Alun & Debbie Burt

 

Alun and Debbie Burt. May 2010 Their address can be obtained by contacting the Church Office. office@stjames-streatham.org.uk

 

8^th May 2010

Dear Family and Friends,

My guess is that our start of rain indicates your start of spring flowers and sunshine!  17 decrees feels so chilly after a long hot summer, that I ventured out with two tops and a jacket on this morning!   Still the rain is welcome; it washes away some of the piles of builders sand that has accumulated on the church field in recent months and does wonders for Alun’s emerging veggie garden!

Arise:

Arise is settling in wonderfully to the new building.  It makes such an enormous difference being in the community.  We knew there were many hurting children in Heideveld, but still the scale of the suffering has hit the staff hard this last month.  Children raped, kids witnessing their parents murdered, living on the street with parents high on drugs and drink.  Such is the reality for a handful of kids that make up some of the new cases Arise has picked up in April.  Pray for us; pray for them; praise God for His very great salvation.  Come Lord Jesus, Come.  How we long for the promises of Revelation 21 to be realized. 

The Valuable to Jesus program is being well received and the principal and his teaching staff have worked alongside us all the way.   We are three assemblies into the program and we have been able to lay good gospel foundations.  The first week we showed the children photos of an unborn child; the children were stunned, they had never seen anything like the images.  It was quite awesome as we taught that God knew them in their mother’s womb.  The ‘interventions’ team, made up of social worker and two psychologists are now in the school most weekdays and offer therapeutic services to several children in school hours.  We are thankful that we are able to be unashamedly Christian; pray that it will last and that children and staff will come to acknowledge Christ as Saviour and Lord.

Arise got through an important meeting with the management of Cape Town Child Welfare a fortnight ago.  Debbie was very nervous as their backing of Arise is crucial if our community work is to be effective.  Praise God they were very supportive of us and gave Arise lots of opportunities to partner with them with holiday programmes, foster support and emergency care placements. We are thankful to God that we are now in regular networking meetings with their Heideveld social worker Esther.  This meeting and the understanding gained from it marks a significant step forward in Arise’s services being recognized when it comes to children’s court inquires and prevention work taking place.       

Debbie is particularly involved with two tiny babies that were removed from the streets a few months ago.  After a long wait, the case was heard in court last week and a formal investigation has now been launched.  The children are being cared for in a lovely Christian family at the moment.  Please pray for the children’s health, and for the social workers to have wisdom as they decide which family to place the children in long-term.

Debbie has started a slightly unusual evangelistic project this last month.  For several months she has been having Afrikaans tuition with a non-believer.  On Thursday they begun reading the gospel of Mark together, with the aim of improving Debbie’s translation skills, but also to provide a platform to engage in meaningful conversation.  Pray for Linda.  Several Arise staff meet with her throughout the week for lessons and we all pray that she might come to recognize the God we worship and serve.  

Alun is busily knuckling down to youth work Cape Flats style. The focus is on weekly Bible study groups for different age groups as we study the book of Colossians, which encourages Christians to ‘stand firm in Christ, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught.’ (Col 2:6-7) This is our prayer for the young people as they journey through their teenage years and beyond. Praise the Lord they are seeing the value of doing Bible study weekly and making it a priority. It is once again proof that God’s word really is living and active and relevant to young and old today. The groups are held in our home which makes it easy for them to be relaxed and for us to show hospitality to the young people. They drink a lot of sugar in coffee and enjoy cricket in the field, so we have lots of fun with them too!

A wonderful thing to praise the Lord for is that we have had several youth returning to the groups. They left when we changed in January from a Friday night youth club to weekly Bible study groups. However those that did continue to come to studies have been active in persuading them to return and some have done so. We pray that they may be drawn from a motive to get closer to God through understanding His word, and to let that word shape them so that they love one another as Christ has loved them.

In addition we are working on providing a really great program of camps and holiday activities for the youth. These are of course greatly looked forward too, although the challenge is to find cheap ways of doing them since many of our youth come from families that struggle financially. Next month we are partnering with a church by the sea to give our group a week in a different environment. We will be taking the opportunity to look through Genesis 1-12 as we see God’s plan of salvation unfold in the teeth of rebellious human creatures! Please pray for Alun as he prepares talks for the week, as well as the youth that they are ‘established according to the Gospel’.

God has been gracious in providing leaders for the groups thus far, but as we are growing we are in need of Christians who love the Lord, love youth and are able to teach them the Bible. Please pray with us that they Lord might raise up such people for us because we are approaching a bottleneck with more youth than leaders. Of course one strategy is to train the youth to be leaders in a few years, and this is our prayer, but we need leaders before then. Please pray especially for Sergio (a guy at St. Thomas) as he comes on camp with us that he would be inspired to be a means of God’s blessing to young people in the years ahead.

Events coming up for your prayers:

• 30^th May               Opening and Thanksgiving service for the Arise Family Centre
• 12^th June              The First Arise Adoption Support Group
• 20^th June              Alun preaching at St. Thomas  
• 28^th June              St Thomas Youth Camp in Fish Hook

The children are growing taller daily.  Likhona is taking after his daddy with his love of climbing and is learning to say big words like ‘resurrection’!  Ilana is, well, let’s say, ‘being two’ at times, but is seriously cute as she tries to talk!  She is a different girl to the child we brought back to the UK seven months ago – so confident and eager to learn from her big brother.  We are pleased to report that nine months after bringing Ilana home, we have now formally been screened as her foster parents and should receive the court order soon!  We are trying to sort out her adoption, but the new Children’s Act has moved the goalposts and we are trying to learn what we must now do.  We appreciate your continued prayers for Likhona and Ilana’s adoptions.

With our love, Alun, Debbie, Likhona and Ilana xxxx