INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH RODE THE SIX HUNDRED!!

YES!   THIS IS A DEPICTION of the Charge of The Light Brigade, and every time I see or hear of it I am personally reminded of School Examination days, the preparation, the apprehension, and very often the total mental pandemonium of my mind as I ploughed through the Paper in front of me.

CANON to right of them,

Canon to left of them,

Canon in front of them,

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell

Boldly they rode and well, 

Into the jaws of Death

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred

And scarcely has such a terrible scene been painted in words than this singular Cavalry Charge against an enemy.    Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote it, commemorating the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean Wars between Great Britain and Russia in the 1850s.     It has always reminded me of my School days and especially of Examination Days.    Those Days which always seemed to come unexpectedly and yet so compellingly.    Days that dawned with apprehension, if not terror for me.   Squeezed into a small space, with teachers shouting instructions, handing out papers, and the noise of scraping desks and chairs mixed with confused and excited chatter from my classmates tended to silence ME into horrified paralysis.       It was not of course a BATTLE or a battlefield - but for me it well might have been, and I was irresistibly caught up in what could easily have been a charge toward certain death.     Too melo-dramatic?    Probably, but to day sixty years later I look at our students in Testimony School - the Secondary School  Form 1V final Government Examination candidates - and I can see many of them are also terrified.      Their usual high spirits and bonhomie suddenly replaced with a kind of hunted look, as of a person seeking a way out of certain death!

TODAY is the Prayer Day in our School for the Secondary Candidates as they prepare for the FIRST of the many Papers to be attempted next week.       We - Esther and I, and our Houseparents - gathered in the School Hall with many other parents from the area, together with Teachers and the Candidates.

WE gathered to pray for the Candidates all between 17 and 19 boys and girls, and to encourage and strengthen them as they faced the greatest Challenge so far in their young lives.    It was a good time.

In their uniform blazers and grey skirts or trousers, trim, smart and regimented they looked every inch ready for the worst!           At times it all seems so useless an exercise.    With opportunities to find chances in University or College more and more competitive, and with Unemployment continuing to rise, many of our young people succeed in passing exams only to find no one has anything for them to DO.       And if this is the picture for the successful, what of those who die on the field of battle - who do not make the Grade - they will be dead almost before they begin.        

DO YOU BEGIN to get some idea of what it is to be growing up in an aspiring Country that is always telling its people that 'Things' are improving; the economy is in recovery, and soon there will be work for all and more money for all. And it looks good on paper, and sounds good to hear we are no longer part of the Third World, but claiming our advent into the 1st!      YET the reality is that this IS a poor Nation and the majority of its citizens contend and struggle with poverty increasingly day in and day out.

WELL dear ones, this is all for this week,     We did not finish with the School  Prayer Time till 1p.m. and I still have a Sermon to complete for tomorrow.     Continue to pray for us in the light of what I shared last week.       God Bless you, and BE with you day by day.

John and Esther