Our Farewell Covered in Prayer

We finished off our time at Living Hope on Friday with an awesome farewell and a time of prayer. We have had incredible opportunities and been really stretched by God during our time here in South Africa. We have been blessed to work with such humble people and been able to share the Lord and all His goodness to so many people. The prayer time was such a special time as all the pastors prayed for us at the end. We know we have been covered in prayer for the next part of our journey. We will spend the next few weeks preparing for the 3 months furlough in Nashville before moving to Atlanta. I wish I could say this will be idle time, but it will be far from it. We will be doing lots of fundraising and getting together with people to share our story. If you are interested in us coming to share either individually or in a group please let us know so we can put it on the calendar. We would love to encourage others to step out in faith and see what God has in store!

The Final Countdown

Our last 2 weeks have kept us on the run so we haven’t had much time for the reality to set in for the end of our time at Living Hope. Now I can’t say I haven’t thought about it, because we have been training our replacements. We had a team here this past week from Sparks Nevada, Summit Christian Church, and they worked in the community of Masiphumelele. The outreach on Thursday was our last outreach and it was great to see 10 people accepting Jesus into their lives. We also got to see a lot of people that we haven’t seen for awhile and to tell them we were moving back to the states. This was a sad day for both us and them. They were asking us if they could be stowed away in our suitcases and brought to America!! On Friday, we had a farewell with the Life Skill Educators and that was very special. We work with them the most because they work with the individual volunteers and the teams. We will surely miss them. OK, so perhaps reality is setting in. We have a friend here this week that will be moving here in October and we have been showing him around. Seems like it was just yesterday that we were the ones being shown around!! God has big plans for us and we are excited for the next chapter in our lives, however, South Africa and the people of South Africa won’t be forgotten quickly.

Teams and Outreaches

August, for the last 3 years, has been the busiest times but the most rewarding times for us. We had a team here for the first time from Danville Arkansas working in Ocean View, and Overlake Christian Church (photo) from Seattle Washington returned working in Overcome Heights. Both of these churches were such a blessing to the people of these communities and to us at Living Hope. They came with people ready to be obedient to whatever God had for them and He really gave them more than they could ask or imagine. We had numerous people accept Christ over the last couple of weeks and thankful for these 2 churches because they are helping to build relationships between the local churches and Living Hope. When international churches come along side local churches it is a win, win for both. When someone says yes that they want to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior the local church then follows up with discipleship and encouragement. The international church connects with local people through door to door evangelism and invites them to the local church for the community celebration. On the day of the celebration, which is the last day the team has outreach, we have various testing’s including HIV, plus games and crafts. This past Thursday, we had over 150 tested for HIV. This is one of the many things we enjoy about our ministry, watching God at work through all the volunteers that come to Living Hope.