Sabbath

I know you must be wondering what the title of this post means. It means ‘Our First Sabbath’ in Africaans, one of the common languages here in S. Africa. We are little by little learning bits and pieces of the languages here, which may take a while since there are 11 different languages, yes 11! Anyway, this is just a short post on our very first Sabbath here, which technically is our second, but the first we actually slept in (shhhh… don’t tell the grandparents…) It deserves mentioning because of the odd circumstances we ended up in, circumstances that we have never been in, that definitely had us laughing.

We attended a meeting by Amazing Facts close to Pretoria’s inner city and it was pretty good. We went with one of our neighbors, which is another young couple, and some friends. Apparently this was a big event where people from all over have been attending the meetings from it’s start. Our plan was to attend the meeting and then have lunch with the guest choir, who our friends knew, and then attend a concert they were putting on later that day. So church is over, and it’s looking like the choir wouldn’t be ready anytime soon for lunch, so we decide it may be best to figure out some other plan for lunch.

As Kirk leaned over my window in the car to see what my thoughts were, he heard someone yell his name. Not knowing anyone since we just moved here the first reaction was to ignore it, but to his surprise it was Paul Charles, Communications Director at SID, who recognized him and came over to say hello. Now if you have ever met Paul Charles you know how hilarious this guy is and laid-back. We chatted for a little and in conversation mentioned to him what we were planning to do and you would not believe what he said. He said that since he and his family had cooked lunch but just now got invited to a lunch elsewhere that we should just go to his home and eat their food. ummmm, yeah. We thought he was joking at first, but when he walked off with his keys in our hands, we quickly realized that he was actually serious.

So we jumped in our cars and headed over to his place, shaking our heads the whole time since this was definitely, DEFINITELY a first for us and our friends. We got there, warmed up the food and sat down to eat. Let me just mention that Paul is of Indian descent and yes, this means it was purely Indian Cuisine and oh, was it good. So just when we had scrapped the last morsels off our plates we get a call and it was Paul, letting us know that he and his family were on their way back home. Hmmm, at this point we could only pray that they were not looking for leftovers when they walk through the door. Hilarious!

Already Kirk has been reeled in to the Media side of things here so he was able to record the concert which was very good. I must say I was shocked to see so many people at AY and then to stay for the concert. Granted the church was small but the seats were Rampacked with people young and old. We just had to share a video of a part of the song service that hands down was one of the best I have ever experienced. The music was just so soulful and you could feel the heritage/culture pouring out of the songs, you just had to be there, but since you weren’t, here are a few videos.

The first Video…