Looking at the country side as an outsider

After a month in Pretoria, South Africa the Rockrohr family has settled right in at the Seminary, the Church, school and have even established a temporary home in a guest house down the road. Read more about their impressions as Dr. Rockrohr describes them for the next LTS Newsletter under the heading: “Different Weather, Customs and Languages but the Same Gospel of Joy”.

He writes: “After six months of preparing and raising support for our move to serve in South Africa, Ted, Deborah and I felt very ready to move.  Deborah’s parents helped finish packing and organizing our house which we will lease and then we were off on the airplane from Detroit on 20 January and arrived in South Africa on 21 January. The day we left Detroit was the coldest day of the mild winter in Detroit, 5° F (-15° C). We met 81° F (27° C) in Pretoria. We traveled from the winter of the northern hemisphere to the summer in the southern hemisphere.

We attended church the next day at St Paul’s Lutheran Church in Arcadia only one block away from Lutheran Theological Seminary. We had made friends in the congregation when we visited Pretoria for a week in March 2011 and we wanted people to know we had arrived. St. Paul is a German speaking congregation, so we understood the liturgy fairly well but the sermon escaped us. Friends from the congregation said hello to us after the service.

The following days we caught up on sleep from jet lag and also attended a number of meetings for both the church and the seminary. The next Saturday, 28 January, Deborah and I were invited to attend a funeral service for a young pastor of the Lutheran Church in Southern Africa who had died leaving behind his wife and three small children. We left Pretoria at 4h30 for the service which started at 7h30. The service, along with the burial site liturgy, lasted until noon. Many area pastors and women’s groups came for the funeral as well as the people of the local congregation and town.

The funeral service and burial was mostly in Tswana, but also in some Zulu and English. There was grief expressed, yet also thankfulness for the pastor’s faithfulness and the hope of life everlasting with the Lord Jesus. The local tradition is to take the coffin directly to the burial site right after the service similar as in the United States. Since it was a small town all walked behind the hearse for several blocks to the graveyard. What was different however was that the burial rites include lowering the coffin and covering it with the pile of earth right then and there. Attending pastors and men of the community shoveled in the dirt and rocks while a choir of women from the Women’s Prayer League and the Women in Action groups led all congregants in singing Christian songs. I was privileged to stand right behind Bishop Weber watching the men burying the coffin while being literally surrounded and enveloped with Tswana hymns sung by a women’s choir of at least 50 voices.

Though sung in Tswana, I fully recognized the melody of the second last song that was sung: Joy to the World. And so Lutherans in a small South Africa town sang at a young pastor’s burial the very hope that we Christians proclaim to all: Joy – for God has given us His Son to save us, even in the midst of death.

Lutheran Theological Seminary, the place to which Deborah and I are called, has just started classes today (7 Feb). We have about 41 students in all (some are still arriving). The students are from South Africa, Liberia, Uganda, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia, Sudan, Botswana, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Six of the students are doing masters or honors studies at the University of Pretoria. Eight of the students are women who are part of the first class of residential deaconess training. Though our instruction is in English, our students represent many languages and cultures. At the inductions into our seminary positions in chapel this morning, Deborah and I again plainly declared along with the whole Church that there is one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we would abide in true faithful teaching. We are thankful to God and to His Church for sending us to be with fellow Christians at LTS. We see again and again, the Gospel of Jesus Christ reaches into the hearts and gives faith, hope and love to all whom He calls regardless of race, language, culture and condition.”