Hello...Wellington

The lesser known Wellington is in the heart of the fruit growing countryside near Cape Town. It has a loooong missionary history - the missionaries used to set off from there in their wagons to cross Bains Kloof and head up into the rest of Africa. A stone image of Andrew Murray still gazes broodingly down the main road, gazing after them. Of course the trekboere also took that route - what a complicated history

I was in Wellington with a Discipling Nations camp on Saturday last weekend. Wellington is a small country town with lots off churches and lots off bottle stores. This  image was of a proud survivor of a night of drinking the evening before...it became obvious that many people had not quite finished by Saturday morning.

We divided into my usual teams of four, painting and retelling parables and Bible stories. I have started insisting that teams do a proper inductive Bible study on the passage before we go out

Then the teams go out and adlib the stories according to the storyboards - if you follow this blog you'll know the drill. I am all very organised when I lead these evangelism exposure trips, but things often do not go according to script. On Saturday I had an artist who kept on jumping up to preach:)

But it was a lot of fun, and generally a quiet, attention-grabbing, respectful and affectionate way of being witnesses to the Kingdom of God on the street. I had some lovely peaceul interactions with three drunk people, including one long conversation about addiction with me and two drunk buddies leaning against a wall and slowly talking through the subject at helpful depth. But I wasn't meant to be doing that either - easy to go off script, though, when serendipity strikes :)

I'd like to finish off with what I think is a beautiful image of an intercessor - each of the groups has one person tasked to stand at a distance and pray for every interaction or potential interaction. This photo seems to catch the essence of that role, and stands as a challenge to my own threadbare prayer life.