Sunday, March 14, 2010

That sinking feeling in Carletonville




Our journey continues, and we've left Carletonville behind, but I learned a lot there. One thing was that judgments like what happened to those Israelites can still happen. In Numbers 16 Korah, Dathan, and Abiram spoke against Moses, and ended up getting swallowed, not by a whale, but by the earth!


See that monument above? It's a memorial to a family that lived near there. Their house was completely swallowed by a sinkhole. We were told that these sinkholes are caused by dolomite. I'd like to research more about that, but for whatever reason, an entire house with a mom, dad and 3 kids, disappeared beneath the surface of the earth. I'm not saying it was a judgment on them, just that it still happens.

We were told that this family had just come home from a vacation. They were planning to leave again the next day to head to Cape Town, but they all died in their house. Freaky! But a good lesson on always being ready to go.

Carletonville is a mining town. The Main street is called Gold Street,
Other streets are
Opal St.
Mica St.
Sapphire St.
Dolomite St.
Anthracite St.
Kaolin St.
Talc Rd.
It's like a vocab lesson in mining rocks and terms! What a fascinating place to Google. Google Earth shows up the mines around the town.
The people there were kind to us and so enthusiastic about Paul's message. We hope to go back before too long.

3 comments:

  1. Sounds a little bit like the Streets in the New Jerusalem !

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  2. Fascinating! (And a little scary...) I'm going to google earth it right now.

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  3. I'm with Melanie...off to Google Earth!!

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