O-Week: The Adventure Continues

Orientation Week at Rhodes is like a wave on a stormy day at Jeffreys Bay: you don't ride it; it rids you. The drinking crowd all have stories about nights they can't remember. (I don't quite know how it's possible to tell a story about stuff you can't remember, but many Rhodents are quite good at it.) And the Christians' stories can sometimes be just as wild.

Take Tuesday morning. I was in the Linguistics department and one of the lecturers asked me how I was. "Well, but sleep-deprived," was my answer.
"Why?" he asked.
"It's O-Week," I said.
"Oh, why did I ask?" he replied, not daring to probe for specifics.

Little did he know that the reason I was sleep-deprived was that I'd woken up before 5 that morning to take a graveyard shift in our O-Week 24-hour prayer room, after getting to bed past midnight, having socialized the evening away at an Isaiah 26:8 coffee bar. Just to top it off, I'd done a 30km training ride on my bike with my digsmate James after my prayer room slot.

As Christians @ Rhodes chairperson, I planned to spread myself out, visiting at least one evening event hosted by each Christian society. I had a wonderful time at each of these: they were all hugely blessed by God's Spirit and a bright, friendly atmosphere. People came to know Jesus, and they got in touch with friends they'll keep forever. But as usual, the highlights of O-Week were the unplanned moments when God took over and did something great.

On the Saturday, which also happened to be Valentine's Day, we had planned a Church Crawl, a walking tour to show first-years where all the churches in central Grahamstown are and what they're like, to encourage them to visit some and find one to call home. It was a great idea, but for one thing: it was raining that night.

I should have smelt trouble when on Thursday I saw that rain was forecast for the day of the Church Crawl, but I blithely thought it would probably happen at some other time in the day and not affect us too much. But on the day, it started raining in the early afternoon, and carried on and on and on and on. Meanwhile, I was praying everywhere I went, asking God to dry up the weather. As the evening drew closer, I oscillated between despair that no one would come and the thing would just be one big fiasco, and hope that things seemed to be clearing up. They didn't.

Nevertheless, about 20 people joined me under the Rhodes Theatre's porch, ready to explore. Among them were some random exchange students staying in Port Elizabeth, who had come up to Grahamstown for the weekend and decided that our Church Crawl was just the kind of guided tour they wanted. These 20 people were the most intrepid students I've ever seen! We squelched all around central Grahamstown in wet shoes, visiting all the churches on the programme with hardly any complaint about the weather.

And the stops at the different churches were wonderful. We'd asked each church to give a five-minute presentation welcoming the students and telling them what their churches were like in the most creative way possible. Some churches had audiovisual presentations; one even led us in five minutes of worship. The presentations showcased the beautiful diversity of Christ's Church, and as a friend remarked to me afterwards, you could feel the presence of God in all of the churches and their warm welcomes. On the way back, the new students excitedly chatted about which church(es) they would visit the next day.

I somehow got the feeling that God had allowed the rain to continue so that only really earnest first-years who loved the Church would be brave enough to come along with us. These people had been stretched in what they were prepared to do to find where God wanted them to be, and he blessed them greatly for it.

Then on Monday afternoon, after O-Week had finally wound up, and I was trying to slow down to the normality of termtime life, I got a random phone call saying something like "Hi, is that Ian? The university gave us your number. We're on a prayer journey, and would like to know if you have anything on that we can participate in today." I told the guy on the phone that his team could come and pray in our prayer room, and agreed to meet them to show them the way in an hour's time.

When I met them, I found out that they were from United Christian Student Association (UCSA) in Jeffreys Bay, that they were going around the Eastern Cape praying in different places, and had been led by the Spirit to stop in Grahamstown. Here they had found out that the previous week was O-Week and that it was a big event in the life of the city, so they had gone to the university administration, who had directed them to me. I told them how much of a Godsend they were, and how much in need of prayer we were. I explained that while the Christian societies had made great gains over O-Week, there were also tragic setbacks, such as the rape of a student in a local pub on Friday night. They prayed with me in the prayer room, writing encouragements on our posters on the walls and in the prayer journal we kept in the room for O-Week. They prayed for mercy for the many people here who have turned away from God, and really just strengthened us, saying that revival here would not come quickly or easily, but it will happen.

The prayer team had been going around completely on faith, not arranging places to stay ahead of time. So that evening, I tried to find people who would be willing to put some of them up for the night, when I went to our men's ministry fellowship meeting at church. I got a few very kind offers, but when I called them again, I found that God had already provided them with accommodation. He's so amazing!

So I'm left now without having got much academic work done in a week and a bit, wondering at what God is doing and trying to fit all the pieces together. I can't wait to see what the final picture will look like, but what I do know is that these are just a few baby steps of obedience on the great adventure of following Jesus. Watch this space!