Music, shopping attempts

Yesterday was another HOT day. We had the Good News Club from 10-11. Nick and I have now taken over the music side of it – although more accurately, I have taken it over and Nick is helping me. I did all the talking bits in between singing, and got them to stand and do actions, and generally tried to get a bit of an excitement going about singing. We are introducing many new songs, and it was nice to have the guitar (me) and banjo (Nick). Next week I am doing the lesson as well, which I gladly accepted when they asked. I think this may be a good place to minister, and I have been praying about ministry opportunities.

After the GNC, we went to town, to buy bread and juice for communion and hunt for acrylic craft paints that we will need to paint backdrops for the Holiday Club. We went from shop to shop, but no one stocks that sort of thing! It’s not a very specialized thing, any shop in Joburg would have it. We couldn’t find any sort of poster paints or powder paints or anything!! I did bring some with me, but those won’t go very far and there’s no prospect of replacing them. So what we will probably have to do is buy tins of regular wall acrylic in different colours, and thin them down slightly. Such a simple thing of procuring paints becomes an impossibility on the island. We had lunch at Ardee’s (our favourite place, I think). After lunch, we walked back down to Spar to do the shopping, and do you think we could get bread? No! Not even one roll. So we drove up to the Half Tree Hollow Spar, but they also didn’t have anything except for a few donuts which I didn’t think would be appropriate. One last place to try was a 7-11, but they only get bread on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I think we just left it a bit late and everywhere had sold out. Thankfully I have a few slices of bread in the freezer, I just hope it will be enough!

Yesterday afternoon was Bethany’s birthday party. The kids all seemed to have fun, other than one fairly unpleasant incident: the party place seems to be on the premises of a disability home, and one of the patients wandered in to see what was going on. He seemed to be in a fairly bad way – severely retarded, and had both arms bandaged up over burns, I think, judging by his hands. Both sides of his face, below his ears, were raw and bleeding, must be because he scratches himself all the time. He knocked some things off the table, and it was a while before one of the staff came to retrieve him. Some kids were quite shaken up, and one little girl would not be pacified. She must have been about six years old, and eventually someone had to phone her mom to collect her.

Caleb is busy cleaning windows outside by throwing water at them.