Bread of Life! Literally.

Friday, June 18, 2010, 1:33AM

Pneumatix Campus, Somerset West, South Africa

So two days ago (Wednesday) we spent the majority of our day in a township called Enkhanini.  It is still in Stellenbosch, it is just a smaller, worse off township than Kayamandi.  This township is where Lourens has been investing time almost weekly with a large group of volunteers.  The group has helped build stairs in the heavily traveled areas as the clay ground gets very slick when its wet, and has raised enough fuss to the government that they finally installed a trash removal system.  This township has one of the most beautiful views in all of Stellenbosch, if you can look past the disparity that’s in the way (right).

One of Lourens’ main contacts here in Enkhanini invited us into his home and showed us around some (right).  He has one of the nicer homes in the township and actually has electricity- stolen from a nearby school.  He also has a small garden and chickens that he keeps to get eggs and to eventually sell the chicken for income.  Then he gave us a tour of the entire region of Enkhanini.  It holds about 3,000 people in a very congested area with only 3 working toilets, 5 working water spouts, and 1 area for dumping trash for waste management to pick up.

Then Thursday the 13^th floor crew had their first performance here in Stellenbosch.  It was at a church not too far from the main city center in a major wine farm area.  Yet another gorgeous view, this time not blocked by physical disparity.  They did their play, called Ghost, and left the audience with a deep, penetrating question of the types of choices they have been making.  It was rather convicting as no matter what we often choose the option that doesn’t include God.

At the end of the performance I got to talking with Lourens about their religious relationship with the people in Enkhanini, finding out that that conversation had never been talked about before.  It is assumed that the community has a somewhat Christian background since there is a Baptist church at the center, but most time the township communities (usually 100% black) include some of their ancestral practices, possibly bending the truth.  Nonetheless we don’t know for certain since it hasn’t been talked about before.  Until now!

An organization donated a large amount of bread to the Keep Them Safe program.  Each slice of bread has a Bible verse written on it.  So, tomorrow we will go into Enkhanini and pursue personal relationships with a slice of bread in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.  The current plan is to simply ask how the verse is taken and whether they believe it as truth.  I say current plan because 1) this is Africa- things tend to not go according to plan, and 2) God may have something different in mind!

Until then, that’s all for now.  I must be getting off to bed now, and am quite chilled as it tends to get pretty cold here at night and the rooms are not heated…  Please pray for those conversations and the after-math of what might come of them!

Friday, June 18, 2010

Pneumatix Campus, Somerset West, South Africa

Today was an amazing day!  In the morning, we went to Enkhanini.  Before we entered the township, Lourens had me lead our group in a time of prayer.  Since Philippians 4:6-7 has been such a blessing to me over the past couple weeks, I wanted to encourage the team with this verse as well, focusing on verse 7.  Since the township is generally accepted as a dangerous place and is where we are all the least comfortable, only God’s grace could get us through the day.  Verse 7 says, “and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.”  This idea of God’s peace was something we specifically asked for as we walked into the township.  And God provided!

We split up into groups of three and walked to the homes of the people we met when we were in Enkhanini earlier in the week.  It was so cool to already have a personal relationship with some of the people there that we could build off of and not need to start from scratch.  The most amazing part about what we did today was the gift we were bringing with us to the homes.  The bread I talked about earlier came on time and we were able to hand it out!  Each slice of bread had a different Bible verse on it, and most of them had verses printed on both sides.  We decided that the verses aren’t printed as much as they are probably toasted onto the slice without making the entire piece of bread into toast- however they do it, its really awesome (below).

So with the bread, me and two other girls set out to talk to the people we had met on Wednesday.  We sat and ate bread in four different houses.  Every person said that they believed in God and believed what the passage said.  Every printed verse held the basic idea of the gospel- Jesus being the only way to eternal life.  I was a little disappointed in some ways because the language barrier did not allow us to have very deep, personal conversations.  And since we made the rule of three for safety, that rule also hindered some of our possibilities for those one-on-one conversations.  Nonetheless, I definitely felt like God was using us… and bread… to spread the truth.  As we left each household, we asked the people if we could pray for them- something I felt was where we were really bringing God in for the more personal touch.

1,000 packages of the “special” bread, or “Jesus” bread as some people were calling it, will be delivered every Friday for people to distribute to the township.  Hopefully by next week, God will show us how we can improve on our conversations and really use the words on the bread to help people see the truth in them.

Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”  -John 6:35