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

Dear Friends,

We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas despite the awful weather we have heard that you have had to endure, and a very Happy New Year to you all.  We had a lovely Christmas and not wanting to sound boastful but spent some of Christmas Day in an outdoor swimming pool!  We spent Christmas Day with our daughter and her husband and our granddaughter and it was a very hot day so after overindulging in food and wine we all jumped into their pool just to cool down!  As you can imagine our granddaughter loved this and thought it was hilarious that all us “oldies” were in the pool together.

As many of you know this is summer time here in South Africa and it is the time for annual holidays.  We don’t usually go away but we did this year we took a trip to a game reserve called Madikwe for 5 days just before Christmas.  It was very hot there but we saw the most amazing game including all of the “big 5” as they are called here. 

One of the highlights of the trip was to see and experience the drama of a young lioness taking down a zebra to feed her and her two cubs.  She was exhausted by the kill and so the ranger suggested we return later in the day when it was a bit cooler and we did and watched fascinated at all three of them devouring this poor zebra.  It was interesting as well to see the hyenas gathering for the left-overs!  We feel so fortunate to be able to see and be a part of the natural process of nature it is an experience that is so wonderful and so difficult to share the thrill that one gets from this.

Thanks to the generosity of you, our friends in SA link, we were able to enable others to have a very joyous and wonderful Christmas.  At Mamelodi the township church where we are members, and worship when Graham does not have another engagement, the young people wanted to organise an outing for the senior citizens, many of whom are bringing up grand children because their parents are either very ill from AIDS or have already died of this disease.  We were able to give a large donation towards this on behalf of you all and a wonderful outing was had by all.

They were all taken to the zoo – for many black South Africans this is the nearest opportunity for them to see game despite that there are so many game reserves!  They had a wonderful lunch and all of them were given a gift of a very large fruit basket to take home with them.  How we wish you could experience the joy that these elderly people had that day. 



Then on Christmas Day at Mamelodi the service was in the form of a Christmas party particularly for the children who have been orphaned by AIDS.  Some of them are being looked after by grand parents, mostly widowed grandmothers, and others by the eldest sibling in the family.  The problem is so vast that there are not enough facilities to assist these children.




When Alison Elliot (former Moderator of the Church of Scotland) visited us she and her husband gave us a gift which enabled the manyano (women’s guild) to start a support project for these children and so enabling many of them to be fed regularly and even get into school.  So with your generosity we were able to give the manyano some money to make this party a memorable event and we even had Santa and every child was given a Christmas gift! 

We were also able to assist one of our black ministers – we have regular electricity cuts and one in particular lasted for 28 hours and this caused his deep freeze to trip.  They were visiting family for the annual holidays and had put food into the freezer for their return as they knew that they would not have any money until the end of January when he was paid again.  When they returned the house was stinking and all the meat had rotted with the freezer being off!  Sandra was able to use some of the money sent by you to buy them food and almost fill the freezer for them.  She still had the ‘waste” card for Woolworths from when she used to buy food for the students and was able to get them a lot of meat and fruit and vegetables at less than half price.  They have young children so you can imagine how much this gift meant to them.

We were able to make Christmas wonderful for two other families; one is a Zimbabwean family that we have assisted personally and from money sent from Cumbernauld Old congregation on a regular basis for a number of years now.  Shupi is the last surviving adult of her family; all her siblings have died of AIDS and there is only her and her elderly mother left with 9 children to care for.  She travels back and forth to South Africa selling crafts and when she is in South Africa she often stays with us.  Her elderly mother looks after most of the children and recently she has managed to get 3 of them into school here in SA thanks to Cumbernauld Old who have paid the fees in the past. She usually visits us on her way back to Zimbabwe for Christmas and I phoned her to find out when she would be coming as we always try to buy her groceries to take home with her.  She told me that she was unable to go home – the bus fares have doubled because of the soccer coming to SA!  We were so glad to be able to tell her that she would go home for Christmas and to give her a huge food hamper to take home with her for the children. 

We have since heard from a friend in the UK who sent a generous amount of money to assist refugees and we have decided to use this to pay the school fees for another year to enable the 3 children to continue their education here in SA.

Finally, some of you may remember Joe Ncevu who was a Moderator of the church here in SA and visited Scotland with his wife in 2000.  We always remember Joe saying that God could take him anytime now as he had fulfilled his greatest dream to visit Scotland where his church came from.  Sadly Joe passed away on Christmas Eve last year and his widow has had to really struggle financially.  Despite him serving the church for 40 years she only receives a pension of R500 per month - less than 40 pounds sterling!  We knew that Christmas was going to be a sad time for her and although we couldn’t do much to alleviate her pain of loss we could at least send her some money so that she could have a wonderful Christmas and be able to offer hospitality to her friends and family.  When we told her the money was not from us but from her and Joe’s friends in Scotland she asked me to thank you all on her behalf and to say ”God bless you all as He has blessed me with such caring friends some of whom I have never even met”.

It was such a great joy for us to be able to bring the spirit of Christmas to so many people. We thank God for giving us this special opportunity and we hope that you in Scotland can share with us some of the joy and warmth we feel from us sharing with you how we have used the very generous gifts that you have trusted into our care and use.  We are sending on some photographs of the church events which we hope that Ivar with his technological genius will be able to enable all of you to see. 

We are now back to normal, the schools and businesses have all opened this week after the summer holidays.  Graham will continue to assist at St Andrews, while Sandra will be busy preparing for the football frenzy!  We have all been asked that those with private homes with spare rooms if we would consider offering accommodation for some of the fans as there is a fear that there will not be enough accommodation.  So we have offered a couple of rooms and we are looking forward to having people staying with us from different countries.  Someone comes to inspect the accommodation offered, it has to be of a particular standard so already Sandra is busy making sure that the rooms are all in order, and suddenly she wants new duvets covers, then the sheets don’t match…………………………………. This is causing Graham great consternation he wonders when will it stop!

On that note we will stop with this letter and finish by saying a great big thank you for all your support, prayers and correspondence over the past year and we look forward to more of the same for 2010.


With lots of love
Sandra & Graham

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