Reunited with some friends from Fiji

A few months ago we learned that a couple of the leaders from our YWAM Crossroads Discipleship Training School (CDTS) in Fiji, were leading a team here to South Africa. We don’t normally plan for YWAM teams because there are so many teams coming here and they have transportation issues to get to our locations. However, we chose to help Jeff and Ann with their ministry because we wanted them to have an awesome experience working with Living Hope. They came as a soccer ministry but ended up only getting to play a few times due to rain. They spent the mornings at our homeless ministry, Living Grace, and afternoons at the children’s clubs. They had an amazing time and didn’t want to leave as they were just beginning to build relationships. This is true of all teams that come for 8 to 10 days, but hopefully they made some impact for the Kingdom in the short time they were here. It was great to see them and we got together Sunday evening, before leaving on Monday, and reminisced about old times. This part of the journey is where I see God’s hand in so many things. He uses each of us to accomplish His will. Had it not been for us going to Fiji and meeting them 3 years ago, they would not have had the experience they had here in South Africa. God is good!!!

Disturbance in our Bible Study

We knew the time would come when our cultures would collide and it happened last week. We started a new topic on marriage and Mike was talking about keeping the marriage bed pure (Hebrews 13:4) and this caused quite the stir. One guy in our Bible Study that says he is a Christian and believes it with all his heart, soul, and mind, began to argue this point. He has a belief that adultery is only considered in a marriage if there is an exchange for something (paying for the goods like prostitution) If no money is exchanged then it is not adultery. He has been taught this by a pastor or someone with some authority because he had so many “loaded guns” or verses in the Old Testament that he used on Wednesday night. It came up right at the end of our study, so Mike wasn’t going to get started in detail because of the amount of time needed to discuss it. We have since talked with all the other guys in the study and they all agree one woman, one man when you get married. I know it is not up to us to change the way he thinks, because that is the Holy Spirit’s job, but pray for us to be able to clearly deliver the message God intends for us to use this week. Pray for the Holy Spirit to convict him so that his family will be drawn closer to Jesus and he will see changes in his life from living this lie he has believed.

Worker Readiness class at Living Way / Handling Money God’s Way

I finally got the privilege to put together a program for our worker readiness course at Living Way to help folks learn how to manage their finances from a biblical perspective. I really believe this was something God laid on my heart when we first started talking about coming to South Africa. But up until this year, it hadn’t come to fruition. Early March I felt like God was pushing me to do a 4 week Bible Study for our Zimbabwean group so I did and we finished that in mid April. Then Richard, the General Manager, at Living Way asked if I could facilitate about a 1 ½ hour presentation for the worker readiness which I completed on April 28. We have now decided to incorporate it into the Entrepreneur class that will be starting next week, and finally, one of our co-workers has invited us to come to their Bible Study in July and facilitate the same program with them. I am very excited that we are getting this opportunity to share God’s love through finances because I believe there is so much that people don’t understand about God and money. Please pray that the people who hear this will be eager to know Christ more and be a good steward of what has been allotted to them for this time.

An Unfortunate Accident

Brighton, the young man in the middle that Mike baptized Easter weekend, had a very unfortunate accident just a few weeks ago. He was working in a plant using a table saw, when the blade slipped off and hit his left eye. He is from Zimbabwe so the healthcare for him was not going to be the best, but like any other place in the world they have to treat him. They did surgery on him to sew the cut over his eye lid, but a blood clot remained behind the eyeball causing him his loss of site. He went back for a check-up only to find out that they told him there wasn’t anything else they could do for him. He came to our Bible study with a patch on and we talked about his situation a little bit. We wanted to disciple him in the correct way and help him to understand when you accept Christ in your life and make the decision to follow him, everything isn’t going to be easy. He understood and said that some of friends had already been giving him a hard time and telling him he should have gone to visit a “Sangoma”, a local witch doctor. He recognized immediately that this was probably a test from God and told his friends that he was choosing to trust Jesus for his healing and health not the sangoma. We were so thankful that he understood this, but know that he still has a long road ahead of him of trials and tribulations. Please pray if it is God’s will that Brighton’s blood clot would dissolve and he would regain his eye sight. We believe this can only come from a miraculous healing that only Jesus Christ can do. This would give him such an awesome testimony. We also understand that this just may be God’s plan for his life but we would like to believe that he will be healed.

God’s Creation

A few weeks ago Mike and I, and some of the volunteers, took a little road trip to Sutherland South Africa. This is supposed to be the coldest place in South Africa because of the altitude. This, however, was not the main reason for us going. We went so we could say we saw the 2nd largest telescope in the world. Unfortunately, we still can’t say we have seen it because they use it in the evening hours for research. We opted to view the stars through a couple of very high powered telescopes and one of our highlights was seeing Saturn, not the car To see the big telescope we had to wait until mid day the next day and we didn’t really have the time or finances to do both. We really enjoyed our time and had such an encounter with God. When we arrived to do the tour, we could see the clouds were rolling in and the tour guide told us that she wasn’t sure we would have time to see everything. It was so amazing it was if the sky stood still and the clouds stopped moving. We made it through the whole tour including taking the photo of Saturn through the telescope. We returned to our cars, drove down the hill and stopped for another look. Within 5 to 10 minutes the clouds rolled in and the sky was covered for the remainder of the evening. God really showed off for us big time!
The other photo is the sunrise looking out of our front window. It was so beautiful I just wanted to share it with you!