Exploring the North

Today Archdeacon Ngidi has driven me 425 km in his faithful old Mercedes as he shows me round the Northern Archdeaconry. We visit most of the ten Madwikwe Anglican Chapelries, smaller churches which come under the responsibility of the energetic and hard working self supporting priest, Father Patrick Botshelo. Perhaps I’m beginning to feel the pressure of trying to respond positively to numerous requests for financial donations to enable church buildings to be completed. Perhaps there will be ways of meeting some of their requests; perhaps it is shocking that congregations are meeting in small shacks constructed from corrugated iron sheets where they get wet in the rainy season and experience awful heat the rest of the time. Any way I find myself telling the small gathering in one chapelry that we can either call the glass half empty or half full – that we can make real progress if we go for the half full option. Then in another, maybe St Monica’s, I find myself using John 3:16 to say that God so loved the world that he sent a ......cheque! No he didn’t, he sent his Son and our partnership must be based on relationship, relationships of trust and mutuality. 'You have so much that we are blessed by', I tell them through translation; 'Your passionate worship, your resilience, your endurance and way through the horrors of apartheid, showing us the way of truth and reconciliation……'