Graham & Sandra Duncan 56 Daphne Road, Maroelana, Pretoria, 0081 South Africa

Dear Friends,

It seems such a long time since we last wrote – the time does go so much faster as you get older? We have had a very busy spell with visitors mostly from Scotland. In March we had friends of ours, Peter and Patricia Bell from Aberdeen, for almost a month. Peter formerly worked for the Board of World Mission and is retired now although he still does a lot of work throughout Africa in a private capacity. It was great to have them visit us and while they were here we were all four of us able to make a trip to Cape Town which gave us a well earned rest.

While they were with us we also had a former student from Sedibeng called Pedro Lutiniko from Angola. Pedro came in January to defend his PhD at the university and decided to stay in South Africa until his graduation in April. As we had no room at Sedibeng to accommodate him he moved in with us and was still with us when Peter and Pat came. We also had a short visit from our son David who also overlapped with the Bell’s visit. It was great to have David around as well and also very helpful as Sandra was still not able to drive at that point so David became the family chauffeur.

We had a very quiet Easter this year for our visitors because Graham is now Interim Moderator at St. Andrews which is the mother church here in Pretoria and they have traditional European services to celebrate Easter unlike what we are used to in the African church. Nevertheless the Bells did enjoy their worship. On Easter Monday we had a braii (BBQ) in the garden for friends and colleagues; we think there were about 30/40 people there. It was really to celebrate Graham getting his second PhD which we were never able to celebrate since Sandra had her accident at the time of his graduation. It was a wonderful day and the Bells enjoyed meeting so many of our friends on their trip.

A few days after the Bells left we had 'the nurses' Joyce and Caroline and there were also two teachers with them from Alva, Betty and Kay. All four of them went first of all to friends of ours in the Eastern Cape where Adamson and Rebecca had planned a whole itinerary for them: Aids work for the nurses and school work for the teachers. They returned two weeks later and spent a week with us in Pretoria catching up with old friends and visiting some of the schools and projects here in this Presbytery. We had the assistance of Wonke, Lentikile, Violet and Alina all of whom some of you will remember from their respective visits to Scotland. All four of them were delighted to be able to return some of the wonderful hospitality they had received on their visits to Scotland.

All four Scottish visitors had a very good trip with so many experiences, which we are sure they will share with you all eventually as they do their rounds speaking to guilds and schools about their time in South Africa. Pedro left us on 22nd April and then it was just us once again. We really enjoy having visitors but it was also very nice after they had all gone and to have our home to ourselves for a while; it had been such a long time with house guests.

We have had a change of Ministry Secretary in the UPCSA and as always with change there are also disruptions. Sometimes people do not like the changes and some other changes are for the good. It has caused some disruption here at Sedibeng and so this year has not gone as smoothly as past years. There has been a lot of dissatisfaction between the students. At first some of them complained about their food saying that they did not get enough to eat, that there were things on the menu that they did not like and that some of the food was past its sell-by date!

Sandra had a meeting with the whole house which lasted six hours and it became apparent that it was only a few students who in fact had complaints and as the meeting progressed it became clear that the issue was not really to do with food but more to do with relationships in the house. In addition we used to have a chaplain for the house but it has now been decided that we have a chaplaincy committee of nine people and it so far does not seem to be working; it has become too 'vague' for the students and some are not coping well because they do not really know to whom they can address their problems. And so it was necessary for Sandra to have a series of very long meetings to try to sort out these issues.

It has been very exhausting for her and quite a long journey but things have been improving. There are a couple of people who are just not happy living in this community and they are not really making much effort to help themselves and to get on with others. We have decided to revive an old tool we learned whilst at St Colm's called Transactional Analysis which enables people to see why they are not relating well and how to fix it. Sandra talked to the students about trying this and there is a great deal of enthusiasm, so Graham and she will try this when the students return from their winter break.

The vacancy at St. Andrew’s is back on track. This is a composite congregation with a large English-speaking section where our members come from all over Africa. Here we have a student attached as part of his preparation for the ministry. He is an honours student, Thando Mpambani. We also have an Afrikaans-speaking section which is very much smaller. They are looked after by Dominee Piet Preller although they take part in all congregational activities. We recently had a workshop to update the mission and vision of the congregation as part of the vacancy procedure. There are sensitivities here as there are different ideas of what kind of congregation we want to be in terms of outreach to our inner city parish. At present we host the Tshwane Leadership Forum and Child Welfare on our premises.

At the university, Graham is involved in discussions in preparation for the introduction of new theology programmes which is part of the national Department of Education’s restructuring of higher education in South Africa. He remains acting head of the Church History and Church Polity department, which is OK apart from the administration which is tiresome but necessary.

You will have heard on the news about the terrible incidents of Xenophobia? Things have calmed down quite a bit now and the news media are doing a great deal to reduce these terrible acts of violence. For instance the television company has adverts by famous local soap stars talking against these terrible attitudes and violence and we think that they are pretty effective. We find this whole thing so worrying because it affects us in the sense that we have Gift and his family here at Sedibeng who are Zimbabwean refugees and there is also a young man Roy who stays with us and who is also a Zimbabwean refugee. And we know their personal stories and feel that they have suffered enough without now having to fear living here in South Africa.

On the family front we are all well. Nicole will shortly be on holiday from school for the winter break and it is her birthday on 3rd July - we cannot believe that she will be 6 years old! She gives us so much joy and pleasure and stays over with us 2 or 3 times a week. We expect there will come a day when grumpy old grandparents will not be so cool to spend so much time with, so we are enjoying the time for as long as she wants to give it to us.

We got some wonderful photos of Ellis our grandson at his birthday celebration and the family holiday in France. We made a DVD for him and apparently he has really enjoyed seeing the South African side of his family on screen. As we are writing this our son David is in Florida and apparently his company wants to send him back to Thailand for the winter months; we were hoping he might have made another visit out here? Susan and Richard are in the process of buying a house as they are finding living in the guest house is not really suitable for them and it is too small – they have lots of their belongings in cardboard boxes our in our garage as there is no room for them in the wee flat they are living in. Michael we have not heard from recently but we gather the job of driving Prince Andrew is still in the pipeline.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank those of you who continue to write to us, for the prayer support which we constantly need and for the donations which have enabled us to assist so many people sometimes in such a small way but it has made a difference to a very difficult life or situation.

We send this with lots of love,

Sandra & Graham

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