Since I had the baby's funeral last Friday, it occurred to me that I should get started now with my write-up for Princeton Seminary. I had my "significant incident" ready to go, and a slow week after a busy one ended on Monday, so I have gotten started with the write-up. I will try to finish it next week, then make changes and additions as appropriate my final week here. I always intend to get my academic work, papers, etc. started early, but it often doesn't work out that way because students are so busy at Princeton. Might as well take advantage of the sometimes slow pace here to be on the ball. Doing the write-up has involved describing my weekly activities, so I thought I would pass some of that info on, FYI.
This past Monday I taught training session for volunteers which Yvonne has assembled to get involved in the ministry. I was asked to do it last week on a bit of short notice. Then I had twelve hours to prepare a funeral service for a six-month-old, and suddenly having just a few days to prepare a training didn't seem so bad. The session was on "Understanding Call to Service and Ministry", the topic Yvonne had chosen for me. It ended up going pretty well. I had planned a two hour session, but the person who was meant to do the second two hours never showed up. That ended up being okay, because the activities I had planned for the group ended up taking much longer than I thought they would. I filled the whole four hours session, went overtime, and still had things left undone that I had meant to cover. I spoke for a while to introduce the topic, and with questions that ended up taking nearly an hour. I asked other staff to share their calling stories, which also filled up an hour, although I had only figured on 30 minutes for both. I could tell it was time for a tea break, then I had everyone divide into groups of three to read and answer questions on a Bible passage I had printed out for them. The Bible might not have been my focus had I been asked to do something like this in the States, but given my lack of materials here, and the fact that I thought the people here would relate very well to biblical stories, I made that my area of focus.
I chose passages describing the "call" stories of notables from the Bible, the common element being that they all were ordinary people, who didn't seem cut out for leadership. They lacked confidence in themselves (Moses) or in God (Gideon), were real schmucks (Jacob, Paul), were too old/young (Abraham, Samuel, David, Jeremiah), or were lacking in what we might call the appropriate qualifications (Jesus' disciples). In my experience working with church volunteers in the past, I often found that they wanted to help, but felt like they could never speak to groups, lead, etc. From what Yvonne and others here had told me, church volunteers in Guguletu deal with the same confidence issues. I think the trainees related to the material very well, and I had no trouble speaking extemporaneously, with very occasional reference to my outline. I was dealing with confidence issues myself, since it has been a long time since I was involved in teaching or leadership of any kind, but it all turned out well. I preach in less than two weeks, so the events of the past week have been good confidence boosters for me. I plan to discuss my chosen passage (all or part of James ch. 2) with a few people from the congregation so that I can better understand how the Bible is interpreted in this setting. That Cultural Hermeneutics class I took last semester is going to pay off.
Social life has been a bit tough, although I have been out with people my age from church on a few occasions, and made friends with older co-workers as well. Crawford Brubaker, a fellow PTSer is in Cape Town for the summer as well, and we have hung out a few times. Last night I went to "90 Minutes for Mandela", a football (as in soccer) game pitting an all-Africa team vs. a team of players from the rest of the world in honor of Mandiba's 89th
birthday. Mandela is at left holding the FIFA World Cup after it was announced that South Africa would host in 2010. Anyone want to come back with me? The players on the Africa XI and Rest of the World XI were mostly retired former greats (including Pelé, aside from David Beckham the only soccer player famous enough that most Americans have heard of him, although I don't know if he got his 66 year old feet out on the field) and you could tell their old legs were pretty stiff. Some of them still had it, however, and there were some world class younger players, like Samuel Eto'o, the Cameroonian Barcelona star. The match was at Newlands Rugby Stadium, and getting in was a bit scary because people seemed ready to stampede. That didn't happen, fortunately, nor was my pocket picked in the surging crowd. It was a fun event, and a good chance to make friends with a group people I met last weekend. Also the first time I have seen a soccer game since college. The professional leagues here start their season just before I leave, so I will try to get to a game at Athlone Stadium, across the street from where I live. Tomorrow is my day off, and I need it! I will report back Sunday or Monday.
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