22nd-24th June

On Friday we went to Northdale for the weekend, with Pastor Collin [the vice chairman of gateway]. After making up a lot of reasons about why we couldn’t attend we finally gave in and agreed to spend the weekend with his family in the Indian area of town. However when Friday came I was really excited about going, looking forward to proper showers, beds and finally getting out of the prison. The four of us girls stayed with his sister who has a massive house all to herself as she is a widow. We had a brilliant weekend which included going bowling, shopping, to the cinema and double beds!

The main part of the trip however was being force fed. The Indian families here are amazing hosts and we had so so much food. When we arrived we had cottage pie and curry, bacon and eggs for breakfast, lasagna for lunch and a roast for dinner. As soon as our plates were empty they were refilling them and having had 3 portions already was no excuse because ‘we don’t count here’! We also went to Collins church on Sunday which was a nice change and then went to his afterwards for a Braai. We got to spend time with his kids, nephews and nieces. This was the most jokes part of the trip because Colin had previously given us a talk about how well disciplined his children were, however in reality it was a very different story. As soon as we arrived to the bowling all them were drinking and smoking and saying ‘what our parents don’t know won’t hurt them’! We didn’t really know what to do! It was also pretty neeky because they clearly thought that this some how made them ‘cool’ – not so much.

In the evening on Sunday we went to the church service at NCF and then followed by a standard Mug and Bean session.