the wildcat leaving tour

It's just gone midnight here in South Africa and I'm likely going to be up for a while because I'm in one of those moods. I find that in my life particularly I am fueled by emotion. Thought, understanding and reason may well be my trademark to many people but in truth, and I believe this to be a truth to most people, those things are best used to set one's direction. The power behind your movement and drive must be emotion, passion and a deep desire to see your goal achieved. Tonight I am full of emotion. Right now there's a touch of sadness, joy, honour, humility, thanksgiving, regret and probably a few more, all burning inside of me, creating something like a fire that is going over the last four months, refining and showing things to be as they truly will remain.

And what crazy fool would go to bed with all that happening eh? jokes.

But yeh, there's a lot going on inside of me so I will likely be up for a while yet. I suspect I will speak to Ru and tell her about the last two days, I will catch up on some journal and prayer (the two go hand in hand very nicely), write this blog entry, plan a number of letters to write to my team and other friends here, and muse over all these things as I plan the final team devotional that I will leading in two days time. This my friends is what the heart and mind of Phil gets kicks out of!

Right, let me go finish making my cup of tea and I'll be back...

...and back. As I write I'm wearing black suit trousers, a white shirt, a black tie with the button undone but not enough to see Jonno's white t-shirt I borrow underneath. It is probably my favourite thing to wear in the whole world. I am wearing these things because tonight was our last church home group. We had a sit down meal so we got everyone to dress up. Naturally I took this as an excuse to wear my favourite clothes ever and have not yet taken them off. We just did Izzy's final devotional and all the guys were in their pjamas (how the heck do you spell that??) and there was me still looking like I could do a set in the Copa (thank you Aaron). Anyways I ramble, sorry. I am just trying to set more of a scene than I normally do in these entries.

Ok so my plan for this entry is as follows. First I will briefly summarise the last 10 days or so, something I will affectionately called the 'Wildcat leaving tour', and second I will do something I've been thinking of for a while. I want to try to give you guys a flavour of who I work with and around here so I'm going to write some testimonies and thumbnails of some people I've spoken to both on personal time and work time. I hope you will be as inspired as I have been by them, or if not that, see that I have been inspired and send yourselves or your kids out to this place one day.

So first off. I don't remember if I mentioned that we had a lot of social engagements lined up, but as of tonight we've gotten through 9 of them. It's gone so fast but they've been great.

#1: Baby sitting the best kids in the world. All hail the Ng-Yu-Tin family!

#2: Church home group. I led the evening and shared a message on the need to overcome the barriers that life puts in our way in order to have God's love and truth truly come to fruition in us. It went very well and I enjoyed it muchly.

#3: Actually turned out to be a night off because only the girls went out to our scheduled event!

#4: We went into the community and to a church there. We had traditonal Zulu food (which wasnt half as unsual or scary as we'd been warned) and then in the service I ended up doing some Zulu dancing and giving an encouragement in front of everyone. In Zulu culture there is still a sense of male protection and standing up and looking after the group so as the male leader I get looked to a lot for this kind of thing! But I enjoyed it and was yet another move to increase my comfort zone!

#5 & #6: We spent the weekend in an area known as the Drakensburg which is a national heritage site and has lots of green, mountains and hills. We went with the school we work in and with fifty 13 year olds. It was a lot of fun and it was actually a really nice last weekend here.

#7: Last church service. We went to the church we'd been to most and said goodbye to our friends there. It was very sad actually and felt like only yesterday that we'd first come.

#8: Big meal for our staff friends. We cooked for 30 staff friends and kids to say thank you for all they'd done for us. We made Lasagne becuase it's our speciality ('our' meaning Abby and Jenny's). It went so well and I go such a kick out of being a waiter. Plus I got to speak many people I have come to love so so much. And got a genuine offer of accomodation for when I come back here, which will be asap!

#9: Big mea for our cell friends. Only 15 this time and we had fajitas. However this was so very sad. I think it was the first goodbye where we won't see people again. Other goodbyes have been at times when in all likelihood we'd see people before we went. This one wasn't. When it came to goodbye I felt sick inside and I felt so close to my team because we all felt the same. One of the most amazing thing about being part of Church is the speed at which people become part of your social family, meaning people who you might not know all that well but you still value so highly and would do so much for. We'd met so many people in cell who obviously didn;'t know us, had little to gain in welcoming us, but who gave so much to us and whom we love now so so much.

Ok so that's an update. I will post this and start a new one with part two. Stay tuned. I promise it'll be worth reading.