Visit to KwaMashu
(Thursday, 24th May 2007)
Text of report letter to Concord church's Spiritual Enrichment group:
Hi, Judy,
As you know, I visited the D section Isililo yesterday, (Thursday). Rev Susan Cartmell went with me. She is the senior minister of the Needham Congregational Church (UCC) in Mass, visiting us for 9 days. I focused on my relationship to you and TriCon whenever I introduced myself, but there may be some lingering confusion!
Our first meeting was with Phyllis Ndlazi in our car. As you know, she is traveling to Jo'burg for 2 weeks. She will take the overnight bus there this Sunday evening. I did tell her that Diane Leahy would be the one calling her this Sunday evening. She received an additional pair of socks for diabetics as well as the baby blanket for her new granddaughter, Slindile.
Then Susan and I went to Mavis' home to pick her up. We got to see Phineas when we stopped. He is a good man. I gave him a pair of socks for Rejoice, but then Phineas indicated that he, too, had diabetes, so I gave him his own pair as well. They appreciated the packages that you sent, but did not open them as we were off to the D section church.
And, we got lost on the way to church. There is construction on the main road into D section and Mavis could not figure out how to get us to the church. Eventually, we followed a local bus, in the hope that they would both know how to get through the construction and would be going in our direction. They were, and we made it to the church.
Before the service, I introduced myself and brought out the socks for anyone in the group who had diabetes. Mavis saw to it that the first pair went to Matilda Mdima, the head of D section Isililo. And then this lady needs a pair, and that lady, and who else? I think everyone there came forward, with one exception. They were a big hit, but it is a good thing that it was not a big group, as I was then out of socks.
The service at the church was touching. They sang beautifully, most of the talking was in Zulu but Mavis had thought to bring an English Bible so Susan and I could join in reading the scripture. Mavis said that if she comes to Mass, I must loan her a Zulu Bible. We have one, and I will. I taught the group the chorus Jan wrote on the Zulu name of our program -- two times through to learn it, once more for fun. Susan also spoke to them about her longtime desire to come to Africa and how she was now realizing her dream.
The service ended with appropriate Isililo announcements by Matilda. While in Zulu, I recognized the bit about the Isililo uniform. There has been quite a stir here about the possibility of the uniform changing. There are small but apparent differences in the uniform among the 3 provinces where most of the Isililo members reside. There was an attempt to make the uniforms all the same back in the late 60s when the denomination was formed, but evidently not everything was truly worked out. So, we have heard several times now in several churches, the admonition that pieces of the uniform may change, such as the ribbon or the hat. I gather that the belt, which we have heard is also not consistent, is non-negotiable, as it is never mentioned. It has been clear to Jan and me that the women take the uniform very seriously. Indeed, changing it will be no small matter financially, when you consider how many Isililo members there are in the region.
During the service, Beatrice Sithole had arrived. She has been very ill. This was her first time back to Isililo in some time. Matilda indicated that she and Beatrice have been "racing each other to die", so it was a joy to have both of them at this meeting. Mavis knew that I had 2 prayer shawls in the car and indicated that one should be given to Beatrice, which I did.
But then, when I learned that Beatrice has very bad diabetes, the Isililo member next to her said that she must choose -- she could have the prayer shawl or a pair of socks, but not both! It has been cold here lately and Beatrice chose to keep the shawl. This in spite of her doctor telling her that her diabetes is eating the nerve endings of her feet.
Gertina Mkhize was the one Isililo member who had not received a shawl or socks, and Mavis indicated that I must give her the remaining shawl. I never learned what her issues are.
So we all climbed into my car and another vehicle, so that we could go to visit an Isililo member who "lived close by, just across the street". Climbing in was not so easy. We had 3 Isililo members plus Susan in the back seat. Mavis sat up front, in order to give directions, and left the larger Zulu ladies crammed into the back. I recollect that she suggested that they just "squeeze in their buttocks"! Susan indicates that she was not actually on the seat but sitting on her legs on the floor. However, this was not her chief concern, as one of the women started trying to adopt her. Most of this was in Zulu, but Mavis joined into the joke, asking Susan if she could collect firewood?
The drive to the close by house was a bit longer than necessary, as we drove by the house and had to turn around and go back. I find the Isililo visits to homes very appealing. Pryzina, the sick Isililo member, is a widow who has had the flu for the last month. She certainly was coughing quite a bit. Matilda also said that she has "cardiac" problems. Matilda read scripture, James 5, I think, talked a bit and there was singing, followed by prayer. Very moving. The session ended with instructions from Matilda, a retired nurse, on how Pryzina should care for herself.
I dented our rental car, trying to get out of Pryzina's driveway. And then we were off to find Beauty's house. I was in the lead, although I tried not to be. We got lost. Eventually the ladies in the car were not certain which way to try next, when I spotted the other car load behind me and pulled over. It turned out that they had tried to call Beauty and she was not home. So we started back to the church, with the other car leading. After several stops to let members off at their homes, we dropped off our last member. With just Susan and Mavis in the car with me, I made the point that my gas light had been on since we left the church and we really needed petrol, except I had not thought to take money with me -- did Susan have any? Fortunately she did and Mavis got us to the petrol station. I dented the car but managed to avoid running out of gas in KwaMashu!
Hope you have fun with your guest.
Ruthann
P.S. So, I was just going through your updates from the last 6 months and more, to see if Gertina Mkhize was mentioned (not that I found). Also, I knew that Beatrice Sithole sounded familiar, but am now sorry to have just discovered that she is one of Diane Leahy's pen pals and that Matilda also wanted a pen pal -- I did not find if she had one assigned or not. I wish that I had known that yesterday! I did not talk to Beatrice or Matilda about this, but I will try to get each phone number, if that seems appropriate to you.
Photo gallery from the visit:
Visit to KwaMashu
(Thursday, 5th July 2007)
Text of report letter to Concord church's Spiritual Enrichment group:
Hi, Judy,
I did join the kwaMashu Isililo for their visit this morning to a hospice. There were over 20 women in the group. Phyllis Ndlazi indicated that the number was large because this was a circuit-wide Isililo activity and because this is school vacation week, so teachers were able to swell the ranks. Mavis was not there, but Matilda and one other woman represented D section.
Phyllis met me at the mission church, since I really do know how to get there. Then we travelled to the KwaMashu Station, a large taxi rank, where the Isililo women were gathering. They rented a "combi" -- a van -- along with its driver, to supplement individuals' cars in transporting the group. In the end, there was a parade of 6 vehicles. I was in the lead, since my only passenger was Phyllis and she was one of 2 who knew where we were going. Since I had readily admitted my lack of knowledge of the roads within KwaMashu, Phyllis took me under her wing and made certain that I would not get lost.
After a bit of driving, we arrived at the back gate of the hospice, all 6 vehicles crammed into a small space.
The Isililo women sang hymns, prayed and preached for the patients of the hospice. The singing was beautiful, with staff members and other visiting church women -- I never did determine which denomination -- joining in. This is not a large facility and many of the beds were empty. The first ward we entered had 8 beds with 3 patients. The second ward had perhaps 5 beds, with 2 patients who were very wasted. I had the feeling that the patients were the youngest people in the rooms, younger than any of the Isililo members, dying from AIDS.
After the service and a brief tour of the facility, big bags of vegetables were presented to the hospice, including tomatoes, butternut squash, onions, cabbages, and carrots. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera had run out, so I don't have pictures of the vegetables, but within a few days will send along pictures from earlier in the event.
It was good to see Matilda, who translated a bit for me so that I would have a sense as to what was going on. The founder and director of the hospice, Sister Mkhize, had arranged for the Isililo visit with Phyllis, then become ill and died last week. The hospice employees are continuing the work, without knowing what will happen to the facility now that it has lost its leader.
Phyllis travelled back to the mission church with me, so that I could find my way out of KwaMashu. She and the rest of the Isililo women were going over to D section, to visit a family with a wedding this Saturday. But she herself, along with several others, will be at the Izipicka conference at Emphusheni starting tomorrow and ending Sunday. Jan and I will see her again on the 15th of July, when we are going to worship at the KwaMashu mission church.
Ruthann
Photo gallery from the visit:
Worship at KwaMashu
(Sunday, 15th July 2007)
Text of report letter to Conord church:
We have visited the KwaMashu Circuit, and most usually the central, “Mission” church, a number of times over the years, and over the past couple of years with Tri-Con visitors in tow – the Antos in ’05, the Van Horns last year. It’s a bit of coming home when we go back there, and people tell us that we’re not really visitors any more. As it should be.
On Sunday, July 15, a bright winter's day in Durban, we are met by many familiar faces when we come to the KwaMashu main church. Arriving a bit early, we are greeted first by Baphiwe Nxumalo, who’d made the arrangements for our being there, and by Phyllis Ndlazi, who’s the prayer connection contact for this branch, who is in regular contact with Judy Hill and the Spiritual Enrichment folks at Tri-Con, sharing prayer requests, joys and concerns, between people of the two churches. We had with us to give to Phyllis some print-outs of photos that Ruthann had taken a week before when she’d joined the Isililo women's group for their visit to a local hospice.
After we’ve gotten ourselves planted in a good front-row seat (important for Jan’s bobbing up and down for video, photos and recordings during the service), we’re joined by S’mangele Mkhwanazi, a friend from our service with the regional church’s Mission Council back in ’01-’02. She served several times as a translator for the local community outreach workshops we facilitated around the province those years. For the past several years, she’s been working as a special ed teacher in one of the United Arab Emirates (Sharjah, if we recall correctly), and had just returned for a holiday visit home to KZN. “Sma” is hoping to be studying in Seattle in the next year.
It was not a circuit-wide service this day, so that services would also be taking place at the other four worship points of the circuit, but the church was pretty much full anyway. One special attendee from the “D Section [of the township]” branch – Othandweni is the official name of that branch church – was Mavis Khumalo, who is the prayer connection contact for that branch, also in regular contact with Judy Hill and the Spiritual Enrichment group at Tri-Con. Mavis now lives quite close to the “F Section” church, the central “Mission” church, but still regularly attends the D Section branch near to where she used to live. She came to be with us this day and, after some general discussion about priority seating, settled in next to Ruthann, with S'ma on the other side next to Jan's photo equipment. It’s an unusual experience to have too many people want to sit with one in church!
Rev. Mkhize is presently on his ‘long leave’ – three months’ sabbatical after five years of service – so was not in attendance, but the service was led by a familiar face, Deacon Terrence Ndwalane, who’d been the deacon who led the service last year when the Van Horns visited, and who this year was also the preacher for the morning. We were warmly welcomed, and he requested that the ladies seated with the two of us provide a translation where necessary, and S’ma for Ruthann, and Baphiwe for Jan, were most helpful in this regard, especially during his sermon on a text from Revelation, but which focused on John the Baptist.
We knew that Jan would have some time, at some point during the service, to speak to the congregation, and should have guessed that we’d be asked to pray at one or the other time during the service. Exactly when, and to what particular purpose in the service, is less predictable. Jan was asked to pray early on, one of a couple of such requests to people in the congregation that morning, at various points in the service; Ruthann was called on for the offertory prayer (Earl Van Horn will recall such a request of him last year); and Jan was asked for a closing prayer, benediction-like, at the end of the service. So we had a bit of work to do!
When the time came for Jan to ‘say a few words,’ it was helpful that even though the KwaMashu church is one of the Zulu churches that are beginning to shorten up their services, they’re not as yet totally fixated on limiting the service to an appointed number of minutes. We were allowed the opportunity to bring general greetings from the Mass churches (read out in isiZulu, about which S’ma was quite complimentary afterwards, leaving Jan beaming a bit), and of course specific greetings from Tri-Con (easy enough, when over one’s shoulder is Tri-Con’s banner, draped along the wall), with special mention of Judy Hill and the prayer connection effort, and Marsha Martin and the pen pal effort. John Lombard had e-mailed over a greeting which was read out to the congregation as well. What followed was a pep talk of sorts about building on the elements of the connection between the two churches that had begun, to make these things known to others in the church, including in the other branches, and to enlist more people as direct participants.
Why? Well, first as a response to scripture, to live out the directive that ‘we should love one another,’ made real by seeking to know one another; and also as an honoring of the historic connection that our churches have, through the efforts of the American Board missionaries who declared that the churches in America and those in South Africa should be, not patron and client, but ‘brethren and co-workers,’ making this also real by seeking to know one another. But can we do this otherwise than by infrequent visits? We’d been asked about more Tri-Con parishioners visiting, by a young man who’d heard about the prayer connections, as we were entering the church that morning.
Well, consider why it was that Paul wrote to the Roman church that he longed to visit them: so “that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” We have the opportunity, that Paul did not, to reach out to each other in ways that make us close, to offer that mutual encouragement by conversations about our lives, our churches, our faith, on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis. Our reciprocal mission to and with each other is made possible by the modern world that we share; we have a responsibility to make use of it. And so we made an open plea for folks willing to share phone calls, and for those who had access to e-mail, to make themselves known to become involved in the relationship effort.
As we’ve been doing at the churches here that we’ve been able to join for worship (it will have been thirteen of the churches by the time we depart in early August), we mentioned also the story of last year’s visit to Adams Mission, just south of Durban, when the Amabutho members in charge of the service that day based their testimonies on Paul’s words from Ephesians. They’d not been told we were coming that day, but we have carried that so-apt message with us, the message that they highlighted for us through that service, as we have spoken to participating Massachusetts churches since, and so also to KZN churches: that Jesus “came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God …” And so we were welcomed this day at KwaMashu, and so it can be, even more so, as the people of the churches speak with and write to each other, that it truly is as a family, and not as strangers, that we seek to interact with one another, that we are not strangers to one another, because we are ‘fellow citizens’ of the one church, across time and across oceans. And so, we should work to know one another.
Well, this was well received, and we could end with a rousing rendition of the ‘i3L chorus’ which has found good use in the churches here.
A good day, indeed. But our memory of the day, as of the days before when we’ve been privileged to come to KwaMashu, will be strongest in the echo of the music of the day. Not formal music, no ‘special’ music by choirs this day, but the a cappella singing of the congregation. The choruses, the powerful hymns, the sound of the many parts ringing out and reverberating from the metal ceiling and the cinderblock walls, the pounding of the hymnals (in their often main use, as percussion devices), the additional rhythm of the bell, the swaying and the near-to-dancing, the joy and praise of it all. One must smile, one must feel the joy of the moment, the sense that God is pleased. It is good to be in the house of the Lord, together.
As we were leaving the church, we were approached first by Mrs. Khuzwayo, the elderly widow of one of the Zulu ministers, who lives now in KwaMashu. We’ve known her now for a number of years, and it is always nice to see her. She is always supportive of calls to enhance the present-day KZN churches’ awareness of their links to the American churches.
We were also greeted by Charlotte Dludla, who reminded us that she corresponds with Carol Miller. Charlotte is to go into the hospital for an operation, the week after next. She told us how when she’s feeling lonely (as well as ‘when I don’t have a newspaper or something to read’) she’ll dip into the large pile, as she described it, of Carol’s letters that she’s kept, and re-read one or two of them, and it does her good.
We came away from KwaMashu, it is most often this way, much energized. It can be surprisingly difficult, we’ve come to learn, to ask church people to reach out to each other for the purpose of reaching out to each other, so “that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” We often seem to hold our faith close, as if we seek to keep it safe from others, as if our faith belongs to us, rather than we to it. But then there are these moments, when we hear of evidence of the sharing of our common faith, when we hear of the value that Charlotte places on her ongoing contacts from and with Carol, and then we go on our way renewed and refreshed, thankful, and ever hopeful.
Siyabonga, nkhosi.