Busy month

February has simply flown by! A very brief recap of what we've been up to.

For 3 weeks we had a brother from England staying with us, Tim Morse. He took his holiday time (vacation to you Americans) to be here as a short term volunteer, and pitched in with a number of different activities.

Early in the month we rejoiced to have a baptism at the Durban ecclesia. Our new brother Graham is in the top picture at the back, standing between his fiance and his future father-in-law. And we are hopeful that there will be several additional baptisms soon. Our Sunday afternoon bi-weekly class has continued, and two of the students have asked for baptism: Charlotte, the woman second from the left, and Dieu-Donne, who is next to Paul in the back. The fellow right in front has also said he wants to be baptized, and there are two students at the BEC who are also studying for baptism.

Work at the BEC of course continues. The ordering & stocking, database upkeep, and scheduling volunteers keeps us pretty busy all by itself. We are also working to expand the educational side, and we've introduced some individual study classes at the BEC, as well as some group classes at other locations. One of the BEC students invited us to come to a group she put together; the first class has been held, and it appears it may meet bi-weekly on Saturdays. Interesting twist: most of the students don't speak English, and the classes are in Zulu. Fortunately we have a well qualified Zulu teacher, Brother Dumisani from the Westville ecclesia, who will be the primary teacher. For others who help out, there will be someone there who can translate.

Following on from the great study day in Lamontville, we have put together a schedule to do a monthly half-day "First Saturday Good News" session. Paul and Dumisani will do the first one next weekend. Something that we, at least, are finding interesting: the publicity is entirely by SMS (text) messages to our contacts' phones. This seems to be the most effective way of communicating--postal mail reliability is iffy, and most don't have email. But everyone has a phone, and SMS is used here by everyone, for just about everything. The 2010 initiative has an account with a bulk SMS service provider, and we send the messages via a web interface to our 109 students in the Lamontville & Umlazi area.

The Tuesday evening class in Lamontville also continues, and Jane has a consistent bunch of kids who have a class outside on the patio while the adults do a Bible study inside.

Coming up are another couple of very busy months. In March, the Mariannhill Good News Centre will formally reopen (the old building, just a house, was demolished to make room for a larger one, built for the purpose). Our son Caleb and his friend Shawna will be visiting the last part of the month. Then in April a P2P (Prepare to Preach) group from the UK will be here for 2 and a half weeks, which is going to be completely insane by itself, and within that time will be the Easter gathering, which Paul is one of the teachers for. Then the Beelers will arrive from Arkansas, we'll be handing off to them, and then our time here will be done! Can't believe that we can already see the end getting near.

Looking at all of that coming up, we decided we needed a bit of a break, so we went over to Cape Town for a few days. That will be the next post!