Individual attention

10 am Only one boy (Vontray) arrived for Sunday School today. I decided to just "visit" with him. It was a lovely 30mins. He is usually quite disruptive, but this time, just sat there drawing while we chatted. He even offered to tidy up afterwards!

7 pm Graeme preached a good sermon. "Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord", will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven"

Hooray!

I nearly caused it to snow on St Helena today.... I FINALLY got around to mending one of the 3 pairs of shorts that Graeme has to wear.

HOT, steamy February

It is extra hot and steamy lately. More rain than usual for this time of the year, interspersed with hot sun, which naturally raises the humidity levels. I don't perspire - I drip in this weather.

Only one child came to Good News Club today, and the teens' meeting was also a "no show".

Graeme and I visited Charles in Knollcombes. He is not well and is feeling his age. Immediately outside his front door, there is a little tree that a flock of java sparrows call "home". Such pretty little birds.

We then went on to visit Daphne Peters in hospital, and once again, were joined by a bird. This time it was the little turtle dove that regularly wanders into the ladies' ward. No one even takes any notice of him/her any more.

The evening was ended with a "Music and Poetry" evening in aid of the League of Friends who raise money for medical equipment that is otherwise not provided on the Island. I must confess that I was a reluctant attendee to start off with, but was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the music and poetry reading during the course of the evening. Graeme and Tom played duets on their trumpets, Steve played his violin, the vet and the latest locum doctor sang serious pieces, there were a few tongue in cheek poems .... etc. AND there was biltong for sale during the interval!!

Swop around

Work at The Consulate is now rather limited, and Arthur only gets the odd bit of work these days. I, on the other hand, am being pressed to put in more hours in order to catch up the backlog of book keeping work. I had to make a choice about how to spend my time at home - too much to do, and not enough time to do it in - so have stopped my lace classes. We are trying to raise money to repair the roof on the chapel that was damaged 2 years ago, and the next fund raiser is to be an Easter Fare. Only 7 weeks to get some items made to sell.

Arthur now speaks almost every Thursday afternoon on the radio. The present format it answering questions, a little explanation of the gospel, interspersed with gospel music.

Terrific Tuesday

A red letter day, indeed.

The day started with me vacuming and tidying the lounge and our bedroom. While I was resting to regain a bit of energy, Graeme asked me to run a visitor to the island to the windmills in Deadwood. (Graeme had a previous appointment, and was not free) The RMS sailed at 1 pm, and this was 11.45am. The trip to Deadwood normally takes about 20 mins.

Mr Bau Rowland is an ornothologist, and badly wanted to get some photos of the wirebirds. He had been told that nests had been sighted in the area just before the windmills. These birds are an extremely endangered species found only on St Helena. They are about 3" high, and make their nests in the dirt on the ground.

It was raining heavily (for St Helena, that is) but I took off as quickly as I could. When we reached the area we were looking for, we saw one wirebird taking a bath in the puddles in the road, but he was too far away to get a good photo shot. The rain had cleared a bit by now.

We travelled along slowly, skidding in the mud once or twice, and saw one or two birds flying around the car, but could not get any decent shots

Bau asked me to turn around and park the car near an area that looked most like what had been described as "the spot" to him. While I waited in the car Bau opened a wire fence gate and slowly walked around, looking on the ground. Suddenly I saw him taking photos and looking excited. He had discovered a nest. He had spotted a bit of shell through the dirt in a patch of earth, and had carefully exposed the 2 eggs. He got some beautiful shots of the eggs with his fancy camera. I got out of the car with my basic "point and shoot" camera, and followed him. Our eyes caught the mother bird doing the "broken wing thing" and trying to lure us away from her nest. We got a few good shots of that performance. As soon as we moved away from the nest, the mother bird returned to it, and quickly covered the eggs with dirt again.

Bau was beaming. We now had 25 minutes to get back to the RMS before it sailed.

Having safely delivered the happy ornothologist to the waiting ship, Graeme and I checked the post office for mail. What a delight to get 2 parcels from SA. One from our previous church - full of "cannot get it on St Helena" things, like spares for our vacuum cleaner, an exercise ball for me, dried onions to cope with the present onion shortage, and even new braces for Graeme's trousers! The other parcel was from my sister-in-law. She is CRAZY about animals. Her parcel contained a gift for each of our 4 pets, as well as for each of the 3 humans. The cats got fancy collars, and the dogs got a dress each (pugs like to dress up)

Graeme went to visit Daphne Peters in hospital, and Arthur and I went to the Cape Villa Bible study. Arthur is going through the letter to the Thessalonians, and I am enjoying the way that he opens up a book and gives new insights.

As I had my camera handy, I took a photo of a flower growing along the pathway.

Back home with an hour to get ready before the Jamestown Bible study and the book of Ephesians with Graeme.

Encouraged

Arthur was greatly encouraged by tonight's Bible study held at Half Tree Hollow. It is attended mainly by non Baptists. Arthur has changed the format slightly and was encouraged when 2 Anglican ladies not only did their homework, but asked questions and participated in the study.

Bad pattern

After presenting my grand idea of bed socks, I now had the problem of finding both knitting needles and wool. One shop had 9 pairs of needles in the size that I wanted ( I needed 8 pairs) - and very few other knitting needles, and another shop had fairly reasonably priced wool in lovely bright colours.

The Jamestown BWA ladies also agreed to the idea of the "love boxes" and the knitting of bed socks. So I got them started with the knitting while I went through the short Bible study.

BUT

a problem arose.

I went ahead knitting as fast as I could in order to make sure that I could help anyone who struggled with the pattern. Well, it turned out that the resulting sock would only fit a short, stumpy foot. So I had to try and work out where to change the pattern, and start again. Luckily, my second attempt, with an adjusted pattern, fitted my foot nicely, with room to stretch if need be.

New format

BWA :
I have been struggling to find something that the ladies can get involved in, and be enthusiastic about, as a ministry to the community. It is very easy to reach out to one's community in SA - there are street children, homeless people, unemployed, etc. But not on St Helena. But God answers prayer.
Once a month we visit the local old age home (the CCC) and hold a short 30 minute service. Last week they asked Graeme if we could please make the meetings a little longer, and also visit the bedridden people. It was then decided that, some church folk would attend the service, while other church members would go around to the bedridden folk, and visit with them.

The the idea "popped" into my head. Why not get the BWA to make "love boxes" to hand out at these visits? These are empty shoe boxes that have been "prettied up". In the box we would put a few little gifts, as well as a pair of bed socks - which will be knitted by the BWA ladies. We can spend 30 mins of each BWA session knitting these socks and chatting and getting to know each other.

After our usual time of prayer, and a short study in the book to the Hebrews, I presented this idea to the ladies, and found that they were quite eager to start the project.

The Bible studies :
For the first year that we were in the St Helena Baptist church, Graeme went through the 1689 confession of faith in the Bible studies. It was thought that, as our constitution is based on this confession, it would be a good idea to make sure that everyone knew just what it was that we believed. The problem was that the confession is written in very old English, and some of the concepts are difficult to grasp. The Bible studies ended up being more of a lecture, than anything else.

As we drew near to the end of the Confession, we prayed a lot about how to change the mid week meetings so that there was more interaction and interest. God answered prayer. Graeme got each person to each share something that they were grateful for. He then went through the first 14 verses of Ephesians. His enthusiasm was obvious. A bit more "sharing", and then a time of tea and chatting.