Journeys and Reflections

From Joey: South African News: Edition 3 August 24, 2006

Hello again everyone, after a lengthy respite,

My apologies for having no email communication for the last month.  My
last 2 weeks in South Africa were extremely busy, so that I only got
to use the Internet once, and once I arrived home I began working long
hours for harvest immediately. (For those of you who are not farmers,
harvest simply dominates life for the first 3 weeks of August for my
family, and I work from 7 am until dark or later).

However, now I am back at my trusty laptop, attempting to recreate the
last two weeks of South Africa and the important events that happened
then (much of this email is taken from my journals, so hopefully it
will prove historically accurate).

The biggest change during the last two weeks was that several
short-term teams showed up from Canada and the US.  The first team,
whom I spent the most time with, was from Toronto and consisted of
seven people in their 20s.  As soon as they arrived, pace doubled, and
David and I were caught up in the flow.  Pastor Ohm spent a couple
days with us all as we visited preschools, began the digging for a
community netball court, and learned about the leaders and vision of
each of the parts of AfricanLeadership.  (It was nice to finally have
a formal introduction to all of the ministries, even though I had
learned most of it already).  The team was also finalizing plans for a
camp they were running that weekend for local high school students.
These students were the leaders of the Student Christian Organization
(SCO) at their respective high schools, and the team from Toronto
wanted to have a retreat to train and disciple them.  However, I was
headed to Transkei (the rural Xhosa homeland) a couple of days early
to help SaeYun with the clinic and to prepare for the teams arrival on
Monday morning.

One very important thing happened during Week 3: The Toronto team,
along with David and I, had visited a high school hoping to talk to a
few of the students or share with a class or two.  When we told the
principle that we were from Canada and the US, and that we wanted to
share with some students about life skills and reaching goals, etc.,
we were immediately told that they had 7 classes without teachers
during the next period and they wanted us to speak to them all.  We
had 14 people, since we had brought several students from the Bible
College along, so we were split up into pairs and sent to our own
classroom to speak for 45 minutes.  There was a lot of rapid praying,
since most of us hadn’t prepared anything, and then we were standing
in front of 50 rowdy high schoolers in maroon uniforms.  I was paired
with Pastor Ohm, and he told me to talk first, so I shared a brief
testimony about how I was able to rely on God to overcome my problems
and that I didn’t have to face them alone.  Pastor Ohm then talked for
about 40 minutes on all sorts of topics.  The assistant principle came
in and listened for the second half, so Pastor Ohm spoke mostly about
life skills and weaved in some of his personal testimony.  At one
point, Pastor Ohm was talking about changing your life and stepping
away from the bad things you have done in the past, and one girl in
the front row asked simply: ”How?”  She asked with such sincerity and
honest frustration that it really hit me hard.  That is the plight of
these high school students: they have dreams and aspirations, but no
hope of actually achieving anything.  They have no role models or
guides or pathways to success, and so turn to gangs and crime and sex
and drugs to drown their frustration.  You could see the hunger in the
eyes of nearly every student– so obvious that it hurt me as well.
However, I will tell more about the high schools later because I got
to visit them a lot during my last week in South Africa.

One other quick interlude before I write about my time in Transkei,
which was perhaps the most classic “short-term” mission experience.
But before I went I spent a day with Sae-yun, driving around Cape Town
trying to get together some supplies and get a new car registered for
another girl who was coming for several months.  This included many
phone calls and visits to mechanics and me driving on the left side of
the road and lots of price comparisons, etc.  The experience was
rather frustrating but it really showed me the other side of being a
long-term missionary: the nuts and bolts of handling money and dealing
with beauracracy and buying stuff.  And this was just a car and some
electrical repairs– I can’t imagine dealing with visas and buying a
house and building church buildings, etc.  That Friday really showed
me how multi-skilled and flexible and patient a missionary must be.

So, I fully intended to write about Transkei when I began this email,
but it is now getting late and my family requires my presence at my
younger sister’s 10th birthday party tomorrow, so I must end this
email here.  I promise that I will send at least 2 more in the next 2
or 3 days– you don’t get a break from my unleashed verbosity now that
I have more time and computers at my command.  But, from this email, I
ask that you pray for 3 things: First, for the long-termers in Cape
Town, specifically Solomon, Sae-Yun, Pastor Ohm, and Pastor Tong-Su.
They are the ones who deal with earthly problems especially, like car
repair and finances.  Second, pray for the short-term teams. There are
3 in Cape Town right now, and several more have come and gone over the
course of the summer.  The experience is as much about equipping the
young people from North America as it is to use them to help further
God’s Kingdom in South Africa.  Several of the people from Toronto
were drastically changed even in the week and a half that I spent with
them, so pray that God will continue to guide their purposes and that
they will trust fully in His plans for their lives.  Thirdly, pray for
me, a similar request to that of the other short-termers.  Since I got
home I have been extremely busy, and I don’t want to lose my own
growth simply by being uprooted from Khayelitsha and going back to
well-trod ground.  Pray that I can be focused on God’s purpose as I
speak about South Africa a few times and as I prepare to go back to
school.

Once again, I apologize for my tardiness in sending this email and
general lack of communication.  I did arrive home safely and have seen
some of you in person. I really appreciated the notes that some of you
sent; I will reply as needed and time permits.

FTK (for those who forgot, For The Kingdom!)

Joey Klein
now back home in Edwall, WA

p.s. If any of you didn’t receive Edition 1 or 2, and therefore don’t
understand some parts of this email, let me know and I will forward
them on to you.