If there is such a thing as a perfect day (weather-wise) in Cape Town, today was that day. The fact that it was Sunday made that all the more wonderful.
We worshiped this morning at John Thomas’ church - Fish Hoek Baptist (also known as King of Kings Baptist Centre). Worship was led by Melissa Shaw and team, then after viewing a 6-minute DVD on the gospel outreach that will be going on at the Olympics in China beginning this Friday, we prayed for the Olympics. I guess I never thought about praying for the Olympics, but considering the hostility in that country towards believers, it certainly opened my eyes to the upcoming “all the eyes of the world on Beijing” and the importance of praying for God to somehow be honored even through that event.
John preached a wonderful sermon on knowing the specific will of God in our lives. I am always challenged by his sermons. During his message, he spoke of recent UN statistics on HIV-AIDS released this past week, and once again, the largest populated area of the world infected with HIV-AIDS is South Africa. There’s certainly something to pray about.
After worshiping at KOK, we proceeded down the road 5 minutes to the township of Masiphumelele. Many of you who read this have been to Masi. One can never forget their visit to this township - a community of many thousands living in horrific living conditions, extreme poverty, with HIV-AIDS, drugs, prostitution, crime, and little, if any hope of any kind of life outside this small world of despair.
On the main street of this township is a small Baptist church. Inside this church you will find maybe a hundred believers gathered for worship which begins promptly at 11:00am, but really doesn’t get “started” until about 11:20am as more people arrive and the music/worship gets more energetic, passionate, louder, and infectious. I love this church, and I love their choir - always have - always will.
They used an overhead projector to help their people evidently learn a new song. It was in Xhosa, so I did not know the English translation. Doug Sarrett had one of the (3) new fancy hand-held digital recording devices with him - (we bought them to bring here to use, then leave them with CCFm Radio so they can use them for remote interviews, etc.....but they are incredible for music as well) - and he recorded all the music in the service. I can’t wait to bring these songs back and give them to Steve Hindalong to consider using them on the Masi Choir CD project that we are working on. (Steve is the producer of the CD)
We did not stay for the sermon because Pastor Diba primarily preaches in Xhosa, so we would not understand him.
We left Masi and headed towards Cape Point - (Table Mountain National Park - where you can visit the southwestern most tip of Africa).
On the way, we stopped in Simons Town (probably one of my most favorite places anywhere in the world). We ate calamari by the ocean, and walked around on the main street where there are buildings there built in the 1800’s. Simon’s Town is where the South African Navy Headquarters are.
Further south, we stopped to view and enjoy the penguins, then onto Cape Point. It was a perfect day to view Cape Point except for one minor issue - gale force winds. No joke. There were warning signs up all around. The winds almost knocked me over several times. It was crazy!
We got plenty of great photos/video of baboons, and enjoyed the time of leisure after two intense and long days.
Dinner tonight at The Team House was great as usual, and Boggs, Shane, and Sarrett were in rare form even for them. They had everyone almost spitting out their food or snorting it out their nose - these guys are ridiculously funny! G-Dog and Jakes joined us for dinner and the fun!
Afer dinner, G-Dog took all of us except Shane (he stayed back at The Team House to begin working on the tracks we will use to record the (3) winners of the CCFm Workshops from this weekend) to Mike & Pam Talley’s house to be able to access the Internet since as of this writing (Sunday night), our Internet service has been down since Friday morning!!
We had a great visit, and returned to The Team House to get back to work on tracks. it is now 12:55am, and I can still hear Boggs and Shane working away - these guys are great - I am not sure our new South African friends we will work with tomorrow truly understand the quality of professionals they will be working with. It really does not matter if they understand that or not - what they will walk away from the studio with at the end of the day tomorrow is a greater sense of hope and encouragement that their gifts matter, and that some fun and energetic guys from America care about them and want to serve them in whatever way they can to encourage and support them - even if we may never meet again this side of heaven.
