Love is a choice not a feeling

Boom ting. As promised I've left it slightly longer before writing again - mainly because things have settled down slightly after the intense week with Rich.

Last week we had another American with us - Kerry Slattery - who came to talk to us on Inner Healing. Was an interesting week - he spoke quite a lot about demons and about how he had spent much of his early life wondering, "What on earth happened to the demons we see Jesus driving out in bible times? Where have they all gone?" This question kept nagging him until he was 32. The secretary in his church was doing her work in the church office while her baby son was crawling around on the floor. The baby crawled off though, out of sight and without anyone realising started choking on a coin he'd found. The first the mum knew about it was when she found her baby dead on the floor. You can't imagine the trauma that must cause - the poor woman was hugely greived and was unconsolable for a year. After about a year of being in this depressed state she walked into church one day and a visiting speaker was just standing at the front talking. As he saw this woman - who he didn't know - enter the church he just stopped, and said to her, "Spirit of grief, come out of her in Jesus' name!" and as soon as he had said that the woman fell to the ground and cried out. Kerry witnessed this all and can testify to how the woman was healed of her depression from this day onwards! Ever since then Kerry has been learning how to identify demons and to rob them of their power in the name of Jesus. Really interesting stuff - something I definitely have zero knowledge on. I was certainly very sceptical about the whole demon-scene beforehand but this week has just really opened my eyes to the reality of the power that the devil can hold over someone's life. Good stuff. Well, obviously not good stuff but you know what I mean.

What else has been going down? On Thursday we went evangelising in the community - a staff-member called Khaya, Jess and myself went out together - and it certainly proved a novel experience! At first we headed to a household that Khaya was already familiar with, but even so, we just rocked into the house uninvited and made ourselves comfortable! It's the African way apparently. After saying a few things to a woman and a young man that were at home, Khaya kindly opened up the floor by saying to Jess and I, "Do you guys want to share?" Do we want to share?! Of course we don't want to flibbing share! What are you wanting us to share anyhows - these two were already Christian! Poor Jess took it upon herself to try and say something but the woman couldn't understand her American accent! Embarrassing times. After that we went to another house where Khaya had a rather long chat in Xhosa with a teenage boy who just sat there, nodding along and saying the odd word. After a fair while Khaya turned to Jess and I and said that boy wanted to accept Jesus into his life. Really?! Now I couldn't understand any of the conversation but from the look on the poor boy's face it looked as if he'd rather be doing anything else than accepting Jesus right now! Now I cant judge his heart - I have no idea what he was thinking - but it did just seem a little pressurised and I wasn't entirely comfortable with that. Khaya then turned to me and asked if I had ever led anyone to Jesus in prayer before. Shabbas - I panicked slightly at this point and although I had led that one street-kid to Jesus supposedly, I wasn't really up for doing it again with the whole household specatating so I just hurriedly shook my head! Whoops - I was really rather glad that Khaya did it instead but I guess that wasn't exactly the whole truth right there. We visited one more house where we had mixed results - I think people really appreciated us coming into the house and offering to pray for them but I'm not sure the actual evangelism went down too well. It was definitely interesting but I think I would take a slightly softer approach if I did it again.

Spurs secured fourth spot! It's pretty dang difficult to follow anything over here but when the news of victory over Man City finally filtered through to me I was so happy! It's just frustrating that the one time I have some football armoury to brag about I'm surrounded by people who aren't all that interested in English football! The cricket on the other hand; I had a very satisfying chat with my pastor (in the quiet, reasonably conservative Church) about Saturday's match!

My hair is in desperate need of a chop but I'm not sure I trust the African salons - surely all they've ever had experience with is braiding hair or completely shaving it - neither of which I'm really up for! Maybe I just need to man up and go for it. Probs.

If anyone feels inspired to send me either Michael McIntyre DVDS or Notting Hill, please feel free - I will be more than happy to give you the address. These guys here have barely heard of either of them and are desperately in need of some English genius!

This weeks lectures are entitled Worship as a Lifestyle and its Pieter McCarthy - our base director - who is speaking to us. The first three days have been really good - it's nice to have something not quite as intense as the last two weeks! Pieter's an amazing guy though - he must be in his forty's now but by the way he dresses you'd think he was still in his twentys! Cool guy, big afro hair, LAD. We did something called "An Audience with God" last night which was awesome.

Oooh, sorry, I gotta go, but thought I might as well post this now. Will explain all about last night another time!

Love ya.