The Coldest Church on Fire for Jesus

We were up at 6:45am this morning and it continues to get harder and harder to wake D up as she is not really an early morning person.  Plus it was only about 3 degrees this morning so even harder to get out from under the blankets.  We enjoyed Grandma Polly’s wonderful breakfast hospitality before heading to church with Liz, the orphanage director and Robyn, our representative in South Africa (an amazing lady who I could write an entire post about and probably will later). 

Church was located in a little town called Cedarville.  We drove through it on the way to Matatiele and glanced around but in the 10 seconds it took us to drive through it we did not see a building that appeared to represent a church.  So on this morning we simply followed Liz to this building:

Gene and Corry still get the chills just looking at the picture!

There was a large propane heater in the middle of the building and we chose seats close to the heater hoping to pick up a little heat.  We noted that in the ceiling were 6 “skylights” lacking the glass so thus letting the heat right out the top.  Gene’s hands were shaking so badly from the cold Corry could barely read the words of the Bible! It was SOOOO cold!  We could see our breath during the service!

There was a table with children’s activities at a small table in the back, about 40 chairs set up and a small podium located at the front.  When service began there were about 30 people gathered in the small building. 

We enjoyed prayer, singing and a wonderful message about our purpose in life.  We were reminded that we can all strive to have goals and worldly purpose but essentially we are called to do one thing “the will of the Father”.  All else comes second to doing God’s will in our lives.  We felt truly blessed by the people and message of this service.  They finish off the service with coffee, cookies and a time of fellowship.    

D noticed that the other children were allowed to play during the service so joined the table at the back.  About midway through the service a handful of neighborhood boys arrived to enjoy the play activities(and snacks) too.  What a wonder to see how children interact!  Although no words were spoken I observed a boy help D with a marker, her share some blocks, the group of them build a tower together and at the end of the service she even felt compelled to say bye to a few of them before leaving the table.  As adults we do tend to confuse things with too many words!  I have noticed a number of times during this trip that a language barrier does not seem to exist in children. 

We arrived back at the guesthouse to hopefully catch a nap and some sun to warm up before Z is set to arrive.