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To those interested who are dispersed abroad: Greetings.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I can't believe so much has happened since I last wrote a newsletter. It's
been about eight or ten weeks now and I've had exams, holidays, ministry
week and of course the soccer was going on during all that time. So I'll
start at the beginning and try not to ramble too much.
The exams went acceptably, having been back at GWC I've had the chance to
see my results and I must admit that I was disappointed with some of my
results. The exams were a welcome end to the term though. I flew back to
Joburg a few days after exams finished which gave me the chance to watch
the opening SA vs Mexico game at a fan park which was quite an experience
and then it was back home for me.
My first week of holidays went by rather quickly, I did a fair bit of
reading (I've been reading the Count of Monte Cristo most consistently
recently) and I prepared a sermon which I thought I would need for
ministry week (which was the week after the holidays) but it turned out
that I didn't (I'll hopefully have the chance to use it at Mountain View
Baptist though). To be honest, the first week has become a bit of a blur
in my mind because for the second and third weeks I was involved in
Honeyridge's holiday club.
Thankfully, the holiday club wasn't two weeks of kids (the first week was
a setup week) or it would have been considerably more exhausting. It went
really well, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm pretty sure that the kids did
too. It's quite exciting to have the chance to explain the gospel to a
bunch of grade six and sevens (that was my groups age group) every day for
a week. Unfortunately, I had to fly back on Thursday and so I missed the
last day of the holiday club but I'm certain that it finished well.
So I arrived back in Cape Town on Thursday evening and on Friday I joined
some people from college and went to the Aquarium which was fascinating.
The creatures that one finds living in the sea boggle the mind, they
honestly don't look like they are from this planet - if you want to marvel
at God's creation the Aquarium is a good place to go. Since we were
already in the city bowl, I joined a college friend and his sister's
family and went to the fanpark again. It is rather weird to me that I
began and ended my holidays at a soccer event. Speaking of which, I have
been quite amazed at the power of soccer as a talking point to pretty much
any person in the country; it has been rare to find someone who wasn't
following it in any way.
Easing back into college, we started with ministry week - a week in which
all the undergrad students go to different churches, usually all over the
country but this year, because of the world cup, primarily in Cape Town
and do whatever their host church asks of them. I was assigned to Holy
Trinity in Gardens. Our primary activity was doing a holiday club but we
also visited a hospital and an old age home in the afternoons. I had the
chance to lead one of their Bible studies, on Sunday I also lead the
service and our team leader preached (and it was a quality sermon).
It was on Saturday though that I found out that a very good friend of mine
from school had passed away on Friday night. Although GWC began on Monday,
it was not really college work that dominated my thoughts. Thankfully, I
flew back for the funeral which was on Friday the 16th. It's quite a
thought that a guy who matriculated with me has died and not because of a
car accident or drugs or alcohol but something natural. It made me realise
that death is definitely not natural and, interestingly, one of my first
theological thoughts that I had as I thought about his death was that God
is definitely there.
Last weekend, then, I went on a "Music Ministry" weekend which was a great
experience. We talked about the power of music to manipulate emotions and
the correct use of music and then learnt a few songs. The weekend inspired
me to actively try to learn to play an instrument.
This weekend I joined people from Mountain View and we hiked to Elephant's
Eye at Silvermine which was also awesome. It's good to be back but I feel
that I have a lot of work that I need to start ploughing through which I
normally had weekends to use except over these past few weeks.
You can praise God that He has given me the opportunity to be here and
please pray that I can be an encouragement to some guys staying in res
with me who are struggling at college. I've got a lot of work that I need
to do and I'll need a lot of motivation to do it so please ask God to use
the work to improve my relationship with Him. Please also keep my
devotional life in your prayers; idle hands may be the devil's playground
but boy, I don't think we realise how much he loves busy ones as well.
In Christ,
James Cuénod
--
James, a bondslave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
http://www.rekindle.co.za
