Sometimes I wonder if I've had ANY impact this year...

Jenny has been sharing some of her reflections on how a particular church community operates, and with only six days to go before she returns to Joburg she must have been wondering whether she has actually made any impact on her local church community during this past year.

I guess this must be a common Phase One "thing", since I've also been wondering about some of these issues this past week.

For instance, the YMG secretary arrived unannounced at my office this morning (Appointment? What appointment? What is an "appointment"?) - anyway, he wanted a letter for some rally this weekend, but almost as an aside he informed me that there is a problem with the sewerage at the church, and virtually demanded that I contact the municipality to do something about it. When I enquired as to how long this has been a problem, the response was "Oh, about two years". Two years! And all of a sudden, it MUST be fixed NOW!

The weekend's AGM was also marred by the fact that a society steward of one of the Societies informed me that they had met during the week (without me being present or even informed), and decided that voting would not happen at the AGM, but needs to be postopned for two weeks. Is this okay? I was told this literally as I was about to open the service on Sunday morning! I put my foot down and insisted that the AGM would go ahead as scheduled, but the result is that while one of my Societies had a irtual "full house" and was able to continue with proceedings in a normal (and, I must commend them, in a very good spirit), the other was represented by only four people and therefore voting for leaders could not take place.

Just when I think I've somehow made a difference (however small), something like this happens that causes me to think that I've completely wasted my time this year.