A healing conference

Early October we had the opportunity to take 35 local pastors to a church conference here in Cape Town called Four12. 

The name comes from Eph 4:12 which says, “To equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”  God gave the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (Eph 4:11) not so that they would do all the work of ministry themselves, rather that they would equip the saints, the people of God to do the work God has prepared for them to do.

For many of our pastors we serve at Hope Africa they have not had the opportunity to go to a large Christian event like this before.  Think of Youth Quake for adults (if you don’t know what Youth Quake is, here are a few photos from the good old days of youth ministry!)

Marie-Eve on her way to Youth Quake - 2005

Mike on his way to Youth Quake - 2005 

Most of the pastors would wake up very early and take public transport to Hope Africa.  From there I arranged transport and we battled through city traffic to make it to Four12. 

Many of the pastors shared how they encountered God during the times of worship and how renewed they felt in their spirits after spending time in God’s presence.  Many of the pastors also shared how challenged they were from the Scriptures during the teaching sessions.  I’m currently reading a John Piper book, in which he says, “The deepest longing of the human heart and the deepest meaning of heaven and earth are summed up in this: "The glory of God.”  In worship and in hearing God’s Word taught, we got to experience a little of the glory of God.  

After the conference, we had a time of debrief and 2 of the pastors testified to being healed of physical ailments during the times of worship! To God be the glory!

Many of the pastors also shared about some difficult times as well.  Some felt ignored by the white people while others felt they were spoken to rudely.  Many shared how certain things reminded them of Apartheid and how it was still difficult for them today. We were blown away by their willingness to share openly as usually those things aren't talked about.

Electricity poll in the townships

One lady who was with us, shared about how one night after the conference she again had no electricity in her home, and as a result she couldn’t charge her phone. The next day she was at the conference with a dead phone, so she looked for a help desk and asked the person there if she could charge her phone. The person at the desk looked down at her for not having planned ahead and having a dead phone. She walked away frustrated and blaming the help desk person for the legacy of Apartheid that leaves her in very poor neighborhood with no electricity.  

As she rejoined the conference and started to worship she felt God convict her of her attitude.  She shared, “The people at the help desk didn’t turn off the electricity to my house last night, I was blaming them, but it was not their fault.”  So the lady went back to the help desk person and shared how she was hurt by their privileged attitude and offered forgiveness.  The two of them wept and prayed together.

This was just one story of many small ways that God broke through cultural barriers to bring hope and healing this last week. We had planned 20 minutes for feedback time and we ended up taking almost 2 hours as the pastors shared experiences like this.

“Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Some day when we, the children of God, are gathered before His throne in worship, there will be a group there of people that have come out of South Africa.  That group is going to be beautiful and it will represent all the different races that were divided here under Apartheid, Black people, Colored people and White people. 

Lord, may your Kingdom come, here on earth as it is in heaven!  And as the Kingdom of Heaven comes here on earth, we will see people from every tribe, nation and language together worshiping God, just like they will do in heaven. 

Let me tell you about one of our students

Hello Friends & Family,

In this blog I (Mike) wanted to share with you the story of one of our recent students.  I will call her Faith (not her real name) as she has been growing so much in her journey of faith with the Lord!

Faith comes from a very broken family background, like most of our students, with an absent father, neglectful mother and trying to survive living in poverty.  For years now she would say that she has been desperate for hope.

As she came to Hope Africa to go through our job training program she met Jesus in a radical way through FDG (Faith Discovery Group, one of the programs I oversee in our church related ministries).  She shared how she was in the midst of a serious crisis, both personally and in her marriage.  She was feeling very discouraged, lacking identity and looking for peace.  In her marriage her husband was repeatedly cheating on her, saying he was sorry, but then falling back again into another affair.

In FDG she discovered that Jesus is the one who brings real life, life to the full.  At first this was hard for Faith to accept as she had gone to church for a long time and nothing good ever seemed to happen.

Faith then started to meet regularly with Bishop Nyanga (one of our pastoral staff) and he helped her to understand that going to church is not the same as choosing to follow Jesus with her life and growing in a relationship with Jesus.  He presented the gospel to her and explained how even people who go to church can still have a hole inside if they are not walking with Jesus.

Faith’s heart was ready to make a change and she accepted Christ as her Lord & Savior!   Mawande (our FDG teacher & my brother in-law) encouraged her to surrender trying to "change" her husband but to instead trust in God that He can change her husband.

Over the next few days the joy in Faith’s life was so contagious that the other students started asking her: "What has happened to you?".  Faith was growing rapidly in her new life in Christ, learning to trust in God and growing in her knowledge of Scripture & prayer.  As she was learning these things, each and every day she would go home and tell her husband what she was learning.

These conversations start to grab her husband’s interest.  One of the days she got home and asked her husband a question from class that day: “What is church?”.  He said something about singing and preaching.  Faith then took her notes from class and helped her husband to see from the Scriptures what the church is really meant to be.  The husband got to the point that he realized that he had also been missing out on following Jesus, but he continued to resist making changes in his life.

Over the next few weeks Bishop Nyanga kept encouraging Faith to invite her husband to church, even if he doesn’t want to go.  Then the husband came to Hope Africa to learn about our new Trade Skills (carpentry, metal work, plumbing, and electrical) program.  That afternoon, Faith and her husband met with Bishop Nyanga and he led the husband to Jesus, and they begin some marriage counselling!

Over the next few weeks Faith was easily the person with the most joy walking around the Hope Africa campus and her life and her husbands lives have been radically changed!  Together they came and celebrated Faith’s graduation from Hope Africa and now they are continuing to attend Bishop Nyanga’s church.

Church Leader: prayers please

Today I (Mike) want to tell you about one of our church leader's Mama B.

Every week I get to spend at least some time praying together with local pastors in a variety of settings and venues.  One of the common groups I go to is called "End Times Ministers Network". One of the members of End Times is a lady named Mama B.  She is a strong woman of prayer.  The fruits of the Holy Spirit are plain to see in her life, making her a joy to be around. She is also a student at our Hope Africa Bible school and comes regularly to Hope Africa church leadership events.

Today I want to write to you requesting prayer on her behalf.  She and her family have been under intensive demonic attack from a local songoma (witch doctor) the last few weeks.  Basically there is another family that is trying to extort money from Mama B and she has resisted their threats.  In response they have hired a songoma to attack her on their behalf.  The songoma has told Mama B that they know her prayer life and that is why they are attacking her well beyond the curses of a typical family attacking another family. 

South African songoma reading bones

The songoma has been persistently calling and messaging with death threats against Mama B and against her family.  Last week the songoma contacted Mama B with a picture of an open grave site that they have dug, telling her that it is in preparation for one of her family members who will soon be killed.  Mama B is asking for prayer from her Brothers & Sisters in Christ at this critical time. 

A few years ago she was attacked in a similar manner and she choose to do battle against the songoma alone, and sadly her daughter had a miscarriage right at that time.  This time she has come forward to request prayer and support.  Please pray with us in the name that is above every name, Jesus Christ, that every attack of the enemy will be broken, and that she and her family will walk in the freedom of Christ.  Thank you for your prayers.

The missionary mom dilemma

I truly believe I've been equipped with an extra dosage of guts to accomplish these tasks God has given me in life.  Oh no!  By any means, don't think this makes me fearless.  I have as much fear as you and your next door neighbor combined.  But I don't stop at fear.  And I'm not a supper mom either.  But somehow I'll sing up to fly across the world with 2 kids by myself and not blink an eye about it...

Some people think I'm crazy.  I just think I have more God-given-guts to balance out my human super-sized fears.  I think it's a gift.  And for that I'm grateful.  But sometimes even with guts full of holy-steroids, a person can find himself/herself in a parenting dilemma that will knock the air our of your lungs: again, again and again.

This time, our return to South Africa was that air knocking phenomenon.

Coming to South Africa, meant we FIRST had to say good bye to Canada. Tearful goodbyes.  It is heart wrenching enough as adults, but when you have to watch your children break down having to say goodbye, AGAIN, it's hard not to be shaken. It's hard to not doubt and question constantly "Is this the right thing Lord?".

Because they know this time.  They know how flipping hard it is to live on the other side of that massive ocean and to count down the days until they can catch a glimpse of those faces again.  Those beautiful blood-related-faces.  Their cousins.  Their aunties.  Their uncles.  Their grand-parents.  

They know how long it will be until they walk the halls of that small country town school.  Until they see their friends again, their teachers, ...  And my Breath. Is. Taken. Away.

And for all the people who say: "This is amazing, your kids have such a cool life.", I think they have no idea the sacrifice my little ones make on a daily basis.  No amount of "cool" can make up for that. In fact, please don't EVER say that to anyone.  It's awful and not fair. No one does mission because "it's a cool life". So those comments are well... hurtful.  Because my beloved mini-me sacrifice for Jesus more than anyone probably realizes.  

And they have been sacrificing with such grace and even ease at times.  Maybe it is because children are resilient, but knowing their heart, I know it's mostly because they are madly in love with Jesus. They are so inclined to listen to His calling.

But this time, something was dramatically different.  Not their hearts.  Oh no.  Their hearts are infatuated and more on fire for Jesus than ever.  No something else.  Their desires, hopes and dreams were being shattered by returning to South Africa.

Even after a few weeks of being back, the boys were crying often and wanting to go back to Canada. We prayed and asked others to pray.  As Vincent, the youngest, got over the worse of it, our oldest, Raphael, was still really struggling.

He wanted to play hockey. You might say he was struggling with "earthly things" and this too shall pass.  But no amount of distracting him worked or will ever work with this boy.  If you've had the pleasure to know him, you will know what I mean. He usually only has one thing on the mind and it is to play HOCKEY. But as you can imagine, South Africa and hockey aren't very compatible.

He mourned this quietly.  Not with anger, but with genuine heart brokenness.  Including on Christmas morning, when he said all he wanted was to play hockey :(  It was almost too much for my mom heart.  My super-sized-guts were no help.

"What are we to do?" we asked.  The only hockey here is on Sunday mornings and we absolutely love our church family.  Even Raphael agreed all these years with our decisions.  But this time, we needed to re-evaluate, because we knew the long term re-precautions of this could be massive.

He could hate church.
He could hate mission.
He could hate us.
He could hate God.

or

He could think it's fine to not go to church.
He could fall out of love with Jesus.

So what now?  Well I don't know!!! This is the missionary mom dilemma.  And dad too.  And this is where we are at now. Seeing if we can find a different church, as heart breaking as it is.  Or other options of altering hockey frequencies.  There is no magic answer. They all have good and bad to them.  And no one prepares you for this.  So we pray and continue to ask guidance.  And ask that you please would join us!

Huge church mobilization progress

We have also made massive progress on other areas here in church mobilization.  Our church network has continued to rapidly expand and this has enabled us to really expand our follow-up programs.

Our first year here in South Africa, Mike and Mawande wrote and taught the Faith Discovery program and the follow-up process to that program.  On the average every 6 weeks out of 30 students about 10-15 make first time commitments to follow Christ!!!  Since that time my heart has been passionate about building a “church placement” program, where after our follow-up program we can place these students into healthy local churches where they will continue to be this process for that person.

So we are very excited to announce that we have successfully implemented this new program with our current students who recently graduated.

Using software, we geocode the locations of the students’ home.  So yeah, that's where it gets a weebit technical but thankfully I have a techy savy husband who drove to all the church locations to get the correct GPS location.  Cuz that's how he rolls.

So we looked at our students in the current class and based upon where the new born-again student lived, we invited local pastors to come and meet these students during our 9 weeks program that we teach at Hope Africa.  We gave them a chance to get to know each other in a non-threatening environment.

Part of the teaching the students get is about what the scriptures teach about “church” and then we work with them to choose a good local church where they can grow.  We then follow up for 18 weeks with the student and at the same time with the churches to ensure these new relationships with the pastors and students are flourishing.  I am so excited to see these new believers placed into healthy churches!

Leadership Gatherings

I am constantly, blown away by how God continues to use us to reach, encourage and equip the church.  Tuesday we had another pastors training and prayer morning; we call them “Leadership gatherings.”  Our topic this time was “Timothy – lessons learned from a disciple.”  I could not be more excited and encouraged by how well these monthly training sessions are going.

Our seminars do not follow the typical format of these types of events here, but despite that, I really sense the pastors have come to understand and appreciate in a new way the things we are trying to accomplish as we gather.

For example, culturally in schools where our Xhosa pastors all grew up, the environment if very different than in North America.  You come, you sit, and you shut-up and listen.  Most seminars here follow a similar formula where an “expert” teacher comes to impart to the gathered church leaders.

We have very intentionally from the beginning said we will not do it that way and instead we encourage the pastors we believe that God has spoken and taught each one of you, and as we gather, we seek to bring that wisdom out for the benefit of all the others.  The pastors no longer hesitate during the discussions, instead they are eager to share and ask questions about our topics.

From my last teaching, my 3 large group questions were:

1.            What is a disciple, and who is a disciple trying to become like?
2.            Is every born again Christian a disciple?
3.            When you picture a mature disciple of Jesus, what characteristics do you picture?

We had such amazing conversation on these questions as we wrestle with these issues and we seek the Lord together in prayer for one another.  In my small group a few of the pastors were from a large denomination.  They asked, “How do we begin to do discipleship in our churches when our denominations are against it?”  We prayed that God would soften the hearts of the denominational leaders in this regards.

Most of the pastors are from independent churches, and they were challenging one another on how to not just preach, but to start doing 1 on 1 ministry and bible studies with their members so that the people of the churches can ask questions about the Bible and together they can search the scriptures for answers.  One of our major emphasis this week was on sound doctrine, as sadly there are constantly problems here with churches and pastors that have gone astray.  We talked about opening up churches to encourage the people to go directly to the Word instead of just trusting the pastor to tell them what it means.  It is very difficult to capture in black in white text the joy and passion in these pastors eyes as we go through these topics.

Young Pastor training program

We have just recently started a new training program aimed at young pastors.  Please pray for us in this new and exciting ministry that I believe is very needed.

There is a strong culture here of young leaders rebelling against their older pastors/mentors and splitting churches to create new “movements” and churches.  We believe that it is close to the heart of God to see reconciliation between these parties and we are uniquely positioned in that we as Hope Africa have programs that reach the young leaders, but my personal work is training the senior pastors.