Chereen, our lovely host cooked us a wonderful breakfast
of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, avocado and a fine selection of fruit. We have no meetings today but it’s a good day
to visit a few folk. Our first call was
into a psychiatric hospital in east Pretoria to visit the daughter of a lady
who’d been in the meeting at Church in the City in Brits the other night. I’m not going to name any names or give many
details to preserve her privacy but suffice to say she’s had a hard time in the
last few years and has struggled with mental health issues to the point she
needed admitting recently. I presume the
unfair stigma faced by those struggling with their mental health, as opposed to
physical health, is as bad in South Africa as it is in the UK, if not
worse. Godfrey has a gift for sharing
the unending, unchanging, unrelenting love of Father God for people who find themselves
in such a situation and although he couldn’t get an acoustic guitar to go in
with we went into the hospital anyway.
It was like “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”, bare lino floors, painted
concrete walls and high ceilings, steel bars on the windows and old fashioned
jail-style steel bar doors. The noise
was appalling, not wails or screams just the amplified and undamped echo of
every word spoken, every footstep and every rattle of every door or
window. You could hardly make yourself
heard at the ward reception desk or in the dining area where we were to meet
the young lady and her mum. After a few
minutes struggling with the sound we were moved to a more private TV room that
was still noisy but at least we were the only ones in it. There was no TV either, thankfully. Godfrey sang two of his songs to the young
lady, “Do you believe what I believe about you?” and “I am not disappointed in
you” after explaining that they were Father God’s words to her for her and
about her, specifically. She seemed to
understand and she chatted with him for a while and he encouraged her that her
future was going to be different to her past.
Her mum was very touched that we’d taken the time to go in to see her
and frankly it was a privilege to do so.
I can’t imagine how hard it must be as a parent to see one of your
children suffering and struggling like that.
But she has hope for the future.
Godfrey gave the mum one of his CDs that has the songs on that he sang
to her daughter which she'll keep safe until she gets out, which hopefully won’t be too long.
We then moved on to the other side of Pretoria to
another hospital this time to see a lady called Tilana who was the person who invited
Godfrey to Brits when she found out he was coming to South Africa. She is Pastor Wally’s sister and has been
fighting cancer for eleven years. She
managed to come to the meeting on Tuesday night despite not feeling well and
needing treatment; she was determined she wasn’t going to miss it as she
loves Godfrey’s music so much.
I have rarely seen anyone so fully alive and
glowing with enthusiasm let alone someone who is so very ill. She is a remarkable lady and we spent a wonderful
hour with her chatting about Godfrey’s music, her journey of faith and her
determination to be well. She and her
husband are planning on going on the Religious Detox cruise in the Mediterranean
next September plus she’s hoping to be released from this round of hospital
treatment on Sunday morning which means if she’s strong enough and well enough
she may be able to come on Sunday night to our final meeting of this trip here
in South Africa.
After we took our leave of her we headed to the
mall opposite to meet a friend of Godfrey’s called Gerben who was the Worship Director at a
huge church of 8,000 people in Pretoria when Godfrey came over about ten years
ago. He’s still in a leadership capacity
there and shared with us some of the monumental changes going on at their
church, all of which sounded exciting and very much in line with how I would love all churches to be; focused outwards, serving their community, deconstructing and
closing things that are no longer relevant, trying to remove the consumerist
culture from the meetings of the church.
It’s almost unheard of for a church of that size, with a large number of
full-time staff to attempt such a shift.
Even small churches find that stuff difficult. I hope they succeed. He is also a drummer and an extremely accomplished
musician in several fields. He was someone you could immediately warm to and I liked him immensely.
By then it was about 3:30pm so it was time to head
back to Chereen’s house before we got too caught in the rush hour traffic.
Tonight Chereen and Gordon treated us to a
fantastic meal of Snoek, an amazingly tasty meaty fish, grilled on a barbeque
with roasted vegetables, and a salad. It
was wonderful meal. Godfrey and Gordon
sat out on the terrace sharing a tot of each of their favourite whiskies while
Chereen and I talked inside. She told me
some of her amazing life story, which as it’s her’s not mine I won’t be sharing
here, but it was FULL to the brim with the grace and goodness of God in what at
times must have been incredibly hard situations. She is a remarkable woman and my only regret
is not getting to meet her husband as he was been working away all week and
gets home tomorrow after we’ve left.
Tomorrow we’re heading for Johannesburg itself and
this time we’re staying in a hotel near the airport instead of with members of
the church. We have a meeting on
Saturday night and two meetings on Sunday.
Apparently I’ll be playing an electric drum kit which I’m not looking
forward to. I don’t like them even if
they’re expensive and fancy ones. Partly
that’s because they lack the sensitivity an acoustic kit has and partly it’s
just it pushes me out of my comfort zone!
I shall get over myself and do my best on it and I’m sure it’ll be
dandy! What’s the worst that could
happen? Tune in to Saturday nights blog
to find out!
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