THE VICAR'S LETTER
A report taken from "The Steeple", January 2009
My dear friends,
`I LOVE MY CHURCH' were the words written across the lectern at St. James' Chapel in the Hospital of St. James', Mantsonyane, Lesotho. These words summed up, for me, the thirty years of prayer and service that I have given to St. James'. Enthusing others, fundraising, drawing and painting pictures, my sponsored cycle ride, the things we have shared together for the St. James' project all took on meaning - we do this because `we love our Church'. And the Church we love is the family of Jesus.
I stood in St. James' Chapel with the priest, Fr Maseru, on the Wednesday morning of our visit with all the staff of the hospital gathered around for the Eucharist. I said, `We have come to see you because we are the Anglican Family of Jesus. We have known about each other for years. Now we are here together to share the Family's Lord, the Family's gifts and the Family's needs.' Then our pilgrims came to the altar to place your gifts for the hospital's work of healing.
It had taken us many years of interest and three long days of travel to reach St. James'. We were blessed on our way by Revd Pat at the Sunday morning Eucharist in Banstead. That evening we flew out of Heathrow, arriving at Johannesburg eleven hours later. We were met by our guide Colin. Because the Bishop of Pretoria couldn't see us, Colin took us on a tour of the city and to Soweto. There we made pilgrimage to the Church of Regina Mundi, the haven of hope during the terrible sufferings under the apartheid regime.
The next day we crossed the South African border at Ladybrand to reach Lesotho's capital, Maseru. There we sought out the Anglican Bishop of Lesotho, Bishop Adam. It was one week since his enthronement and his office desk was piled high with problems of how to pay his 37 clergy. He showed us the Cathedral of St. James' and prayed the blessing of the Guardian Angels on our journey.
Most of Lesotho is mountainous and we climbed over 2000 metres before reaching Mantsonyane. The hospital is a mile outside the village, perched on a spur between the mountains, room enough for an airstrip, hospital buildings, a junior school, church and cottages.
Agatha, the hospital cook, made us welcome and showed us our bungalows where we were to stay for two nights. John, the Administrator, had organised a welcome party so we could meet the hospital team, in the new AIDS building we had helped to build. It was like a wedding party, everywhere decked out with ribbons, speeches and lots to eat!
The sun was very hot at 5.00 am when I walked out. The villagers were walking to work and school. Everyone greeted me - tall white foreigner - with 'Damela entate', something like `Hail, Lord!' Well, I said it to them and they to me. There was Samuel: `I'm an Anglican,' he said proudly. `These are my children, Martina, Peace and Comfort.'
After church and Agatha's breakfast, John took us on a tour of the hospital. We saw everything - the new nurses' homes, the play-school with its children singing, `making melodies in my heart, for the King of Kings', the wards and the patients. Dr Elizabeth Hills, who came to us in Banstead, was the only doctor working then. She was exhausted. There is so much work to be done. We pray that USPG will be able to find her replacement.
In the afternoon Andrea arranged a visit to the Church Junior School. As we walked out of the hospital compound we were greeted by a singing, dancing welcome party of schoolchildren. They flocked from everywhere to see the English people. Their four classrooms were sheds - no electricity and few desks. Four hundred children, all uniformed in maroon, somehow crammed into these 6 rooms.
Outside in the playground they sang for us - and we responded with `If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands'. They loved the `jump up high' bit. Andrea arranged with the teacher to bring home some of the children's drawings. They proudly stood with their work as we photographed them. We were shown the school pigsty project. Then it was time for them to walk home, perhaps over three miles, and many of them are AIDS orphans.
Andrea and I paid a visit to the vicarage and Fr Maseru showed us the church with its MU banner. He told us how very poor the parish is. He has five churches to visit. His congregation at St. James' Church (not the hospital chapel) is about fifty. He showed us the view over the mountains as the sun was setting. Small groups were finishing the washing up at the school kitchen and walking home down the valley. A herd of cattle came past from the other side with its herdboy all wrapped up in his Basuto blanket.
The next morning I watched oxen ploughing and a farmer broadcasting his seed. I walked into Mantsonyane village with its round kraal houses and grannies cooking over open fires outside the door. I felt like an intruder from another age. Yet we do belong to the same race and time and Church. Mine is a privilege of education and materialism. Theirs is a privilege of simplicity and tenacity. I think we need each other.
I came away with a treasury of real faces of real people with real joys and real needs, and with a determination to keep the link going because I too `LOVE MY CHURCH'. And you do too!
Your sincere friend and parish priest, David Chance.