Evening in Eastwood

I did not want to be there.

Sitting on worn-out mattresses in the back of Pastor Hein’s enclosed truck bed, watching the evening settle on Pietermaritzburg as dark clouds that rolled in over the city, was the last thing I wanted to do. I looked over at Connie sitting across from me. She was staring out the window with the same expression I imaged I probably had on my face too – a look that was subtly annoyed, blank eyes starting out the window to the dirty streets.

Earlier that afternoon, I had been in the kitchen pouring through the More-with-less cookbook when Tim ran into the room. (I am not exaggerating when I say ran here, people).

“Pastor Hein just called,” he announced, excitement practically jumping out of his skin. “You’re going evangelizing tonight.”

Crap.

Annoyed, I looked up from my cookbook. “Just me?” I asked.

“No, You, me and Connie are coming too.” He said as he stood there for an awkward moment before he headed out of the room, but long enough to notice that I did not share the same enthusiasms that he did.

Shortly after Tim’s dreaded announcement, Connie came into the kitchen, setting a cookbook on the table. “I was going to make dinner rolls,” she told me, obviously frustrated that her night to cook dinner was going to be drastically different than anything she had anticipated. I didn’t blame her either. The nights I get to cook supper are my favorite day of the week and I know Connie, the avid cook and even more passionate baker, felt exactly the same. It was rather disappointing for both of us (I mean, come on, who wants to go from the idea of having dinner rolls to not having them in the same moment, especially on a day like today when the food options are slim to none).

Once again, we had received a phone call and without much warning, Pastor Hein was coming in a half hour to take us out evangelizing. So whether I liked it or not – I was going on “evangelizing.” (Breakthru Church has been preparing for this week for awhile. It is to be a week of sending out teams from their cell groups out into the harvest to save souls. I will say though that I am glad that Pastor Russell is against straight up street evangelism, but rather BCI emphasizes reaching out to people church members already know. Unfortunately – or is it fortunately, we RJers don’t really know anyone yet, especially out of the BCI context).

The three of us sat in silence in the back of the truck until we arrived at a vacant parking lot in Eastwood (a township right outside Pietermaritzburg). Shutting off the engine, Pastor Hein came around back to get Tim, leaving Connie and I in the back and his wife, Melane in the front. Melane switched seats, started the truck again and led us away to some unknown location.

“I hope they don’t except us to take the lead.” I told Connie as we bounced around in the truck. “I mean, how am I supposed to tell people that Jesus loves them when I don’t love myself yet because I will have just met them?”

Barely a few minutes later, Connie and I found our unsure selves standing at the gate of a small boarding house. The students eyed us curiously and cautiously. The out of place Americans did the same.

“What is this place?,” I thought as Melane lead us into the small building after briefly chatting with a woman there who appeared to only be there long enough to prepare the evening meal for the youth. We were ushered into the area of the large room set aside for the “living room” – two couches angled towards a surprisingly nice looking television.

“Oh my goodness…” I wanted to whisper to Connie sitting on the couch next to me. But I remained silent and waited as the girls we came to visit filed into the room, bright eyes no doubt wondering – who are these people? As we went around the circle making introductions, each girl said there name and age as I smile and nodded at each of them, shamefully pretending that I understood how they pronounce their names which were full of Zulu “clicks” that bewildered my tongue entirely. All these girls, ages ranging from 13-18, lived here – in this tiny boarding house, most of them hours away from their families, in order to go to school in Eastwood.

Although I still felt out of place, the more Melane talked with the girls, the more I began to relax. In fact, it appeared that Melane was not planning on “evangelizing” these girls. (We found out later that Melane had never met these girls before and thus had no intention to try and convert them since we had all barely met).

“Do you have any questions about the church?” Melane asked the girls.

The girls sat their quietly until one spunky girl dressed in poke-a-dot pajamas spoke up. “Is the temperature in America different?”

That question seemed to open up a floodgate. The girls were dying to ask all these new Americans sitting in their living room all sorts of things.

No, I don’t know any other languages besides English [one of my biggest shames here]. Yes, I had a locker in high school although, unfortunately, Troy Bolton did not go to my high school. [Okay, no one actually asked me that, but the locker question did come up because of the High School Musical]. No, the U.S. is pretty different then it looks like on TV.

“Why did you decide to come here?” The oldest girl, who still wore her navy blue school uniform, asked me.

Since we’ve been here, I’ve been finding it rather difficult to explain to children, especially this young group of girls, why I decided to come to their country. How do you say “to escape the direct clutches of the empire for awhile and find out what God is like in South Africa” to a bunch of girls who treat us like rock stars all because we’re from the States.

As we concluded our time, Melane said two prayers so that the girls could switch in between them in order to all get a chance to hold our foreign hands. As we left, the girls swarmed us with hugs -all excited to have met and hugged American friends. Back in the truck, I wondered how many of the girls we had just met were planning on coming to the youth just for a chance to hang out with the Americans.

The feeling left a weird taste in my mouth.