under the ground. He had to have faith in God and that he would come through.  And God did, becasue he is faithful - EVEN when we doubt.  At the moment, it feels like I'm in the dark about the future and being a missionary. It also feels like it's an impossiblility, but God is faithful and he's working, he's also the God of the impossible. I just need to refocus and trust that he does in fact have a plan and purpose for me.

xKx