The prodigal son comes home

I’ve got a pretty sweet story to share with you guys!!  Are you ready for this???  (say it louder I can't hear you).

So after Mike was done teaching his first Faith Discovery Group class (you can read all about in the  last blog), himself and Mawande (fellow staff) started following up with our students once day/week for 5 weeks.  They have since changed the structure, but I wanted to share one of the stories that came out of the follow up group, because it’s just too awesome.

On the day follow-up time was planned for, Mike and Mawande got held up in a meeting, and by the time they went outside to find the students, they had already left.  Feeling somewhat discouraged, they sat down in the courtyard and started to pray for the students, and discussed ways they could continue to develop the follow-up process.  There were 2 students in particular that they felt were on the verge of making first time commitments to Christ, and they had just been talking about them that morning to our staff asking our staff to also be praying for them.

After about an hour, Mike and Mawande went back into the office to continue with the day’s work.  Maybe two minutes after they got into the office, reception calls them to tell them that some people are there to see them.  So they went outside and those exact 2 students were waiting to see them!

One of them starts to say:

“yeah we thought we would come say hi to you guys since we missed you an hour ago.”

Then the other speaks up and says,

“tell them the real reason we came back.”

 The first student then says,

“we came back because we want to have the class, we want to talk more about how to follow Jesus.”

Mike writes:

"So, Mawande and I proceeded to sit down with them and talk about how to be born-again. We then spent lots of time in prayer with them, and one of the two students gave his life to Jesus! What an incredible privilege to watch someone move from darkness to light, to see their burdens removed from their shoulders as they come in repentance to Jesus!!!

The other student was not quite ready to take that step, but allowed us to continue to dialogue and pray with him.  This is the same student who in my previous blog update shared how he would trade his wife and kids for money, as life was all about money for him.  So even though he was not ready to take that step of giving his life to Jesus yet, God had been making serious progress working in his life.”

But this isn’t all folks...  Keep reading!!!  (I know this story is a bit long, but it gets even better!!!)

Two weeks later, in the morning this second student drops by.  He shares with Mike and Mawande that after the classes he went through a really hard time, and started to consider suicide.  There in that place, he heard God calling out to him to surrender his life, and like the prodigal son, come home.  And so he did!  Since then in the last 2 weeks he has literally been going to church every day, he is alive with new life in Christ!  It is stunning to watch as the Holy Spirit has taken this student from a place where all he wanted in life was money, to now all he wants in life is Jesus.  

On Tuesday, he was back at Hope Africa again inquiring about how to sign up for our month long discipleship course called EPIC (Equipping People in Christ).

Please continue to pray for him in his new walk with Christ, that he would grow into full maturity in Christ, that he would be good soil that the message of the kingdom would flourish and produce a harvest 30, 60, even 100 times that which was sown in his life!