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I’m very tired.

Found out yesterday that tonight us STEPPERs are going on a ministry trip to visit a youthgroup, and tell them how great missions are, and encourage them to do them, or something like that. Anyway, John, who is in charge of it (the one who got mugged) told me that I am going to be doing a drama. The “offering drama”. I’d never seen this, or ever even heard of it.

He said “well go find out from the creative ministries people”. Ok. So I did, they told me in about 2 minutes. It’s a 1 person drama/mime. Very cool story, actually. They gave me a pair of white gloves too. I wish I had brought my black tousers with me.

Oh well. Maybe I’ll do it at some point in Larnaka.

So I had then to find a way to get out of being on watch tonight. I SHOULD have been given time off already. About a month ago our STEP-mum sent an email (she said) to each of the deparment heads saying that STEPPERs need to be given time off on Friday nights, and other STEP times.

But last Friday was Sabbath Week, and so no STEP ministry time. The Friday before that, we were on overnight, and so no STEP ministry. And the Friday before that, we were voyaging, I believe. Or if not voyaging, then something else happened, or else I wasn’t on watch, or something. I don’t remember.

Anyway, so this is the FIRST time that the situation has acutally arisen, and so they had forgotten about this, and so I had to personally this afternoon find another deckie, and them willing, to swap watches with me for next week. Happily, I could find someone, and so that’s OK. But it will mean that now I have to do an extra watch next week for one day. 🙁

Oh well.

Met more home-educators today. 8-til-12 really lets you meet more people.

I’m thinking about renaming my blog “oh well”. What do you think? heh…

One of the previous STEPPERs, the one who left, lost his badge. Yesterday, while we were cleaning up our cabin to allow the other new STEPPERs to move in, we found it. Then one of the other cabin mates took the badge, and pinned it on the notice board with this note:

“Attention Ship’s Ladies!
Want a piece of the hunk that is
(name) ? His name-badge is going on
auction with a starting bid of 10 Rand,
please contact cabin (number).”

Then this morning, someone stole the badge from the board! This shocking problem caused my cabin mate to put a new notice on the board:

“Lost! One name badge belonging to (name).
Could whoever has stolen it please return
it to cabin (number). I know he is handsome,
but stealing is wrong!”

Then this afternoon, I saw his badge up on another cabin’s door. I told my friend, and he went and got the badge. Now he is going to put a new notice on the board, saying something like

“Due to high demand, the badge belonging to (name)
will no longer be on display, and for security purposes
will be kept safely in cabin (number). Bidding will resume,
at (price), please contact us!”.

We have the strangest notice board.

Anyway. I must be off. I am reading “The Practice of the Presence of God”, which I found in the Library. Interesting. And I also want to run through this drama/mime thing, and also do some replying to other emails and things.

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Still deck work to do, but not for watch keepers. I get the whole afternoon free, which is very cool. I hope to go out tomorrow. I bought some more at the book-ex today. A study bible (slightly ‘damaged’, it got wet or something while sailing), NIV, basically the same as my old one, for aprox. 2 CYP (equiv.), a new bible-cover, and a book of knots and rope work. I am wondering if I perhaps will run out of space to take things, or luggage allowance. I was under when I came out, right? And I will be leaving some shoes behind. So…

Strange life. Random happenings, on watch. A man walked through the gates, wandered around the quay for a while, went to our book-ex packing equipment, and started pulling a loading-trolley, and heading back towards the gate again. Not a port worker, just a random person. So I went up to him and told him “Please don’t take our trolleys”, took it from him, and put it back. He wandered around a bit more, and then left.

I met a family of home-schoolers today. They arrived an hour early of opening time, and so I chatted to them for a while. Christians. Very nice people. We talked about schooling, and from there into evolution vs. creationism, and from there into end-times, and he then told me that, by the way, the AntiChrist is alive and well, is English (sorry), 51, grey-haired, and just got married recently (again).

When I looked puzzled, he then told me the name of the AntiChrist, which adds up to 666 when the letters are counted, or something like that, in both English and in Hebrew. He is decended from royalty, and one day will be King of England, if his mother leaves the post. Hmm. I hadn’t concidered him before… hmm.

Oh well. I have a hard time taking seriously all this eschatology stuff, I’m afraid. It’s a major failing, I know, but… well… what happens happens, and I don’t think we can know exactly who will do (or be) what, and when it will happen. One day, perhaps, I will learn to take it seriously. Perhaps. Maybe I will end up knowing who the AntiChrist (if there is _one_) will be. Perhaps I will write books and hold seminars decrying the evil hidden deeds of whoever I know for certain the evil incarnate is… Perhaps not.

Anyway.

This guy also gave me a CDROM of some pastor doing some teaching about evolution, I think. I also met a teacher of an A.C.E school here, which is being forced by the government to switch to using it’s curriculum, which she is upset about because it is so secular humanist, evolution and all, but she says is OK, because they will screen all the stuff before they teach it.

The volunteers all speak English here, which is cool, and are all quite sociable, so I have got to know some of them, and talk about stuff with them. Also SO many South Africans on board have family coming to visit and stay, and I got to chat with one family, so friendly, and talk about much.

Anyway. I’m off to do some clarinet, again, and then get ready for watch tonight.

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Doulos opened in Durban today. I am on gangway watch 8 til 12, so any time in the afternoon I am available to give tours. Today was the official opening in the morning, and then we opened to the public at 2pm. It is now 2.30, and I will go and see what’s happening once I’ve finished the email.

One of the STEPPERs is leaving in half an hour, to go home. He is finishing early to go to back to seminary, he arranged this from before, so apparently STEP dates are really not so set in stone. It feels very odd to see him leaving.

Today just as I was finishing up my watch, at mid-day, a group of 3 people came and wanted to see the ship. We were not yet open, and so I phoned the tour people, and line-up, and others, but no-one was free, because of the offical opening.

So once my relief came, I took them on a tour, showing them the ship, and then when we went up to the book-ex, found it was open, a group of pastors had arranged a special trip, and the book-ex staff allowed my tour to go and buy a load of CDs and books and things.

My tourists (ha) were very happy, and impressed (I think), and said they will try to come back sometime, but live quite a way away. They were Christians, I think, they bought some worship CDs, anyway. “The 20 Worst of ’90s Worship: 100% pure cheese” or something like that (that was a bit harsh, though)… there is SO much Christian pop-worship on this ship, it is unbelievable.

Sarah, who works in the kiosk was listening to some classical the other day, Beethoven, I think, and it was such a nice change to hear! If I come back to the ship, I think I will remember to bring a CD player, or something, so I can listen to all kinds of music.

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(Again on the computer with the weird spacebar).

Today is the last day of SabbathWeek, man, has it been tiring. Every morning doing the kids work. There are about 30 or so kids, ranging from ages of about 1 to 14, which is quite a large range. It means though that the range is too great for doing more formal games, I tried doing a few of the more basic drama games, but they just collapsed, as some kids just wandered off, others joined in enthusiastically, and then tried to help some of the younger ones, but then by helping the younger ones, got distracted from what they were doing. Oh well.

Today all of us were so tried, (I meant to type tired, but the typo seems to fit as well) that Jordan just didn’t bother with a speaky bit (we are “doing” the fruit of the Spirit, LoveJoyPeacePatienceKindnessEtc), but just put on the tv, with some cartoons. Rubbish.

Absolute garbage.

I think it was roadrunner, or something like that, where one random overly cheerful character blows up, maims, and generally smashes another random overly cheerful character for 15 minutes, and then the whole thing starts all over again. Thankyou, mum, for keeping me away from too much TV when younger. Blah.

Anyway, as predictable, the kids started getting irritable, crying, “I can’t see, you’re in my way, I can’t see” and so on, and so we took them outside for a while longer to just play on the fundeck (one of the lower decks (the poop deck officially) which is separate from the rest ofthe ship, and netted all around and has rubber floor, toys, swings, and so on).

We have been doing loads of crafts with them, Rachel has been in charge of the 5/6 years old group, and me helping for crafts. Anyway, it’s over now, the kids seemed to enjoy it, and the parents are happy, so thats good. I have 8-til-12 watch next week, so I can relax. *phew*.

I had watch 2 times this week too. The information desk is closed after 5 during sabbath week, so that means all international calls come through to the gangwayman. SO many. My goodness. About 1 every 5 minutes. Then as the gangwayman has no way of paging the ship for the person to forward the call to, you have to do a complex redialing procedure to route the call through to their cabin, or if they are not answering there, then to dining room, or other places they might be.

One funny story, after my watch 3 days ago (4-til-8), one of my fellow STEPPERs was also on watch. He is from South Korea, and his English is good, but basic. The phone is dead hard to understand anything on any way (international lines), and the re-directing system on the ship is quite complex too. Anyway. So I handed over to him. Yesterday, I was on watch, and one of the other sisters on board came and said she was expecting a call. Her mum had phoned 2 days ago in the evening (the day I was on watch, but later, during this other guy’s watch), and had been told this:

“Too bad, I don’t know how this phone works, try again tomorrow, goodbye.”

Funny. Very funny. She wrote quite a concerned email to her daughter saying “And I thought you were all christians!” or something along those lines. heh.

Also, I was answering a call, and looking up in the book trying to find a name to direct to, managed it, looked up to find 3 guys in smart suits right up at the gangway. It was one of the government ministers, popped in to see how it was going! Totally out of the blue! So I called the Duty Officer, and he told me to phone someone else, and quickly the line-up people came, and conducted an impromptu V.I.P. tour. Wonderful.

I love being here.

Yesterday was a big fun-night for the end of sabbath week, many people doing cool dramas, funny songs, and so on. The puppet-people have been putting together a very cool puppet show, mixing live puppets with a whole puppet-film they have been filming last week. I have been able to occasionally help a few times with them, which has been really cool. Being a puppeteer, so they could watch and direct the filming, holding strings during a mission-impossible type stunt scene with a flying puppet dropping from a rooftop, and so on. Really good fun.

Anyway, yesterday, I was not able to go to the funnight, as I was on watch, but was able to help the creative ministry staff with setting up the room, moving chairs, hanging set, moving drumkits, and all that kind of thing. I just enjoy being able to do theatre work again. If I come back for 2 years, then I would be able to get envolved more, and perhaps in the second year be able to transfer to doing creative ministry (drama, puppets, etc) full time…

Anyway.

Only 2 weeks or so left… very strange feeling. Like I have only just arrived, and like I have been here forever.

We have been doing Purpose Driven Life in one of the small groups on board. It seems, well… It basically is a 40 day course which covers (or touches on) most of the basic aspects of Typical American Evangelical Low-Key-Charismatic (not penticostal) Christianity. It is very organized, and too pushy for me. It doesn’t really say anything new, but brings a whole lot of stuff together, and presents it well, and in an easy-to-get way.

It is aimed at pop-Christian-culture, and it fits very well. Basically, it gives the major Purposes of a Christian life, ie, getting to know God better, growing in Him, ministry in the church, and mission to tell the world about Him. It is all presented in such a way that I am sure it has helped many people, but it is so broad, and so sweeping in places, and so pop, (and American), that I think it has probably also annoyed a lot of people and perhaps even pushed some away too.

For me it is kind of take-it-or-leave it, or would be, except for how annoyingly enthusiastic some people are about it. I guess that is partly why it does agravate some people so much.

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More photos! Dan sent this selection saying there will be higher-quality pictures when he returns. Also he can move them to the relevant blog posts.

This one is back from the first ‘e-day’, when he was helping to dig a reservoir hole for a family of missionaries.

Another group photo, I presume of the church he stayed with last weekend. This time Dan’s in the front row, wearing a blue hoodie.

Apparently this is the pastor with Dan.

Dan is in the light-blue coveralls, the other guy is sitting on the ‘bosun’s chair’. They’re doing repairs or maintenance to the funnel. I’m glad I didn’t know about this until after the event!

Another view of the funnel.
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Saturday 6th August

This week is “Sabbath Week”. This happens once a year, and is a week of (comparative) rest and restoration and all of those sorts of things. Just good fortune for us STEPPERs to be here for it this time!

The book-ex is closed totally, and all workers from there are spread out about the ship, and all duties of all departments are cut down, so this means that (say in the deck department), we only have to do 8 hours each in the whole week, plus one day of being on duty (hardly any work, but cannot leave the ship for 24 hours), and one day of doing the garbage for 1 hour in the afternoon, and then done. So pretty light duties.

Every morning there are devotions/teaching/whatever from a special speaker, who this time turned out to be Dale Rhoton (one of the co-founders of O.M). Very cool. The STEPPERs, though, are running the childrens programme every morning, so we have not actually been to any of the devotions. Very good kids, all of them younger than 12, and seem to be very happy with the programme, organized by Jordan.

Yesterday was the ship outing to a waterpark and ocean-world, which I decided not to go on, as I had not had an off-day in 12 days, and my next off-day is on the 15th! So I needed an introvert day, and so stayed on board. There were only about 25 people on board, in all, which is about minimum to keep the ship going, plus a few extras (like me). Good day.

One of the STEPPERs from another of the overnight teams has malaria… she started getting ill during the overnight, so I guess must have picked it up a few weeks ago. She had to be brought back to the ship, and yesterday was taken to the hospital. Apparently she is doing much better though, now. My Big Brother bounced back from malaria after about a week, in total, before being back at work. But he is like that. Rebekah is not so hardy. It would be nice if folk could pray for her, as it is most difficult for her, only being here a few months, and yet getting malaria!

Also the day before yesterday some of the people went out to the city, one group was John (a Malaysian STEPPER) and a group of 5 girls. They were stopped on the road somewhere in the city by a whole group of men, who grabbed John, put a knife to his throat, and forced him to give them his camera, they also tried to get at his wallet, and sliced up his trowsers.

We are all very thankful that they did not hurt him at all physically, although of course he is rather shaken emotionlly. There really was nothing he could do, other than give them what he had. Apparently, from what the South Africans have told us, this is quite a rough area of Durban, and there is quite a lot of crime, and John being the only man in a group of girls was also more likely to get picked on.

Also, he looks ***very*** innocent. He is a very very lovely trusting guy, and doesn’t look like he would hurt a fly. And he looks Asian, and there are quite a lot of Japanese seamen here, who are all rich, and totally un-streetaware, as also, John is, and the muggers apparently can’t tell the difference between Asian-Malaysian, and Asian-Japanese. None of the group knew even the first thing about watching people around them, keeping distances, eye-contact, and so on, either, so in a way it was not really something totally unexpected, but it is very sad, anyway.

Anyway, I’m off to try and get some coffee, and perhaps read a bit, or play clarinet, or drums, or something. I’m on duty and so cannot leave the ship for 24 hours.

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The Doulos is now in Durban (South Africa) with an ADSL connection, so Dan’s managed to send some photos, to give an idea of what he was doing on his weekend away from the ship (see posts below:)


This is a group photo, I presume of the Doulos team who visited the church, plus the pastor and his family. Dan is in the back row near the right of the photo, the tallest and fairest – not very clear of him.


This is inside the church, I’m not sure if this was before, after or even during the service!



And this one was simply entitled ‘the loo’. Lovely.

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Overnight Update part 2.

So, where did I leave off…

Ah, yes. The story thus far left our trustworthy hero in the hands of a local, with his fellow companions and he not knowing whence they should then depart to, and whatfor they were about to be occupied…

So off we went, the dear companions, our volunteer helper/translator, and I, off down the dusty mud-lined prickly hedged alleys of sub (very sub) urban Maputo.

Most the houses are made of cheap concrete breese-blocks, or from bamboo or reed thatch. The rooves are generally from corrigated iron, or occasionaly from more thatch. Floors are just cold concrete, if at all. Many are just mud, like the church building of the compound. There are often bamboo/reed mats on the floors, kind of like the ones we might use at the beach, just a little bigger, and rougher, probably hand-made.

No running water, but with electricity, so you get a television in every house. I hate televisions, now. We visited a few houses, but every one had a T.V in it, and it was on. We talked to a few people, but with the T.V. on it was quite hard! We went to one man’s house, a friend of our translator/volunteer, and sat down in his living room, to talk. He went to a different church, but apparently both pastors are good friends, so that’s all right.

Anyway, he began to tell us (via translation) about his plans and work that he is starting to begin a youth/young-people programme in an area not far off, where there is a lot of poverty, and unimployment, and so on. He was asking us for what kind of things we had been envolved with, and some of the others shared about some of their experiences, and gave him advice, along the lines of how to get it going, how to make sure it didn’t just stay as talk, but actually became something.

This is one of the things that the line-up teams have been emphasising to us the whole time in Mozambique. The Line-Up team is a team of 3 people (or so) who get sent to a port a few months in advance of the ship’s arrival, and there they do all the negotiations of getting a berth for the ship, telephone lines, etc, as well as working with the local churches, and municipality, and so on, to find and work out the programme that the Doulos will have when she arrives, in order to be of greatest benefit.

There are currently 2 or three line up teams out there, one in Richards Bay, and one in Madagascar. In some ports they will decide that the greatest need is practical work, so much of the effort of the Doulos will be in that sector. In some ports (like the last ones), a massive problem is HIV/AIDS, so we have had many programmes on board which are talking about this problem, as well as orphanage visits and work.

Many people in Mozambique just have NO idea about HIV/AIDS at all, and partly because of the culture, and other things, sex outside of marriage is quite common, with and without commitment, and even within marriage and family relationships, incest is rife, with some fathers sleeping with their daughters as a “normal” state of affairs. Adultery also is quite common, and there is little or no objection to this, by most of the population, and even parts of the church. They just don’t know.

From hearing this, from the various line-up teams and from pastors in the area, it is quite easy to see why HIV/AIDS is such a problem! In many of the churches we visited, 1 in 3 of the congregation had HIV. It is very sad, and very hard to deal with. Much prayer needed.

Anyway, back to my point… one of the other things that the line-up teams of Mozambique, and particularly the one of Maputo had said to us was that there is very little teaching and knowledge of leadership and structure. Now I know that my dad, and others, will object to this being a problem. In the West, we have the opposite… too much leadership and structure. In the West, we are ALL encourages to “Become Leaders”, lead small groups, bible studies, learn to motivate people, to have good people skills, to find the felt-needs of people to encourage them to come to church, and then at church, the structure is very confining, and mickey-mouse, and tries to make everyone the same.

The problem with leadership in Mozambique, from what we were told, is that they have no ideas at all about this. For instance, say God calls someone to work with the street-kids, and they think that they need a team of people to work together. So they get a bunch of people interested, and then… well… they don’t know what to do next. Yes, we need the Holy Spirit, and Yes, He will help us through these things, but… a certain knowledge of how groups function, how to stay focused during meetings, the realisation that different people have different gifts, and can not all do the same work with the same way, and so on, can be of great benefit.

Anyway. Enough of the theoretics.

We chatted to this guy for a while, me the whole while having problems concentrating, as the blasted T.V. was on, and then the others were watching, and going “Oh wow, it’s Oprah! It’s just like home again” and so they turned it up for a while to watch. Of all inane programmes I have ever been forced to watch part of, I think that whatever that was has to be one of the worst. Man…

Anyway (again). We left after a while, and went and met some other people, and then went back to the house. There we went inside, and sat down, and they brought us coffee, milk, and tea. Very very good, compared to ship coffee & tea. (All of it was Nestle, by the way…).

We heard music then, people singing, and were brought out by the pastor into the church building, where there were 25 or so people. We had not had time to change clothes, or to get any props (for the Numbers Presentation, pictures of the ship, a map, or whatever). We went in, sang some songs with them (their songs. very cool, typical African style, a cappella).

Then after various things, praying, the pastor talking a little, and everyone singing an oyo-oyo song (oyo-oyo means “welcome” in the local language Shangana) to us, Jordan, the team leader said “OK, Daniel, would you like to share?”

So I stood up, opened my bible, and couldn’t find my notes. I had made two A5 pages of notes, just points to pick up on, and possible links. But, none of them were there.

So I just dived in. It’s quite easy to do a sermon, if you know the kind of thing to do, and aren’t afraid of talking in public. Thankyous for welcoming us, gosh, how wonderful it is, beautiful church, etc, today I want to look at a psalm… and so on. I think it went OK. I mean, it wasn’t anything special, I didn’t really say anything new, but whatever.

Anyway, afterwards, then Jordan shared a story with them, David & Goliath, and also linked to a similar psalm, and to Jesus walking on water. Afterwards, he came and told me “When you started preaching, I leant over to Ryan (the other boy on the group) and said ‘ He’s stolen my message!’ you picked exactly what I had!”, just very slight differences.

Quite funny. I’m sure there should be some way to make the whole thing sound very spiritual and “Amen, obviously this means God must have been saying something special!” but if He was, I didn’t really notice it. Oh well.

Then at the end of the meeting, the pastor said for anyone who wanted to, to come forward, and these wonderful American brothers and sisters would pray for them. So everyone started singing, and then one after another most of the people in the church began coming forward one after another, and knelt down and we laid hands on them and prayed for them.

We had no idea what any of them wanted us to pray for, so just prayed that God would answer thier prayers, whatever they were, and give them peace. Quite emotional, I think, very confusing and humbling to have people kneeling before you asking for prayer… I was feeling quite tired and low, unsure of why I was there or anything, and so after many of the church had been prayed for, I ended up on my knees, and Jordan and the pastor prayed for me. Nice people, then all the rest of the team and the pastor knelt and we all prayed for each other. Rather nice.

Afterwards, We all stood around talking outside, when the son/volenteer came up to me “Brother Daniel, it is now time for you to have your bath.”

Oh. Right. Well, OK.

So I followed him into a tiny little room behind the church room. Basically a 1.5 metre cube with a corrigated iron roof. A washing basin full of warm water that they had heated for me on the fire, and a packet of soap was on the floor. “You can use this towel if you want” he said, and then left.

There was no door to the room, just a light shower curtain. So, not wanting to offend or anything, I quickly stripped, tipped water over my head to make it look like I had had a “bath”, used a bit of soap, and dried off and went out again. Quite nice actually.

The trouble was that most of the church was just outside wandering around talking, and I realised that probably I had been given first “bath”, or even the only “bath”, because I had preached, and so probably everyone was waiting for me to finish quickly, so that we could either eat, or the rest could have “baths”, or we would do another service, or something. You never know.

By this time, Ryan had gotten his new name. They thought that his name sounded like “rain”, and so he got them to call him “Shuva” which means “rain” in Shangana. So after Brother Jordan and Brother Shuva had partaken of baths, (Brother Shuva somehow managing to have a bath in aprox. 40 seconds, and come out with dry hair), we then went in to eat. The girls were not offered baths, by the way. Something cultural, I guess.

So we sat down to eat, us and the pastor only, and the women (his wife, and daughter in law) brought food out for us, they and other random relatives and people ate elsewhere. It was a kind of mashed rice thing, with a vegetable soup, and also a few other vegetable foods. Wonderful.

After that we sat in the living room, talked about families, got introduced to them, and them to us, and then went to bed.

We were all sleeping nicely, us guys in one room, I presume the girls were sleeping in the other room, when just outside our window a most tremendous racket, a rooster.

Oh man. What time is it? Jordan and Brother Shuva were groaning and saying “Do we have to get up already?” but I checked my phone clock, to discover that the rooster was slightly over enthusiastic about greeting us, and the hour was 3.32 in the morning. Thanks dude.

He continued to keep us amused with his loud raucus crowing until about 7.00, whereupon I got up, the family already up and working, the rest of the team all asleep. I guessed that I might have to do another sermon soon, so got my bible, and began to prepair something. Didn’t really get anywhere though.

About 8.30 or 9 or so the rest of the team got up, and we were served breakfast. Lovely lovely lovely. Pancakes, or crepes, (which for some reason Brother Shuva insisted should be called “craps”), mixed banana chunks and apple chunks (1cm cubes), with yogurt, and lovely crisp fresh white bread, and real butter. Amazing. On ship we don’t have real butter, only marg, and the cereals get old, as we don’t normally have real milk either.

Anyway.

Lovely food, and afterwards, some more coffee and tea and stuff. After that, we knew we had a childrens program in the morning, and then a womens conference and then a youth event in the afternoon, and then another church service in the evening. So we got ourselves all ready to do the childrens program, until they told us that no, we were going out this morning.

Oh. Right. Well, OK.

But first they would kill the duck we had seen walking around, so that we could have it for dinner.

Oh. Um. Right.

That was my reaction. Not so the other lads.

“Oh boy! Wow, cool? Can I kill it? No? OK, I’ll film it then! This is so cool….” so they caught the duck, chopped off it’s head with an axe, and then dumped it on the ground. It continued writhing for a few minutes, with Brother Shuva and Jordan walking around with cameras saying “Man, this is so brutal. Like, this is just, so brutal man. Like, brutal.” The family watching amused at their antics. Lovely. The girls were feeling a bit grossed out, they said. I didn’t really feel anything. I knew it would happen. I don’t like it, but offending other people is worse than offending me.

So we got a whole load of little booklets in Portuguese, and then a whole crowd of us went out. We gave them out to everyone we met, and then went into a whole load of peoples houses. We would just all troop in, and start singing a song. Then they would come out of some back room somewhere, look at us all “oh, hello.” and then we would pray for them (more kneeling), and wander out again. Often they would join us.
Many of these people were
the not-quite-so-faithful, we were told. People who had not recently attended the church. OK.

At one house, we were just leaving, when our translator told us, “Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, at the previous house, not this one, but the one before, a man died yesterday. The womans brother. He was cleaning the house, his feet were wet, and he touched the electrics.”

Oh. Oh dear. Um, thanks for telling us, how did you manage to forget to tell us while we were there? We could have prayed for her then!

Anyway. We went home for lunch.

Sounds awfully cold blooded, doesn’t it. We did visit some more places, and so the same, singing and praying, but all of us felt a bit damped by that, I think.

Lunch was a chicken thing, with loads of vegeitables and other stuff. I didn’t have any chicken. The cook asked why, and if I ever ate meat? So I said, no, not normally, so if I she had cooked the duck for the evening, and I ate her lovely chicken now, I would probably feel ill from too much meat. Well, that’s kind of true. A bit true. Not totally a lie, anyway. I ate the chicken given to our church team last week sometime, and felt bad for the rest of the day and some of the day after, so, yeah. She didn’t seem to have a problem with it, though, so that’s OK. I hope.

Anyway, after that, everyone was so tired, they said, that they would sleep until 2.30, for the childrens program. So they went off to sleep, and I played Jordans guitar, I had not had much chance to practice before that. Nice guitar. I also read a bit. I woke them at 3.00pm, but they went back to sleep, and again at 4ish, and eventually, I gave up, and went to read outside.

At 5pm, ish, they staggered out of bed, and found that there were quite a lot of kids in the church, and some of the people we had met on the morning. But they were just leaving, as it was too late for them to stay. Oh. OK. So we did some kids songs for the kids, “Allellu, Allellu, Allellu, Allelluya, Praise ye the Lord”, and so on. The adults loved them too, and then at about 6.30, the pastor came in, joined in, and then eventually said “OK, let’s start tonights service now then!”

So, we sang a whole load of Shangana songs, and then he talked for a bit, we talked for a bit, and showed them a map where we all were from, and Jordan gave a sermon. I then told them all the story of the prodigal son, w/o bible, and a small application of it, and then the pastor asked the girls if they would like to say anything to the women?

This rather dumbfounded the poor girls, who had been slightly in culture shock the whole time from seeing how much work the women did, how they didn’t eat with the men, but served them, how they worked _constantly_ in the kitchen, looked after the kids, and so on, and yet didn’t complain. So they said a few things, and said how much they were learning from the women themselves.

Anyway. It all went well, and after that, we were all offered “baths” again, this time the girls as well, after we had finished. Then for the meal (at about 9pm). Loads of food, rice, vegies, soup, bread… and the duck. So I took the smallest piece, and some extra sauce, half-hid it under a bit of potato, and smeared it around a bit. I was forced to eat some of it, and tell the cook how good it was. I think it probably was good. She is an amazing cook, but alas, meat is wasted on me now.

But anyway. Again coffee afterwards, and then we all went to bed. Next morning, another amazing similar breakfast, and then the church service. We realised that we had never told the people that we were from a ship! For all most of them knew, we had just randomly visited. So we told them all about the ship, many of them knew about it already though.

There was another congregation visiting with them this Sunday, as their building was still in the process of being built. Most of them seemed a bit richer than this congregation, but anyway. Then many of them got up and talked about the ship too. One lady, the widow of one of the pastors who had died a few months ago seemed in very happy form about the ship.

We had another translator that service, a 19/20 or so year old girl, quite friendly. One thing she said made everyone laugh, and when translated was this: “You all know that the way to Heaven is to follow Jesus, but now I tell you that the way to the ship is to follow me. I will be going there at 2.30 this afternoon.” Funny.

Then after she talked about the ship, she began to talk about someone who had just died. The translator said that we would have a few minutes of silence. So we all bowed our heads, until everyone started singing. Then our translator began sobbing, and went and collapsed in front of the table/altar thing, sobbing on the floor. This quite suprised us, until we were told that it was her father had just died last week. Wow…. we would never have guessed before.

So Jordan was asked to pray for her, so he did, and then after a while she got up again, and went back to translating. So humble, wow.

Anyway, the service ended, and we all went outside. They offered us baths again, but we said “Thanks, but we are already clean, we had baths last night!” So they had baths instead.

Then lunch, which was amazing, again. Pasta and rice and vegies, and some chicken for those who wanted it. Mmmm… Then coffee, and then it was time to go. They gave us each a huge orange, and a few bags of cashue nuts. We all walked back to the main road together, they insisted that they carry all the bags and such, we were definately NOT allowed to. Then we all squashed into a chappa bus and went home. No real excitement on the bus this time.

We got to the port, and then took them on board to ship to give them a tour. Unfortunatly there were no more red dinner-guest badges, only yellow ones, which meant there there was no capacity to give them dinner on board. We showed them around, and then took them up to the book-ex. Jordan took their badges, and then after shaking hands, hugging, laughing a lot, and shaking hands some more, he and Brother Shuva and Jennifer (also on our team) left to go have showers.

Rachel and I felt rather bad about just dumping the guests, while they were still on board, in our home, so we stayed with them in the book-ex, showing them around. It turned out that none of them had brought any money with them, not expecting to go to the bookshop. Rachel and I did have some local money though, so we bought them a Portuguese New Testament each (not all of them had any kind of bible at all!), and I gave the pastor some money to buy a cookery book that he really wanted (he too is a wonderful cook).

The pastors method of trying to buy the book was a bit… er… interesting. We were all waiting just past the book-ex, waiting for him to buy his book at the cash desk. He didn’t join the queue, but went strait to the front, and tried to push in. This did not impress the other people in the queue, who didn’t let him in. Nor did the cashier. Eventually he got through.

We waved good bye to them as they left down the gangway, and went back inside. I found that I didn’t have any clothes left. All of my clean ones were in my Big Brother’s cabin, and I couldn’t find him anywhere! So after wandering around for ages not finding him, I decided to spend the last of my local money, and brought a few CDs at the book-ex.

Eventually I found him, and oh, joy! He gave me his key. And Oh Joy! All of my clothes were lying on his bed all folded, and OH JOY! They were clean!! Amazing how the little things can make one so happy at times. Lovely lovely clean clothes. And lovely lovely clean towel. So I went and had a shower.

And that pretty much wraps up my over-night. Except for one small story at the end. That evening was the last evening that the volunteers would have on board, after their good-byes and all, Vasco (our volunteer/translator/son-of-the-pastor/generally-all-round-nice-person) was talking to me and Bro. Shuva.

As we were talking, we heard the page from info that it was the time to get free ice cream. So we got him one, and his brother, and stood around talking on the quayside. Just before he left, he said that one thing he really wanted was an English Bible, as no-one he knew had one, and he really wanted to read one, to help his English, and to let him know the Bible in English too.

The book-ex was closed, and we couldn’t find another English one about, so I gave him mine. Bro. Shuva was a bit suprised, I think, but as I said, we’re living on the Doulos! Worlds Largest floating bookshop! I can get a new bible any time. Anyway. Vasco left, very happy, and I went to bed. It felt good to be home. Funny how a place can become
home so quickly.

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Monday 1st August

We left port quite early this morning, so I have an extra hour or so this afternoon, so I will try and write at least some of the detail of the overnight…

Our group was to meet at our STEP-mum’s office at 3pm, and then leave, so I had most of the day (Friday) free to pack, write email, clean up, and other things that I needed to do. I wrote down some notes for a sermon, because I had been told I would probably need to do at least one. My first ever sermon, fun.

I chose Psalm 13, the one which goes something along the lines of:

How long, O Lord, will everything terrible happen to me?
Life sucks, I’m sick, I’m going to die,
Mine enemies shalt triumph over me,
I’ve got such a headache,
Yet will I praise the Lord,
For He has been good to me
Amen.

I picked it as it is one of my favourite psalms, many of the early ones sound too righteous for me to really be able to associate to, and the later ones are too long, and I hate jumping about from verse to verse to make a point.

Anyway, I figured I needed a story as well to go with it, so randomly looked about the New Testament for a good story to use, and found about Jesus and Peter walking on the water.

Cool, I thought, and found a way to link the two passages, talking about faith, and thinking “Well, if it needs to be a sermon to non-Christians, then I have plenty of room to maneuver it into an altar call (Don’t worry, I’m not getting that holy. heh.), and if it turns out the whole audience, er, sorry, congregation, are Christians, then I have something vaguely encouraging to say, ie, that even when life sucks, God is in charge, and will catch us if we fall.”.

So that was all O.K. I knew I would have a translator (probably), and so that would make it all longer too (I hate long sermons, but have been told repeatedly that culturally long sermons are required. I feel too tired to bother speculating on reasons why. Maybe some other time…).

Anyway, then after that, I put my notes somewhere safe, and then went to borrow the sailmakers thread and a needle. I could not find a good needle, but my shift leader lent me one of his, and said “hey, no worries, it’s too thick for anything I ever use, so if it breaks, cool.” or something like that.

Which is a good thing.

My beloved rucksack (backpack) had become unstitched quite badly where the armstraps are attached to the bag, and I wanted to repair it. So I got the needle and thread, put the needle through the material once, pulled through, fine! This was great! I could have my bag nice and fixed before going. I had 2 hours still.

I put the needle through again, and pulled… and pulled… and pulled… nothing. It would NOT come through! Odd… So I reversed it, and tried again, and snapped the needle at the eye. Wonderful. Now what?

So after staring at the beautific sight of a snapped needle, a broken bag, and a watch saying 1 and a half hours til I needed to go, I had a bright idea of seeing if I could borrow my Big Brother’s bag. I found him, and he said “Yeah! Sure.” And that was good. I also asked him if he could collect my laundry for me on the Saturday, again, no problem.

Anyway.

So after collecting mozzie nets, and all the rest of the various details, we left, and followed one of the volunteers out at 3.30pm, found a chappa (bus), piled in, and set off. After about 15 minutes of traveling, all squashed in this bus, we heard a strange sound, and then when we next stopped because of traffic, Jordan, the group leader had his head out the window and was shouting something.

Then we all heard it, a very loud “Hissssssss” from the aft of the bus. “It’s flat!” he shouted, “there is some metal thing stuck in it!”. Hm.

I was quite excited about the whole overnight thing, and so was actually not at all concerned. I was thinking “Oh, jolly good. I hoped something like this would happen. Something unexpected, Thanks God! Any chance you could do something miraculous? You know, keep it full of air until we get there, and then, like let the whole thing go totally empty and the bus fall over in a dramatic manner? That would be SO cool! Anyway God, if you want us to not arrive, that’s up to you, so …”

At about this point in my vaguely absurd cocktail of prayer and I’m-A-Spiritual-Person-in-Africa fantasy, the bus pulled over into a car repair yard, they brought an air-hose over, filled it up, did something obscure and mechanical to it, and we drove off again, the whole incidant taking perhaps 4 minutes from puncture to fixed tire and on-the-road-again. Wow…

I was feeling slightly anticlimatic, after all those grand ideas of meeting the public in some cool Divine Appointment ™, and we aren’t even delayed… “Um, Thanks God… That was pretty cool. Um… Yeah… For some reason I feel like I should be more excited than I am…” Oh well.

So stopped, got out, and started off walking down these mud alley/roads. Eventually we got there. A small compound type arrangement, one 6-room-house, one kitchen-block, one extra bedroom block, and one 5 metre by 10 metre hall, the church. Most of the rooms didn’t have glass in the windows, just a hole. The walls were made of concete breezeblock type things, with a corrigated iron roof perched on top. Mud floor in the church, and unadorned-concrete in the rest of the rooms.

We were expected to do a program at 2pm or so, apparently, but because we didn’t get there until about 4.30, so everyone had left already. O.K, no worries, and Vasco, our volenteer, (and now it turned out, son of the pastor,) would take us for a tour of the local area.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Just a very very quick update.

Survived the overnight (2 nights). Amazing. Lovely lovely people. Bucket-of-water showers, no running water at all, tin roof, no glass in most of the windows, mud streets and floor, concrete breeze-block walls, loads of prayer and singing, I preached once, told stories (preaching without directly quoting scripture), and slept benethe a mozzie net.

They killed a duck for us yesterday to eat, happily I was able to avoid eating more than about 1cm cubed of it (Thanks, Tim, for school “I did eat food, really” hints (smearing sauce)), but still…

Anyway. Amazingly cool. They got loads of photos, and a few videos, I hope to have them on CD.