WhatsApp weekly update: 1–6 February 2026

Hi everyone!

On Thursday, we started our four-week focus on Reconciliation. The Afrikaans word is “Versoening” (“soen” means to kiss) and the isiXhosa word is “Uxolelwaniso” (“uxolo” means peace). One of the good things about being South African is that we have all these languages, each with its own unique nuance and emphasis. It is important that we reclaim this and other words before it loses all meaning (e.g. what does “peace” mean or what does “ceasefire” mean?). Whether we like it or not, there is a war on words and their meaning.

Tom Rennard (who previously served in Lesotho) kick-started the conversation with the seSotho expression of Ubuntu: “Motho ke motho ba batho babang”. In other words, a person is a person through other persons. No person is an island. Besides starting with that, he also distinguished between three different forms of justice:

• retributive justice
• reparative justice
• distributive justice

The discussion and reflection will continue next Thursday, facilitated by Dr Allan Boesak, one of the co-authors of a book called “Radical Reconciliation”.

In other news

Mental health. We take a direct interest in our young people’s physical and mental health and intervene where possible. This week, we asked the young people to fill in a form giving us some details about their health situation. By just being attentive to small details, we can sometimes change someone’s life completely. A wonderful example of this is when a Thursday congregation member took a direct interest in the well-being of one of our young people (Ayabonga) and he was healed and really appreciated this. We do not have the capacity to always deal with everything, but where we can, we do what is possible.

Buy a drum. Although our drum sales are still few, we continue to sell drums to some interesting people. This week we received an order for a 35 cm drum for a 2-year-old boy in Worcester, who was baptised at Volmoed and whose Mom and Dad also got married at Volmoed. For those who do not know, our drum sizes are 35cm, 45 cm, 55 cm an.d 65cm and they sell for R900, R1200, R1500 and R1800 respectively. Simply drop me an email at edwin@volmoedyouth.org.za.

Every now and then, people who want to help the programme gets in touch with me. I had a great meeting on Friday with someone called Gustav, who has been to Taizé before and is a media specialist. I was able to introduce him to some of the staff at Volmoed as well.

Thank you again for all your support! We really appreciate it. God bless.

Edwin Arrison