Diary of a ministry trainee #10

On fire. Not for the gospel. Just on fire.

I was very surprised to arrive home this week to find that my house had burnt down.

I’d been spending the week at the Church of England in South Africa Synod with my senior pastor Dave West, staying on a sleepy sugar cane farm in Durban’s hinterland. It was about ten in the evening at the end of a long day, and I was lounging about watching pay TV when my phone rang.

It was McDonald, one of my housemates, calling from his family’s home in Polokwane, about four hours north of Jo’burg.

“Are you at the house?” he asked.

“No, I’m in KwaZulu Natal,” I replied foggily.

“Well, I’ve just been told that it’s on fire,” he said.

That certainly grabbed my attention. I’ve become used to South Africa as a place where basically anything can happen, but I wasn’t quite sure if I quite believed this yet. So I rang another housemate.

“Ja, I’m actually watching it burn down at this very moment. Jannie and Thabo’s room is wiped out, and yours is just going up now,” he said.

By the time I got back to Jo’burg two days later, the house was basically destroyed. It’s pretty devastating: my church had only just bought the place late last year – it’s right next door to our church building – and apart from housing at least five young blokes, it serves as the church’s office. And now it’s gone.

No one knows quite how the fire started. McDonald and I were out of the province, and the rest of my housemates were out. Some say it was an electrical fault, some suggested arson, but we’re not really sure. I blamed my housemate Jannie who has a penchant for doing his quiet times by candlelight. But he had no candles burning, so we don’t have a clue.

I’m writing now from a flat out of the back of my Bible College Principal’s house – it’s quite nice staying here really – but I’ve got to readjust to my life without a house or an office. And the new university term starts tomorrow.

But all’s not lost though: because I was away, I had my computer, camera and some clothes with me. And today at church one young man I work with, whose name means ‘hope’, came to me in tears.

“I’ve just found out that I’m positive,” he said to me in a low, vacant voice.

I followed him as he furiously walked the streets of Auckland Park, I counseled him and begged him not to take his own life, I insisted that God is good and trustworthy, that life can still be lived with HIV.

And I realised that a fire that consumed some clothes and bikes and books and appliances is not, after all, the worst thing of all.

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