the outside people ...

The high-end street vendors.

We call ourselves "outsiders" because we try to go with Jesus to where people are outside church.  We pray; we are present; we listen; we connect.  But on our beat are many people who are not just outside of church (though many of them belong to churches), they are literally outside in the weather every day.
There are others, but I am thinking of the street vendors: people making a go of life, making a living by selling goods and services 'in the weather'.

In our urban hub there are upmarket, middle-market and downmarket vendor spots.  Some have quite sophisticated permanent shelters (sanitised for the rich, you know); some have created their own very clever shelters to erect where they hire a spot on the pavement; some just squat next to the passing people with their wares on a cloth on the ground.

Street vendors with permanent stalls.

But all of them share several things that challenge me as I pray for them.

1. They create and pack up their entire shop every single day.  I admire them for this alone, especially as the displays are often so beautifully arranged and the display methods so innovative.
2. They are out there in the heat and cold and the dry and wet.  A few stay at home when it is cold and wet, but most are there whatever the weather.  Their sales are deeply affected by the weather, but every possible sale is so important.
3. There is a mobility among them.  On Sundays many don't open, and those that do often move into a better spot for the day.  New stalls open and close frequently.  (Though this is so true inside the centres at the moment too!)  What exactly a stall sells is very variable as the vendor tries to follow their market and adapt to the moment.  Sunglasses in summer, beanies in winter, and team caps when there is a sports event!

We ask God to give these hard-working men and women strength for the task that they face each day.

We ask that their wares will sell well so that they have enough to cover their needs.

We pray for God's protection over them as they sell in such vulnerable places.

We long for God to touch their lives so that they know Jesus and walk with him.  We pray that those who already have a vibrant faith are able to live godly lives and reach out to their neighbouring vendors with the good news.  

It is too easy to walk past without praying.  It is difficult to make the effort to engage with the people who run the stalls.  I don't naturally buy on the street, but if I care about these people I must.

Our church (Claremont Methodist) has a current project to pray for the businesses of the Claremont Urban Hub.  We include the informal traders in this and every couple of weeks we write up one of the stalls for prayer.  

Collage

Settling into our new half-house home has been good.  We love being on hand for Martin's mom and dad.  We think Mom has adjusted to having a smaller space and people so invasively close; she definitely enjoys having someone on hand and a little help with some of life's responsibilities.  We want to make sure she gets to church every second week while someone stays with Dad.  We need wisdom when to help and when to leave.

In December I (Lesley) had the privilege of going to a big Engineering Education Forum in Dubai where I received an award in memory of my brother Duncan and his awesome contribution to the field.

Martin's latest leisure project is puppet creation.  One of his work projects is his PhD - he has completed his pilot study and is ready to interview a large number of Methodist ministers.

Lesley's latest "leisure" project is masters studies.  This means giving up painting and writing for now!

Lesley still works at UCT part time.
Martin teaches at three (sometimes four) different theological organisations.
We work on our "Outsiders - Urban Spiritual Life" project which is integrating more into the life of Claremont Methodist Church again.

Joanna and Adam live next door and we do a lot of community living.
Charis lives in the UK and has had a very hard year.

Hopefully I will be better about news ...

getting out (a little)

We love the people of the Claremont Urban Hub!
There are so many people; each one is so interesting; every person is so special.
Many of them experience the love of Jesus, and love him and serve him.  We pray for them.
Many of them still wait to hear the good news in a way that they can understand.

The balloon man is sharing the good news with the Hari Krishna man ... how nice that we are not the only people who care!
We pray for people who can't hear the "church" way.  We pray for God to show his love to each person in a way they can receive.

Thank you for praying for us.  We have made small steps in getting back into "Outsiders" ...

See our page on Facebook!  If you like it you'll see it.  If you share it other people will see it too.

Discipling Nations

Martin has been working several awesome people since Willem Conradie started an organisation several years ago.  It is called "Discipling Nations" and the aim is to offer training in cross-cultural missions at a grassroots level.  People who can't afford training in churches that can't afford big-time sending meet together weekly for a few months.  At the end of the course there is a weekend conference - often with several groups together.










These conferences are lots of fun and totally exhausting.  They are held on a beautiful apple farm in the mountains.  The owners have built a special mini conference centre for Christian groups to use.

What they are doing in the training is gradually evolving.  They have been using some material from franchised courses. But they also give their own lectures.  These are gradually developing as the cover more topics.  Martin often get the job of sorting out other people's PowerPoint presentations because he does really good ones.

Now they are at the place where they want to take the next step in development of the unique "Discipling Nations" material.  It is our winter break for colleges so there are no courses at the moment.  Martin is spending this time tasked with organising the material into a more harmonised form, and producing a work book for the weekend conferences.  From there they hope to begin to be less dependent on the franchised course.

living water?

Martin labels the spring water, bottled at source in Newlands!

Andrew collects his tlc, fruit and water.

Spring water was one of the things we offered to passers by at Earth Dance.  For some it was very helpful as they had only brought liquids with additives.  For some it went deeper - one friend called it "holy" water, and lay on the ground to let it pour straight into his mouth every time he came past.

new moonlighting

Okay ... so where does an ad-film agency find an older, bearded puppeteer in Cape Town?  From Artee Partees (Kirsty Paxton) of course, who just happen to "have" (sort of) Martin!

So Martin goes along with a suitcase full of puppets, including Captain Seaweed and Able (Lesley's coke-can puppet).  The film-dudes are from Belgium and are selling suitcases.  They like Martin (because he is funny and looks Belgian and has a huge beard at the moment); they like Able too, but htey can't have another product in their ad ... so 

Martin spends they first few days of a one week holiday having enormous fun making a puppet and being filmed.  Also not really getting rest, but ...  

entranced ...

hundreds of tents, peg to peg

 thousands of people, shoulder to shoulder

 noise, light, noise, colour, noise, substances ripe for abuse, noise

some rather nice music

and us

Andrew went to shower.  

One of the young men in the bathroom, incredulous: "Are you brushing your teeth?"

Andrew, taken aback: "Well, yes."

Silence

Young man: "Ur.  Could I have some toothpaste on my finger?"

Several others:  "And me!"

This is ministry.

more when we get pictures from the proper photographers ...

Hey! January happened already

We preached at churches: Claremont, Lansdowne, Hanover Park, Ottery, Wynberg ... bottom line, God serves us, strangers to his grace, so we in turn should serve strangers. Martin gave a paper at a Missiological conference in Pretoria....bottom line, Academics should spend some of their time working with those "strangers" who cannot qualify to attend their universities. And Martin got official training to facilitate a grass roots mission training program (Kairos)... bottom line, he can now help his friend Willem Conradie to train people under the university radar in - guess what - serving strangers! A keynote January if ever there was!


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Charis is soldiering on...although contracting glandular fever was a disaster. She has spent an exhausted month, although she has managed also to work on writing a humorous play which is already in production for performance later this year. And she worked on another film shoot for a student movie-maker. She is getting requests for more gigs but thinks that unless they are actual friends they ought to pay her more than pizza.

And Lesley and Martin turned 52 and 53. We had a big party with our Monday crowd on Lesley's birthday, and a small family dinner on Wednesday. And bought each other some books and framing materials :)

2011 into 2012

 

For those who missed it: Charis started 2010 really ill and missed her last year of school.  Joanna and Charis visited Thailand for three weeks in July 2010.  Joanna and Adam got married on 24 September 2010. 

2011 started off quite difficult:  After falling off a ladder, Lesley was flat on her back for 8 weeks and continued in the brace for another 5 weeks.  Life continued tough:  Martin's dad has been in hospital six times this year and had four operations.  In between he managed to turn 88!

Lesley had a small op, which was a bit tricky to recover from!
We have managed to "serve strangers" as well!


Martin leading a weekend workshop on using street art.

Martin had a huge teaching load this year: part time at two colleges and some weekends with churches. 

Lesley has worked mainly in our urban-hub project.  The big innovation there being the advent of a blog aimed at not-yet and not-anymore and not-at-all-sure Christians and others! see link below  We both have many privileged opportunities as "life coaches", formal and informal.

Right now, Martin has been painting a nativity scene on the pavement outside a shopping mall; he has spoken to witches, a JW, secularists, Christians and a Muslim, apart from the very angry shop-keeper and the dozens who have looked, enjoyed and commented. Lesley has been blogging about the Festive Season. 

We hope that you enjoy celebrating Jesus.  May God guide you as you reflect on living.

getting there

slowly ... very slowly.

But we feel cautiously encouraged that the annual renovation of space will be effective. We have worked out what we can aim to complete before Friday, and we hope to contain the remaining mess in two areas (a small office-room and a piece of work-space outside).  We have even managed to completely tick some items off the list - those who know us well will be aware that actual completion often eludes us.

 

 Lots of sorting of stray stuff has happened, a small amount must still be done this week, but several cubic metres will remain to be dealt with post holiday.  Two huge boxes of stuff went off to the charity shop, and several black bags full departed this life.  Some painting has begun, the water features are being cleaned, and a piece of our back garden is starting to realise more of its potential as a place for work and nurture.


The trouble is, there is a tension between this work and the work of being out in the urban hub.  Tension can be creative, but this just feels tiring!  Still, we trust God to use what we can manage "out there" and what we can achieve "in here". 


We also incidentally have a whole bunch of admin which MUST get done ...
for example, we have sorted out our internet connection (thanks Rory) and written a nasty letter to someone but we still need to sort out our cell phone contracts and Martin's dad's medical accounts, among others!   Of course, we are trying to be good children to Martin's parents next door: his dad came home a week ago tomorrow after his sixth stay in hospital and fourth operation in 2011.

taming the chaos

About once a year even we cannot cope anymore with the mess in our house.  The time has come to TRY to tame it.  We are not aiming for a house that looks like yours (stay with me here), just for ... well, maybe piles of stuff that aren't in imminent danger of collapsing on our heads.

Our house is used in lots of different roles (see the "At Home" page in the tabs along the top) and when things get busy we are inclined to move from one thing to the next without much thought (and usually no action) for what has been left behind after whatever we were doing. 

Right now I'm really glad the weather is allowing us to eat in the back yard:  I'm trying to sort out an accumulation of stuff and the dining room table is the place!  We will be making some new shelves as well as repacking old ones, and hopefully supplying Friends of Valkenberg Charity Shop with several large boxes of stock.

We are really bad at housekeeping - it is our ungift, if there is such a thing.  So we need prayer for this - if you are the praying type, we appreciate your help in this!

We hope to come out of this with more space and less tension, without losing the creative serendipity of reasonable mess.  Our house is a place of service, and the most important thing is that it is a space filled with the Holy Spirit.  Our prayer is always for people to experience Jesus here.

We also want to be faithful in making this gift (a beautiful house in a lovely place) something that Jesus can use - for us and everyone else. 

Moonlighting - Lesley this time

This time it was Lesley: exploring fynbos with Belinda's grade 1 class on a rainy day in Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

.

Okay, so I look odd, but we all had fun!  The Kirstenbosch staff were brilliant and opened the glass house 30 minutes early for us ... otherwise it would have been a very wet outing.

Great thing is: now we can pay out water and electricity bills.  God provides, and he uses people to do it.  We won't have to move to a "maatjies" (mat) hut made of reeds (how useful plants are) after all.

street art: free to live

 So, three weeks later than planned, there we were on Saturday.  The perfect weather for connecting with people in the urban hub.  An art installation on the street, a 'meditation' on Galatians 5: what does it mean to live in freedom in the city.  We chatted to about a dozen people and many more saw 'something' going on.  One family found it hard to believe that we were not (repeat, definitely not) selling anything!

For more pictures go to "outsiders - urban spiritual life" and "street theatre".

marking time

two markers in companionable misery

This week is marking week for Martin. 

Sometimes this is fine, even enjoyable, when one sees people having learned and grown.  Other times it is horrible: people make silly excuses for late hand-ins (I had other assignments); people don't try; people ignore instructions; and worst of all ... plagiarism!  All the time there is the pressure to finish by the deadline, and to be fair.

So this week will have its good moments and bad moments like all weeks.

walk the hub

Last night the weather forecast was for rain again this morning.
We decided that whatever the weather, we would take the morning to walk and pray in the various spots where we hope to have street art events over time. 

We prayed for God to show us clearly whether, where and when we should do the "free to live" installation. 

We also prayed for God to show us how he wants to communicate with people in these places through street art.

Right Now ... Graffiti and Sudan

Graffiti artists are a tribe ... you've probably never thought of that, unless you are an anthropologist or were at a church youth group in Bellville last night!
Martin is the speaker for a mission weekend, involving a total of six sessions (four today) ...

If you were to attend, you would find out that it is quite possible that the Irish were originally told about Jesus by Berber Africans!  SO ... a Irish missionary telling a Berber about Jesus in North Africa today would be risking their life to give back what was given 16 centuries ago!

You would also be treated to the South Sudan National Anthem ... a new song for an ancient country, with a history of people following Jesus longer than most European countries!

Pray for Martin to communicate lovingly and effectively God's heart for the people of his world!

What is it?

When the Israelites saw the food God had sent in the desert they said "What is it?" and that become its name "manna"; we even use the word in English!

A lot of the things we do are like that.  Difficult to describe, impossible to name!  I want to tell you about one of these today; it happened to me twice in the last few days.  But I can't think what to call it. 

I will give some images from what many of my friends irritatingly call "real jobs" - I don't think you guys mean to be cruel, and I know my 'job' is really a vocation, I know I don't get a salary for it, I know no one really wants what I do, I know there is no title for it, I know there is no measurable product ... but

Perhaps I should try the answer "Who wants a real job when you have an authentic, genuine and true whole-life calling to an all-encompassing task of eternal multi-dimensional significance."  Maybe not, it doesn't fit the bill for a catchy reposte to "real job".  Never mind.  I know you are actually (really!) on my side.

Life Coach.  Pastoral Counsellor.  Personal Trainer.  Spiritual Director, Mentor or Companion.  Journey Guide.  Career Guidence.  Alas, what I do is none of these, and all of them.

Martin does a lot of this too; I used to think that this was his gift only, but God seems to think otherwise.  I am never quite sure why it happens, but somehow people come into our lives needing loving listening.  Sometimes they specifically seek me out and I still find this a bit surprising, but it is one of the things that God just does.  Martin spends a lot of time with random strangers talking to him, I'm more often with strangers-who've-become-friends.


So what happens then? 
I listen:  not just to sounds, but to something deeper; not just to the person who I am with, but to Jesus who is with us too.
I ask:  sometimes questions to help me understand better, sometimes questions to help the person who is with me explore more deeply or widely, sometimes it turns out to be a God-question.  Notice how often Jesus asks questions!  He was frustratingly uninclinded to give answers.
I think:  one of my weak-strong-nesses is continuous involuntary fast analysis and synthesis, so I find myself seeing things, unravelling and weaving; sometimes what I see turns out to be God showing something.
I speak:  not advice, I try never to tell people what to do or think; but sometimes I end up picking out good things to show them, or reminding them of past conversations; sometimes what I say turns out to be words or wisdom from God.
I pray:  during the conversation as part of the conversation-with-Jesus that is going on simultaneously, usually with the person before we part or join others; and over the days and weeks following or between conversations.
It is really about loving the people in my life.  I see all of them/you as part of his grace to me.  When he/they/you let me into your space that is grace too.  I have had to learn to hold precious people and moments lightly - some stay in our lives for a long time, some move on when a particular time of need has passed, some are with me for a single conversation.  But God is the one who is actually their life companion, just letting me share his joy.

I don't know what to call it. 

In lots of ways it is nothing that everyone else isn't doing all the time.  I know I am not naturally gifted for it.  I'm not formally qualified for it, though I have had lots of training, done lots of reading and read lots of books.
But God is doing it in me (with me, for me) and I am grateful for this grace.

moonlighting with children

I've mentioned before how we sometimes do things we get paid for which contribute to the finances.  We try to make sure these don't divert us from our core business, either by making us unavailable or because they are at odds with the concept of "serving strangers".

Yesterday Martin spent two hours with a Grade 1 class ...

The theme was SPACE:
There is a book specially created for the occasion called "Zooty the Space Girl".
There were hundreds of cut-out bits of corrugated cardboard which assembled themselves into 28 spaceships.  (Yes, don't come to our house today if you have a problem with millions of tiny offcuts of cardboard box!)
There was great excitement about pretending to float, catch a planet and open it to find ... an imaginary smarty inside!

AND much more ...








These occasional stints at school (two or three a year) are enormous fun for Martin, and totally exhausting!  (How do the grade one teachers do it year after year?)  They also often seem to come when we really need the small financial injection: today we'll be able to pay the French teacher and the cell phones!!  We are grateful for the way God keeps us.  We are also grateful for how much fun our work is.

HOLIDAY !!!

Sorry about the long delay in reporting ... But we finally did get to leave on holiday! 
And here we are, at Pearly Beach - between Hermanus and Aghullhas.

 In a lovely house, with a lovely fire place and space around us, and time within us.

 

 

Martin's Crazy Days

Martin has just finished a marathon of marking exam papers and essays.  BI courses complete!
He collects his final CI essays this afternoon.
He has been preparing a course for BI for next semester ... 'Evangelism'.  He is amped to teach it, but starting a course you have never taught before is a major undertaking.  He has found some fun stuff on how not to do it; up YouTube!

He is just busy finalising his prep for running his street-art-and-talking workshop - happening for the third time over the mountain pass in Villiersdorp.  Tomorrow morning will see five paintings happening on the village main road.

Then he will drive post haste back to the Cape Flats to run a seminar on 'Becoming a Life-Long-Learner' for the lay preachers in our group of churches ... tomorrow afternoon.  He will finish off that preparation tonight at bed-time.

Meantime, we are hoping to leave on Sunday for a long-desired holiday.  Martin was really tired before last week, so you can imagine that he will be a basket case by Sunday!  Also that some prayer for all this would be essential.