Saturday, June 27, 2009

Enjoying SA

Dear Friends and Family,

 

My time here in Durban has been very good.  I have been able to relax a little.  I have also had sometime to get some pictures put together into a bit of a presentation for when I return home.  I am hoping to set a couple dates for those of you who would like to see pictures and hear a little about my trip, for you to come to our house, or if you would like me to come to your place let me know when and we can make arrangements.

 

I am staying in Tongaat with Jean and Jackie which is kind of a suburb of Durban.  This whole area around here is where most of the Indians settled when they came in the 1800's.  I have been enjoying the Indian hospitality and the awesome Indian food.  Nothing quite like chicken curry, their food tends to be on the spicy side but that is ok with me.

 

On Wednesday evening I went with Jackie to some new believer's home in his neighbourhood.  There were several people from their church that were coming for a time of worship and to encourage these new believers. I said that this is an Indian neighbourhood and when the Indians came they brought Hinduism with them and so there are many temples around here with altars to many different gods.  This family was devote Hindus and they had an altar on their own property and sacrificed cats to this god.  The parents would be in their 60's and they have two sons probably in their 30's.  Their sons were really messed up in drugs and they were going to different gods and paying lots of money that they didn't have to try to get their sons lives straightened out. Nothing was working till finally some people came to their house and started sharing about Jesus. They accepted the Lord Jesus as their Saviour and have been fellowshipping with the same Christians as Jean and Jackie for the last few weeks.  While we were at their house each of them gave testimony to the difference that Jesus has been making in their lives.  The sons were saying they have been totally set free from their drug addictions and they know that it is only because of Jesus. It was such an encouragement to here these new believers testifying about what Jesus has done.

 

 On Friday evening I had the opportunity to speak to the youth at Jean and Jackie's church.  We had a great time together and then afterwards they had a supper for us.  In several of the countries I have been to I have seen chicken feet for sale in the markets and I have heard people say that they are good, but I had never had a chance to try them.  Last night for the supper there were some chicken feet cooked with the chicken curry and I decided I was going to try one.  It was funny one of the ladies started whispering to some of the other ladies and saying "Andrew eats chicken feet."  I had to tell her that it was my first time.  I wasn't quite sure how much of it I was supposed to eat but you bite of the toes and eat the skin of them and then spit out the bones and then eat the skin off of the rest of the leg.  Not too much to eat on them.  The Indians eat most of their meals with their hands so I have been getting practiced up on this as well.

 

For those of you who know you are going to find what I am about to tell you very hard to believe. No I am not getting married it is ok Joia. (Joia is my sister if you are wondering)  I drank three cups of coffee last night.  I think that I have probably only tried coffee about three times in my life and I have never liked it.  Last night it was just handed to me and I was going to be polite and just drink it and I did and I really liked it.  This coffee was made with milk instead of water and it had lots of sugar tasted more like cappuccino, but I still don't like regular coffee.

 

This morning Jeans youngest brother Richard came by and he took me out for a few hours this morning to show me around the area.  In many ways it is much like Canada.  South Africa is much different then the rest of the countries on this continent. It is much more westernized then the other countries.   This afternoon I went out with Jackie and we ordered some wood he wants me to make some dog houses for his two dogs.  When he heard that I do some work with wood he right away wondered if I could make some dog houses.  Hopefully next week I can get these made for him.

 

Lord willing one week from today I will be back in Ontario.                              

 

In Christ,

 

Andrew

2 comments:

Mom W. said...

Sounds like you are having a wonderful time there, nice little interval between the two continents and all that is ahead... One week from today -woopee! Looking forward to your arrival home...

We had a bad storm with a LOT of wind, water and HAIL that was really hard on the corn crop here in the fields and my garden, looks pretty pitiful.

Mom said...

Happy Canada Day Andrew!!