You are a coward, go back to the Church!

Sometimes when we minister cross-culturally, we hear the best (and funniest) stories. This one happened recently, during a meeting with a local group of pastors at our monthly church leadership gathering.

Mike was sitting with 3 other church leaders just sharing about life and specifically about what they were learning in regards to discipleship.  One of the pastors shared how lately he has been struggling in his faith as he has not been able to get a job and so he can't provide for his family (most pastors here are not employed by the church).  Responding to him, one of the others (Let's call him Pastor A. for the purpose of this story) shared a bit of his life story.

Pastor Vukile

Pastor A. said he had been following the Lord for over 20 years, and during this time he has had countless trials.  He has experienced tremendous family pain, including having his father commit suicide, having family members lying and attacking each other and persecution for his decision to follow Christ.  On top of this, there were many times of not having enough to eat and many challenges that come with living in poverty.

However throughout this Pastor A.'s faith remained strong.  But about 10 years ago, there was a fight in his church as the woman he wanted to marry was not the one that the church wanted him to marry.  He had gone back to his home province and community and had picked a Christian woman there he wanted to marry, but the church wanted him to marry one of their members.

[Marriages here involve a whole lot more than just 2 people!]

Typical Xhosa wedding

Being attacked by people inside the church left Pastor A. disillusioned, and even after years of trials that he had overcome in his faith, this became overwhelming for him to the point of him walking away from the church and his faith.

Songoma (witch doctor)

After spending some time not walking with the Lord, pastor A. was looking for some guidance about what to do next in life.  He turned to the local songoma (witch doctor) and asked what kind of a job he should pursue.  The songoma looked at him and said, "You have the Holy Spirit, there is nothing I can do for you.  You must go back to the Church to find guidance."  Slightly annoyed at this advice the former pastor went to get a 2nd opinion from a different songoma.  However this 2nd songoma repeated "You have the Spirit of Christ, you need to search the Bible not ask me for guidance."  Pastor A. however still wasn't convinced so he went to a 3rd songoma who said to him, "You are a coward, you have already received your answer, go back to the Church!"

So he humbled himself, repented of his ways, turned to the Word, committed himself back to the Lord and went back to the church.  The pastor used his story to just encourage the other to trust in God, that even in the hard times the Holy Spirit is ALWAYS faithful and He is with us!

There are tears in my kitchen

It was a cold winter day.  The kind of cold day where you wonder if the Earth is still part of the Solar System (did you hear Pluto isn't a planet??).  The kind of winter without snow, however, cold enough that heat inside your home wouldn't just be a luxury.  The kind of winter South Africans know about and yet still build these uninsulated houses with bricks and mortar... and without adding central heating.  (It's gotta be a prosecutable crime by now?)

And there I was,
bundled in 100 layers,
crying in my kitchen.

Heat was emanating from my electric oven.  Which meant at this moment, we had electricity.  For that, I was grateful.

Still.

Tears where streaming down my face,
hands covered with flour,
unable to shake the feeling.

The smell of bananas pungent in the air.

My hands were moving along like a well-oiled machine.  My movements were rehearsed.  My work unaffected by the tears.  Peel bananas.  Mash bananas.  Beat eggs.  Measure the flour.  Cut down the sugar, no one will notice.

Tear drop.

Wipe face.

Mix the batter.
Smile.

Tears of gratitude streaming down my cheeks like white rapids.  I was standing on Holy Grounds, in my very own kitchen, listening to God whisper to my soul "well done servant".

I found myself, serving my Lord, with something I actually loved to do.  God had asked me to bake muffins (for pastor leadership training).

BAKE!!!

Making others go "oh! yum!".  Making their tummies happy.  Filling their bodies with nutritious food and perhaps some indulging too.  He had asked me to be part of setting a feast for Him.

And He had equipped me for this moment.  All these years bare-foot in the kitchen (which HAD heat...) were just practice time.  In fact, my God-given talent, had grown with years gone by.  And not because I'm awesome (although a factor?), but because this wasn't a talent I had buried in the sand.  It was a talent I have put to use, even when it wasn't so awesome.  And those are the talent the Lord chooses to increase, the ones we use again and again in faith that He can use anything for His glory.   And so this is the talent I cherish because I've put a lot of work, dedication and sweat into it.  I tuck it away in my heart and pull it out to bless others.  

Add vanilla.
Fold in the butter.
Chop the chocolate.
Mix until moist.

I was crying because as "little" as we sometimes make these things out to be, they are far from little. Our God, our Lord, calls upon us to serve.  YES.  That is a good reason to cry and be thankful, in the most basics of ways.  No shame in my game.

I'm baking for the King of Kings.  I rebuke the lies that it's not important.  The Creator of the Universe has equipped me with good hands, fabulous taste buds and a knack for baking.  So don't mind if I cook up a storm and bless others in this God-given way, while not even bothering to wipe the tears streaming down my face.  I'm standing on Holy Grounds.

What talent is the Lord wanting to increase in you today?  Because there are tears in my kitchen for you too, for when He whispers into your soul "well done my servant".

This actually really worked

Well folks, we went from “this isn’t gonna work” to “please Lord help us” to “wow God, this actually really worked!!!” in a matter of weeks.  Now that’s a lot of "..." So if you are a little confused I’m going to try to help you [*disclaimer: I am in no way liable by means of this blog for any harm caused to your brain as you try to follow what I’m saying].

So in our last blog “this isn’t gonna work”, we discussed how the retreat had gone from 25 people to now 80+ pastors and leaders wanting to attend.  We had to find a new location to host our retreat and fundraise money in a very short time.  We were blown away by the quick response and generosity of God's people.  So thank you!

First of all, praise God for bringing his church together!  What a privilege to join with local church pastors and leaders and spend time worshiping God, hearing from his Word and meeting Him in prayer. We believe that God used this weekend to grow the partnership of our ministry with the local churches and we look forward to witnessing how God will use this unity in the church (John 17:20-23, the world will believe that Jesus was sent by God when the world sees the unity of the church).

On the day the retreat finally began, we had over 100 pastors that wanted to come and join us.  Sadly we had already booked the biggest venue we could find and had to limit to 70 because that’s all the beds we had.  Another 10 still came out just to be part of the sessions during the day (I mean why not?  The truth is some of them "might" have stayed and slept ?!? But at this point we really weren't sure.  Welcome to Africa :)

The retreat was meant to start at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 30th 2015, but...  Meet my friend "Challenge". Because transportation can be very difficult for people here, instead of starting supper at the planned time of 6:30 p.m., we ate at 10:00 p.m. when everyone was finally there!  

But the pastors weren't just hungry for the good retreat food, they were hungry for the Word as well. So even though it was already really late, they asked us to still proceed with the evening’s sessions and so we did. (I can't imagine that would work in Canada!  These guys are hard core.)

Our theme for the weekend was “Lead Like Jesus,” and we looked at 3 passages:

Matt 16:21-28, 1 Peter 5:1-6, 2 Cor 4:5-12.

We had them time of quiet reflection in-between each passage to mediate on the Word.  

Mike finished the first session at 1:00 a.m, and promptly went to bed.  However, he was the only person at the retreat doing this...  Most of the pastors stayed up until 3-4 a.m. visiting and laughing! You would think this was a youth retreat.  Anyone?!?  Amazing.

Here is also a short video of Mike's speaking to the group: 

The next day was filled with times of worship, prayer, scriptures and times to respond to what God was doing.  Many came forward with testimonies of being challenged by the Holy Spirit to not just talk about leading like Jesus, but start putting these things into action in daily life.  

We spent an hour of alone quiet time which is very counter-cultural in Xhosa culture, giving room for the Holy Spirit to minister to us.  

Finally as the day drew to a close around 10:30 p.m., most of the pastors decided they wanted to have another braii (what we call a BBQ in Canada) and so a fire was built up and meat was put on as another late night began. One thing is for sure, Africans love meat and a lot of it.

African Boerewors, which us Canadians like to call coiled sausage...

On the final morning people were moving a bit slower (even by African standards), but we felt encouraged in the Lord and challenged by his Word.  

At lunch time, Mike was speaking to a pastor he had not met before and asked him his thoughts on the retreat.  He responded by telling him that he had been very suspicious of leadership in general and he had decided he would come the first night to hear what was spoken, but fully expected to leave the next morning.  He shared that he was surprised by what he heard and felt very challenged about what it really means to lead like Jesus.

Now what?

The weekend is over and we want to praise God for all that happened.  Thank you so much for everyone who prayed for the weekend, we needed your prayers!  Thank you as well to those who gave towards the weekend, and continue to pray for these relationships we are making.

This is not going to work

Well well well.  Guess who's been hard at work.  The crazy Fast missionaries.  We have been busy planning a retreat for pastors & church leaders at the end of April, and it's been well... hectic as they say in South Africa.

One of our goals for the retreat is to give these pastors some rest and refreshment in the Lord.  Burn out and moral failure are unfortunately very common, and the pace the pastors operate at often contributes to this challenge.  So we won't ask them to run through the mud (although it's rather refreshing), but we want to make this awesome!

Our theme for the weekend is "Leading like Jesus", and we will be looking at a number of passages together with these pastors to grow our understanding of Jesus' leadership so that they can model their own leadership after Christ's.

But now we have a [good] problem so I decided to make a little video to illustrate this [good] problem to you, as I figured you were getting bored of my crazy blog ramblings!!  I hope you enjoy it (keeping in mind I'm no film director!!!).  

Pastor Zweli, featured in this video, is the pastor Hope Africa Collective has hired to help Mike with church mobilization, so you will get to "meet him" in the video.  Huge thanks to all the Hope Africa staff that participated in the making of this 5 minute video.

--> Pastor's retreat video  

So as you can see in the video, we had booked a retreat site where we could host 25 pastors.  However, now have 80+ pastors that want to come!  So yes, we have a good problem. 

The last few weeks Mike has been trying to find a larger venue to hold all these additional pastors.  We have successfully found a venue that can host about 65, so we are very pleased with this.  Good things people are used to sharing tight spaces here!

If you are interesting in giving towards this: please contact us so we can tell you how to proceed.  

Until then, cheers folks and thanks for stopping by!

To South Africa and beyond

Who knew when we first came to South Africa that God would expand our ministry to the "beyond" part of Africa?  Well He did!!!

Mike had the chance to go to Zimbabwe at the end of February, to join an Annual Equipping Event hosted by Global Disciples.  He had been in discussions with Global Disciples for about 8 months (met with them first while we were in Canada) and this was an opportunity to hear about their work first hand from current program directors.

About 75 Global Disciples program directors (all pastors) came to the event from 10 different countries.  (Just in 2014 these 75 men and women planted about 40 churches in their respective countries, and well over 100 churches in the last 5 years!)  Around the world, Global Disciples planted 1400 churches last year, with 40,000 new believers in these churches! 

I think for most Canadians, when we hear the name Zimbabwe, we think in our heads “ends of the earth.”  Well after spending a week at the “end of the earth,” Mike has a lot to say about his incredible week.

"The country of Zimbabwe has been struggling for the past 20 years, with unemployment now at 90% in one of the poorest countries on earth.  But praise God, the church is stepping forward to share the gospel with this nation of desperate a needed people."

Could the church feed a nation?

"We were hosted in Zimbabwe at this amazing church that is reaching out in so many ways to the people of the nation including teaching them how to grow better crops.  The church is a part of the Zimbabwe Evangelical Fellowship and it is their vision to feed the nation, both spiritually and physically.  In order to accomplish this the church uses a combination of church planting and farm training."

"They run crop demonstrations at the church where their crops are 10 times the yield of the average Zimbabwe farmer.  They have now trained 10,000 farmers, and these farmers currently average 3 times the yield of the national average with just some basic training techniques.  Currently Zimbabwe only produces 25% of the food that is needed to feed their nation, but the church believes that they can feed the entire nation by training their farmers!"

"Each day during the event there was testimony after testimony of how God was working in these servants to make disciples, to plant churches, to heal the sick, and to provide for their communities.  We spent hours every day in worship and prayer, and also took 24 hours to fast and pray on Thursday.  That evening we spent many hours praying for the salvation of the nations, praying for God’s church to fulfill the great commission across the globe.  We prayed against the evil in our world, recognizing that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the rules, power, and principalities of this dark world.  We prayed throughout the night in shifts with me having the 2-3 a.m. shift with a few other pastors.  I was amazed how quickly the time of prayer went, and in the morning we started to pray again at 7:30 a.m.  The passion in this group to fulfill the great commission seeing churches planted in every people group of earth was both encouraging and contagious."

Our hope and prayer is that in 2015 I will be able to launch some of these programs with the churches of Cape Town.  We are hoping to start with the church leadership training and sometime after that, hopefully to launch a discipleship and church planting program.  We am very excited to see where God will take all these things.

For all the posts that don't get written

This is a tribute to all the random things that don't get written about.  To all the things that don’t usually or often make it in a blog, all the things that are part of any missionary's life but kept "secret".  At least they aren't talked about in a mission blog, or not a whole blog of those things.  

 
Because mission blogs are supposed to be spiritual, full of stories of people’s lives being changed and of how God is using the missionary in question to do His work.  This folks is what a good mission blog is about.  

I’ve never been one to follow the rules.

 

What you get with me is randomness and truth.  Spoiler alert: Our lives aren’t always filled with ministry work, especially over the holidays.  *gasp*  I said it. 

As we take time to focus on Jesus and let Him fill us so we can keep on going, we don’t have as many stories to report back on!!!  So bear with us as we are people too ;)

We like wordly things too

 

Africans love bling + I love bling = I love Africans.  Except I love Africans for so much more than just for their bling, and their style, and their swag.  But for me those things make it even easier!!! Am I super duper shallow?  Nah!  I just love shallow stuff ;)  And I love having conversations about these very shallow things.

My co-workers love love love the bling as much as I do :)

I love making good food 

 

One of the hardest thing for me moving to SA was that I had to learn again how to make good food with the ingredients here.  I spent a good part of our first month crying over the food I was making.  I don't know why, but it was a big deal for me and I really felt like I was failing my family.  With a limited food budget (other missionaries are nodding their heads), it can be so frustrating.  But once in a while I'll splurge a little and come up with something like this.

Stuffed brie chicken breasts

And then all is right in the world again.  Perhaps I should have gone to cooking school, huh?

We pack food in our suitcases 

 

Coming back to SA this time I had at least one suitcase packed with food.  Especially with Christmas right around the corner, I knew I wanted to be ready to make things from home, deserts that I've grown up with.  This is all part of traditions I want to pass down to my kids, and it's hard to do when abroad.  But I was ready people, and I ended making 7 recipes from my maman this Christmas.  GLORIOUS.

Peanut butter chocolate covered balls

I've also had to become quite organized, which goes against my "free-spirited-ness"!!!  But with hosting lots of people over the holidays, and juggling a busy homeschooling schedule, I carved out a few baking extravaganza days where I traumatized my kitchen for a few hours.  My friend Claudia from Malawi joined me on some of those days in order to learn to cook and bake from "the royal master".  Her words, not mine.  She claims I need a cooking show.

Cooking extravaganza chiiiiiiiiiiiiicken

Homeschooling is not natural for all missionaries

 

Wait, aren't all missionaries supposed to love homeschooling and pretty much have been born this way?  EEEEEEeeeeeeeer, NO.

Homeschooling isn't for the faint of heart.  I thank the Lord every day for His strength as I learn more and more about my kids and teaching.

Fact: Boys do not sit still for their mom

And I thank the Lord every day that I get to be my boy's teacher.  I never pictured myself homeschooling.  I'm really not the organized type and I don't have much patience.  So no, I never thought I would be homeschooling.  But situations change, and sometimes life surprises you in the strangest ways.

So I get to be my boy's teacher.  And I get to teach them about Jesus.  Like all the time.  And I get to shape their hearts and pray with them as we work and discover challenges.

Is it easy?  No.  It's the most challenging thing I've ever done, besides being a mom!  This is like being a mom AND a teacher.  Yes, I welcome prayers in this area.

Homeschool work for the day.  Ready, set, go.

Sometimes we even have fun

 

Well folks, sometimes we like to have fun too.  Did you know that missionaries have fun?  Wait what.  Yes we do!!!  Life is short, ministry is stressful.  Did you think all we did was ministry?  Yikes, sorry to burst your bubble. 

So yes, sometimes we have fun, BUT we feel guilty.  And then we feel like we can't talk about it, or post if on facebook (for us social media people) or Instagram (for the MAC lovers...).  And we feel like our supporters will judge us if they knew (but like, they know right?!?).  And we pretend like all we do is Jesus-stuff.  Which is indeed a huge part of what we do.  But the real stuff that doesn't get written about is that we also have fun.  And I'm big on fun (yo, have you met me?).

Firefighting fun

We do kids outings, we go on dates and we hang out with people for pure social purposes, without a ministry agenda.  *gasp*  We iz humans too.

We hang out as a family, and sometimes do nothing at all except watch cars drive by.

We hang out with our significant others.

We like to get stuff in the mail

 

We are perhaps shallow (again), when it comes to getting stuff from home in the mail.  But the truth is, we love getting stuff.  Anything and everything.  Food, pretty things, nice things, ... we love it all.  So don't stress about it.  If you're thinking "would they like this?", the answer is YES.  And if we don't, we have many missionary friends who will like it.

Jelly Beans from Pastor Chris

We get homesick

 

Sometimes we get homesick, and it hurts, and we wish we could go home.  It doesn't take away from the fact that we are so incredibly blessed to be doing what we are doing, but we feel like if we talked to supporters about it, they would think that we are ungrateful.  And one thing we are not, is ungrateful.

Skyping with my family

Our country is beautiful and we ain't sorry

 

Our assignment country, South Africa, is ridiculously gorgeous.  Sometimes we hesitate to tell you, because we don't want you to think that it's the reason for our being here.  It's so pretty, that sometimes we don't post the pictures so you don't get the wrong idea.

South Africa is beautiful

So you get the picture now do you?  Missionaries live a double life, and it's not easy, but it's a life we are told to live and expected to live.  I'm just figuring it out as I go, and I try to be as real with you all as I know how!

Thanks for reading this crazy blog.  CHEERS.

Before we break for the holidays

Coming back to SA and jumping back in has been busy busy!  And we were so ready for Christmas break.  

Staff Celebration 

 

But before we took some much deserved holidays, we had wonderful times of get together and celebration with out staff.

We drove to a little strawberry farm, played some games, and ate a LOT of meat.  Africans love their meat, so they loved this celebration.  It was so nice to be all together celebrating Jesus coming to earth.  We have grown to love our staff so much, and I'm always amazed of how easy it was for us to become part of this big Hope Africa Collective family.  These people are just incredible.

Christmas holidays means a lot of people go away.  Including our co-workers and staff.

So Mike and I looked after our friends and co-worker's 2 boys while they packed and got ready to fly to Australia.

We did some tree climbing and possibly wall climbing...

And then I decided we should make pizzas and bake cookies...

And with 4 little boys it was a bit chaos but loads of fun

Church Mobilization Update

 

While back in Canada, Mike made this connection with a great organization and has been looking into using their material for Church Mobilization.  So we were so blessed when Pastor Amos, the local representative here, said he would like to come meet us in South Africa!  He traveled all the way from Zambia and was with us for 3 days.

If he was expecting a South African experience, he got a Canadian experience!  We fed him French toasts, burgers and pizza.  I don't think he minded though.

The kids really liked him too.  He has 7 children back in Zambia, so he is used to it.

Raphael using his Dr. things to see if Mr. Amos is sick

We look forward to seeing what God will do with this new relationship, and continue to look for pastors to partner with us in Church mobilization.