She Sat on the Pavement Outside Meyerton Police Station and Decided Not to Wait
Johaleine La Grange is eighteen, a matric learner with no budget and no title. On Saturday, seventeen volunteers, a string of local businesses and two four-ton truckloads of garden waste later, the station looked like a different building.
It started on a Friday evening with nothing to do but wait.
Who is Johaleine La Grange?
Johaleine La Grange was sitting on the pavement outside Meyerton police station while her parents, who both work in the police, finished their paperwork inside. She is a matric learner at Hoërskool Dr Malan, and on weekends she works as a trauma support mediator after completing the Trauma Support course through Frontline of Hope Ministries, the same ministry that chaplains Midvaal Fire and Rescue. She is, in other words, someone already trained to sit with people on the worst day of their lives. With time to kill she did what people rarely do with a government building: she looked at it properly. And she thought that someone should simply paint the place and make it look decent.
Plenty of us have had that thought about a clinic, a school fence, a park, and then driven home. Johaleine asked the next question. Why not me?
An eighteen-year-old decided she was the answer, and then did the unglamorous work of making that true.
How did the project come together?
Anyone who reads Scripture will recognise the instinct. Paul told a young Timothy not to let anyone look down on him because of his age (1 Timothy 4:12), and Johaleine never gave anyone the chance. She treated eighteen as no reason to wait for somebody older, richer or better qualified.
What she did next is the part community projects usually skip, and it is why this one worked. It is also, almost to the step, the Nehemiah method. Nehemiah did not turn up in Jerusalem with a hammer. He prayed, asked the king for permission and supplies, and credited the gracious hand of God for the yes (Nehemiah 2:8). Johaleine made an appointment with the station commander, Colonel Mohale, and walked in to pitch her idea. He approved it. Only then did she go looking for help, knocking on the doors of local businesses, explaining what she wanted to do and asking whether they could contribute, even in a small way.
Who sponsored the Meyerton police station project?
They did. PietRia Hardware supplied the paint and accessories. Lynca Meats gave the wors and Pick n Pay the rolls. Tri Waters and Blend & Brew covered water, and Lizel Giacomozzi of Model Bottelstoor the cold drinks. CERT Vaal, through Cecil Parsons and Gavin Arrow, put up a gazebo. Mosha Plant Hire provided the truck. None of it came from a corporate social responsibility budget in the usual sense; it came from Vaal Triangle business owners who said yes to a teenager with a plan. Jesus told His followers to let their light shine so that others see their good works and give glory to the Father (Matthew 5:16). Painting a police station fence is about as concrete as that gets.
What happened on Saturday 17 October?
Then Saturday 17 October arrived, and the phone started ringing. Several community group leaders who had promised to be there called to say they could not make it. It is the point at which plenty of well-meant projects quietly fold. Johaleine and the people who did arrive started anyway. In the end there were seventeen of them, which is roughly the story of Nehemiah 4:6: the wall went up because the people had a mind to work.
By the end of the day the palisade fence at the front of the station had been painted, and so had the entrance wall carrying the Meyerton SAPS name. The front garden had been cleared: trees felled and trimmed, bushes cut back and removed, litter collected, drums emptied. Two full loads of garden refuse and branches left on a four-ton truck.
The named volunteers include her parents, Kobus and Madeleine La Grange, Armandt Wijk and Carmen Stiger, Jordin van der Merwe and Zerelda Fourie, Cecil Parsons and Gavin Arrow, Bertus Lambergt and Sion, and Alex and family. There were more. Members of the public walked in off the street, picked up whatever was nearest and helped, and then declined to be photographed or have their names recorded. They are, in a way, the most interesting people in this story, and the only ones we cannot thank properly. It is a living version of the quietest instruction in the Sermon on the Mount, not to let your left hand know what your right is doing (Matthew 6:3), and the Father who sees what is done in secret does not need a tag or a caption.
How did the station and community respond?
According to the family, the hardest part for Johaleine was making sure everything was arranged and ready on the day. Her highlight was seeing the finished result and the effort the community had put into it. Police officers and members of the public who visit the station liked what they saw, and were proud of it.
How can I help with the next stage?
The job is not done. The rest of the palisade fence still needs painting and a few more trees have to be cut back. Galatians 6:9 tells believers not to grow weary of doing good, because the harvest comes in its season, and Meyerton is a fair place to test that. Anyone who wants to help with the next stage can contact Johaleine's father, Kobus La Grange, on 083 570 4050.
What this says about the rest of us
It would be easy to file this under feel-good news and move on. I would rather ask what it says about the rest of us. Meyerton did not get its fresh paint because a municipality found money or a department issued a tender. It got it because a girl with a school bag looked at a building, followed a sensible order of operations, and refused to let a few last-minute cancellations decide the outcome. The excuses most of us keep ready, that we are too young, too busy, or not the right person, did not survive a Saturday morning in Meyerton. In Jeremiah 29:7 God tells His people to seek the peace and prosperity of the city where they live, because when it prospers, they prosper too. A repainted police station will not fix crime in the Vaal Triangle. But it is what that verse looks like with a paintbrush in its hand, and I suspect the city is better for it.
