News and Notes...

Yes, I am accomplishing my inconsistent and erratic blogging. I assumed rightly that once I started ministry I would find myself rarely getting to work on blogging.

Bev, our first visitor, has just left after being with us for a few days having attended a workshop last week here in Cape Town. She was my Deputy Director when I was Director in Kenya and now she fills that Area Director role in Kenya. It has been fun showing her around and just hanging out. We have concluded that while we still have much to learn about South Africa and specifically Cape Town, we have much information to offer.

I am enjoying being connected to an office again and am now quite busy. Siegfried, the SIM Southern Africa Director has been freely handing responsibilities over to me. I am now overseeing all office functions and am supporting him with more and more of the non-office matters. I have now connected with a Bible college and a seminary with the plans that I will assist in the work of partnering with other organizations and institutions.

Friends - Mike and Terry provided us with a great deal of training, expertise and support in governance and management as we setup the SIMPact program and directed the work in Kenya over the past 11 years. That training and sharing of expertise as well as other knowledge and experience that has been picked up along the way have now become a great asset as we come along side the SIM SA Office staff, helping them move towards greater performance and unity.

The SIM SA office staff is a wonderfully talented group of people, and the director is loved by all. They have struggled with unclear vision and other factors that have inhibited a good clear working harmony.

The Lord seems to be putting a number of things in place that I believe are going to positively affect this office in tremendous ways. Team building efforts were started before we arrived. There is a strong desire by the office team to excel. Dorothy and I are now involved in office functions and planning. I don't think it is a coincidence that these and other factors are coming together at this time.

It is interesting working in an office that handles both receiving missionaries into South Africa and sending others out to other countries. SIM SA has been unusual in this for some time, but now SIM is planning to make this combination more common in other countries. Even in South Africa the combination has only been in a single office for about five years as they functioned with a sending office and a receiving office before that.

SIM is also revising its focus in missions as we look at reaching the least reached with the Gospel. We are moving into more traditionally closed countries through partnerships and new initiatives. Churches and mission agencies have much to do and this returning to our root focus is exciting.

Blessed by His grace...

South Africa is a bit of an enigma to my brain. Whenever I move to a new place, I try to connect new things and experiences to things I already know, helping me to get a grasp on the new paradigm that I find myself in.

Perhaps I am struggling more here in South Africa trying to put things together because we did not come here from the USA as we have always done with other new countries. Perhaps there was no mental reset to build the new experiences on. Or perhaps South Africa, especially Cape Town, has many things that don't belong together in my thinking.

The idea of being in Africa and having shopping, streets, traffic, organization much more like I am accustomed to in the USA is likely part of my cognitive dissonance. Also, having large white and mixed race populations and being in Africa is different for me as well.

Regardless, We are settling into our apartment and have most things in their place. Tomorrow I start officially in the SIM SA Office and look forward to getting into a routine.

I also have some observations to note that are still fresh in my mind.

• It seems that pedestrians usually do not cross the street at the crosswalk but rather just cross most anywhere. When they do cross at a cross walk they seem to rarely wait for a green light. We were told during orientation to be careful when crossing the street as cars often run red lights. This may account for some of the behavior of the pedestrians. I guess people feel safer crossing roads here as opposed to trying to cross a street in Nairobi where one would be run over is they were not especially careful.
• It is normal to use a blanket, even when visiting in a home, during the cold season. Last weekend we were invited to someone's house to watch the SA Springboks play in the Rugby World Cup. A blanket was placed on each sitting area as we entered. Yes, we used the blankets. Yesterday, we hosted a World Cup watch at our new place but told people it was a BYOB (blanket) event as we don't have many blankets yet. The homes here are not centrally heated and even the malls and work places are rather cold when the weather outside is cold. I am slowly adapting to not only wearing a heavy long sleeve shirt most of the time but also wearing a long sleeve T-shirt as well.
• Water heaters are called geysers (pronounced geezer). Each time someone talks about the geyser being turned on or not working, the picture of some old worn out man comes to mind.
• When hunting for a place to live, we were told to look for a place that faces north. We are in the Southern Hemisphere so facing north is best in the winter to get the sun.
• Power for many or most places is prepaid, so today I went online to buy electricity before we ran out. This system was coming into Kenya, but we still had post-paid while we lived there. Also, I presume because the generating capacity in SA is short of the demand, users of more power pay a higher rate per KWH. Apparently, an assessment is made every so often and the cost of the power is adjusted.

More observations later.

I am sitting here in my sweats with extra blankets, trying to work out a flu/cold bug that I acquired this week. It seems that I often pick up some bug on planes as I travel from one country to another. After trekking over to the Blue Route Mall (5 minute walk from the SIM South Africa guest house), I purchased some fizzy medications that are loaded with vitamin C and other goodies. Now that I am topped up with vitamin C, perhaps tomorrow this bug will be conquered.

We arrived in Cape Town this past Monday evening and were as warmly welcomed on this side as our send off was in Kenya. We are truly blessed to call these many believers our colleagues. Bits of orientation, meeting people, figuring out finances, looking for a place to rent, a car to buy and general adapting have been the order of the week.

Today we drove, using a mission car temporarily assigned to us, across town to a dealer near the airport who had a car with an automatic transmission that looked good on the Internet. We are looking for an automatic as Dorothy will have a hard time shifting a manual transmission due to her current foot pain.

The problem with finding automatics here is that they tend to be special orders for unusual circumstances. Interestingly, if a person takes a driving test with an automatic transmission, their license will note that and they are not legally allowed to drive a car with a manual transmission. Used cars with automatics seem to be in very short supply, so we were happy to find this one a 2010 Nissan Tiida with under 100,000km (60,000 miles) on it. The final price works out to be just under US$7,500. The salesman is going to bring the car on Monday to the SIM office for a final look over and probable conclusion to the deal. The US Dollar to SA Rand is very favorable to us right now, so we were able to get a slightly nicer/newer car than we would have a few months ago. The unfortunate side effect of this is that the South Africans are seeing more price increases that would normally occur.

We looked at a couple houses to rent this week. The first scored 10 on the "very interesting" scale, but a 0 or 1 on most everything else. Lavender plants had overgrown the walk way so getting in the house was a challenge. Maintenance or lack thereof was another issue. A house we looked at yesterday was also interesting but did not score as low on the other scales. It has 3 very small bedrooms, a small kitchen, nice living room and another room that may work well as an office for both of us which has a wood burning stove in it.

It is cold for us here. Temps have dipped way down into the 50s and perhaps even the 40s F. We have two electric heaters in the bedroom of the SIM Guest house that we fire up to take the chill off, so a wood burning stove in a house is very attractive.

The house is in a neighborhood that is possibly mixed racially though we saw no other white people. It is probably mostly "colored" which is an official designation here and not derogatory. The main racial groups are black, colored, Indian and white. Apartheid kept these groups from mixing for many years, so it is taking much time for integration of living areas to occur. The house also has a very small pool and a hot tub, but we are not sure how well things work. Living in a mixed area increases our ministry opportunities but we have to balance that against security.

In formal and informal meetings that I have had this week, it is clear that the next few months will not be particularly easy. I am not surprised as these discussions confirm impressions that we were given back in March when we visited and again via communications since then.

Your past and continued prayers are highly appreciated.

By His grace,
Dwight

Nowadays, I expect that many people would not understand the origin of the phase "sounding like a broken record."

In those dark dim days before mp3 and CDs, we played our 45s and LPs on a record player or as we became more sophisticated - "the stereo." The LPs were often referred to as albums as they contained a collection of music typically totalling about 45 minutes of play time. The albums and those odd little 45s, you know the ones with the big hole in center, needed a good deal of care so that they would not get dirty, scratched or worse yet - cracked. A damaged or dirty record might cause the stylus to keep jumping back into the same groove each time the record did one rotation. The result: the same few notes and words repeated over and over and over and over and...you get the idea. This event had a very high ranking on the irritation factor index chart.

Of course there are now those people who believe they can hear the difference between the new digital music such as mp3 files you might find in your computer (read inferior here) and the good old analog LPs (read superior here) of yesteryear. Because of this popularity, many of the recording companies are putting out the old classic records in analog LP format once again for these audiophiles. They call them "studio releases" among other premium sounding names. At least the audiophiles need not worry much about hearing broken records as they have invested so much into their equipment and album collections that a Rembrandt painting hanging in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg will have scarcely more loving attention. I am glad I don't have to put so much loving care into the mp3 files on my computer as I would an LP, but being able to claim to hear the difference between digital and analog in my aging ears would be nice.

I fear that I have a couple examples of "sounding like a broken record" in my life. One example is me. I often feel that all I talk about and am asked about is how the process of our visa applications is coming along. Perhaps this is what a pregnant woman feels like when others only ask about the baby, and that is about all she thinks about as well. As I blog, visas are the main thing on my mind. I suppose this is natural as waiting on our visa applications is all that is keeping us in Kenya at this point. If you are tired of hearing me talk about the visa process, you have my blessing to close the browser now.

The other "broken record" in my life relates to the replies we get as we inquire about the progress of our visa applications. Each time we have attempted to inquire about the progress or even get some form of timeline, we are told that we will be contacted when things are finalized. I would call this the "don't call us, we will call you" answer. I don't criticize their need to do a thorough investigation and I recognize that they are within their authority to take as long a necessary to process an application, and that it is also within their prerogative to grant or deny visas. Our only real request is that we be given some timeline so that we can plan. All the original dates given at application time have expired, so we are left hanging with no idea of when this might end.

Today marks ten weeks since our applications were accepted. We decided we would submit a letter explaining our situation and time constraints as previous attempts to do this in person or by phone have failed. The security guards greeted me by name as I entered the High Commission grounds. This makes visit number thirteen for me. I took a seat in the visa section and waited as the two main windows were in use. The visa counter person, who I have seen the most, saw me sit down and motioned through the bullet proof glass that there was nothing for me and that I should go. I, however, was armed with a letter for the supervisor that I was determined to deliver. I pointed to the letter in my hand but the motions again indicated that there was nothing for me and that I should leave. I raised the letter up higher and pointed to it indicating that I wanted to deliver it. I was called to the window and as I tried to explain what I wanted, was told to take the letter out of the envelope and pass it through under the bullet proof glass. Without the letter being read, I was told that the supervisor had been informed about our applications and that I needed to just wait. The letter was taken with assurances that it would be delivered to the supervisor. I expressed my gratitude and left.

Your prayers continue to be appreciated. Though we don't see all of God's purpose in the long wait, we continue to trust and know that His plan is still best.

Two months ago yesterday (so on the 18th of June), the South African High Commission accepted our visa applications along with the many accompanying documents. This is after seven visits to the High Commission trying to understand and satisfy their visa application requirements. At the time they finally accepted our applications they gave us a small receipt that stated "Date of collection 19/8" which is today. The lady also added that the process could take up to six to eight weeks. We did not even dream it might take up to that date of collection for the process to be done.

In the mean time since our applications had been accepted, we checked back at the two week mark and were told they had not even started processing the previous month's applications, we checked back at the six week mark and were told to wait until they contacted us or the collection date, they called a couple weeks ago and requested another document from SIM South Africa which I submitted once it was received and today I returned on the "collection date" (for the twelfth visit) and was told "these things take time and they can still approve or deny..." I tried to get some idea of how much longer but was given no indication.

Having the "date of collection" as the final possible day in our minds gave us what we thought of as a worse case scenario, so now having everything open ended has left us wondering if and when we will get SA visas from Kenya and at what point do we give up trying here and pull our applications. We continue to pray for patience and direction, and though we are not throwing in the towel just yet, we wonder at what point to we go a different direction.

We are and continue to be very grateful to those of you who have been and continue to hold us and this process in prayer. Please continue to pray for:

• the soon approval of these visas,
• our direction and continued patience as we wait,
• health concerns for Dorothy as her feet continue to be in pain especially if she does more than walking around our temporary home and for relief from the frequent headaches that may be due to the stress of waiting,
• the work in South Africa as the SIM people too are looking forward to our joining them.

We don't want to neglect praising God and expressing our gratitude so please also join us in praising Him for:

• knowing that we are supported by many in prayer,
• having adequate housing while we wait,
• for healing from a probable kidney stone that left me rather uncomfortable for some days through the weekend.

By His grace...

Yes, I knew I would be an inconsistent and erratic blogger and the proof is in the dates of my blogs. You can check out the erratic-ness by looking at the dates of my past blogs via the link at the bottom of this column. Just saying.

This little tommy (Thompson gazelle) has nothing to do with this blog other than he was looking at me from my computer screen as I was typing. Perhaps, it is inspiration?

This past Thursday morning I was given the privilege of leading the Bible study time at the SIM Office here in Nairobi. A couple months ago, I finished up Sunday morning Bible teaching at New City Fellowship and haven't taught Bible at our office for some time all in anticipation of our move to South Africa. I enjoy Bible teaching as it gives me the incentive to dig deeper than I would for a devotion time and I enjoy teaching from the Bible. The Word is usually very exciting to be in.

I was asked to teach on Colossians 1, so I began with an introduction to give the historical and cultural backgrounds. Also, we discussed what the other major religions in the area would have been that were potentially becoming a snare to the Christians at Colossae. Syncretism (mixing religions) was becoming a major threat as early Gnosticism appeared to be developing.

On one hand the influence of Greek polytheism (remember Greek mythology in high school literature class - this is back when it wasn't considered myth) was pressuring the Christians to participate in the pagan worship practices and follow the gods' examples of humanlike failures. I guess I have a sort of circular illogic here.

Then the Judaizers in the area would have been telling the Colossian Christians that they had come that far, but now they also needed to follow the laws of what we refer to as the Old Testament including circumcision to complete their religion.

Add to all this the Gnostic beliefs that spirit is good and matter is evil and only through secret knowledge could one be enlightened. Therefore, they taught that Jesus could not be God and man at the same time and so it was impossible for Him to die.

These poor Christians in Colossae were likely very confused. The church was young and planted by Epaphras who likely became a believer when he met up with Paul in Ephesus. Now Epaphras is calling on Paul in prison to help. Paul writes this wonder letter to a struggling oppressed church. He likely used this letter as a basis to write another letter to the Ephesians to be circulated among many churches.

OK, ok, I have given plenty of background. Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit writes a most wonderful passage to clearly explain who Jesus is and what he had done. Here is my favorite part of Chapter 1 that I just love to read:

Colossians 1:15–23 ESV
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Jesus always has been and was not a part of creation. He is the agent of creation and is in fact the glue that holds everything together. Without Jesus, I believe everything would fall apart at the molecular or even atomic level. But, He also died in order to make us clean and presentable. Paul removes any question of who Jesus is and the only question that remains is whether the Colossians would believe.

I admit that this waiting for a visa to go to South Africa is wearing on me. If we had a definite date or even a definite assurance that the visa would be approved, I think I would be more at ease about this lengthy "process." We made our first visit to the High commission 5 months ago, and they accepted our applications almost 8 weeks ago. It seems at times that I am just spinning my wheels here with little being accomplished. This passage reminds me to focus on the bigger picture of God's plan and work. God is not bound in time as we are and He is not limited in resources and abilities.

I did receive a call from the High Commission on Friday. The lady said that they needed another document and photos. Seems the photos that we turned in with the applications went missing and the documents that seemed adequate two months ago are now insufficient. We dropped off the photos and a document that we thought explained the necessary information but were told it would not do. We then called SIM South Africa to ask them to send another document. Monday is a holiday in South Africa, but we are still in hopes of having something to give to the High Commission on Tuesday.

Thanks for your continued prayers.

By His grace,
Dwight

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Isn't it nice when things go our way according to the way we think things should go. This outcome gives us a sense of power or even feeling we are in some sort of control.

The converse, of course, gives us a sense of helplessness, confusion and we feel disappointment. Today marks 6 weeks since our visa applications were accepted by the South African High Commission.

At that time, the lady accepting the applications stated that it could take up to 6-8 weeks for the processing. She gave us a small slip of paper that listed a 4 digit reference number and a pickup date of 19/8. August 19th is actually about 9 weeks after the applications were accepted, but we had it set in our minds that it would only take a few days or weeks. We made a visit at the two week mark and Dorothy attempted to phone the visa supervisor as well, but we were not able to get any real positive information about the process timing.

Today, I returned to the High Commission to hopefully find out that the visas were about approved and that I could pick them up shortly. The lady, however, gave me no such positive answers and instead asked if I had received a text from them. I said no, and she than said to not come back until the date on the slip of paper or after I had received a text to come in. Any attempts to ask how far along the process had gone was met with come back on the date listed on the slip - no discussion.

Obviously, I was not in control which is not a surprise, but how do I handle this? What is my attitude?

Typically, I consider that many other people are far worse off than I am. This sort of makes me feel a bit better. But, as I think about this, should I not consider my blessings and position in the Lord even more so. As I take this to mind I realize the minutial significance of having to wait another 3 weeks for our applications to be processed.

Yes, we wait. Yes, things are far from difficult in our wait mode. Yes, I am blessed.

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I have thinking more than usual. Perhaps I should say I have been contemplating more than usual and thinking less. Having to set my own schedule for most of the week has its advantages and disadvantages as we continue our extended study in patience building, but I digress. The increase in persecution on Christian "standards" and even on Christians themselves has been bothering me and it should, but I should not be surprised.

This week in reading 2 Peter, we are reminded to expect problems. After Peter encourages believers in chapter 1, he continues on to warn about trouble makers:

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. 2 Peter 2:1–3 ESV

In the third chapter, Peter goes on to state: "I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder..." I think that is a very interesting way to phrase it. He tells us that there will be scoffers challenging us about when our Lord will return. Yet, as our pastors at New City Fellowship-Nairobi have reminded us in their preaching on 1 Thessalonians that God is patient not wanting any to be lost. This second chapter in 2 Peter also declares that.

I need to be consistently reminding myself that things are not necessarily going to get better in this world. Opposition will grow while we are called and encouraged to be steadfast.

Perhaps the bigger bother for me is seeing many of those who call themselves Christian disregarding the Word that comes to us from Christ. Blindness is so, so ....blinding!

We need to ask ourselves, what do we base our standards or morals on? With many people now not regarding Scripture as inerrant or even relevant, we are left to base our living on man's inventions such as secular (or other religious) laws or worse yet do we base our standards on how we feel? Knowing how emotions flutter about, this is a frightening thought. Humanity is not capable of setting its own standards that will work over time. Even with a good constitution, majority rule will eventually marginalize minorities and the disadvantaged. The unborn are no longer protected in many or most countries. Who is next?

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