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.

South Africa speedz "tshomi"

8 days in South Africa are just not like 8 days in Canada.

It's a whole different SPEED.

But first, what a HUGE difference coming to South Africa is this time compared to 18 months ago.  Leaving wasn't easy, but now when we arrived, we actually know the person meeting us (Terry our director).  He greeted us with big hugs, not knowing we were covered in vomit (air sickness is a thing, apparently).  Bless his heart.  Or "shame" as they say in South Africa (even when it's not shameful at all.  Go figure).

Vincent "sleeping" on airport chairs

Even thought we were UBBER jet lagged and exhausted, this felt really different.  We knew the roads that we are going to travel on, and we moved back into our house!  In many small ways we have adopted and gotten used to the South African way of life.  Or at least it feels familiar, and that's an awesome feeling.

Jet lag is for real

And it wouldn't a welcome to South Africa without a few simple things going wrong.

Car dead...  Getting it revived by merciful friend Peter

But it doesn’t take long for us to realize that even though we are more familiar now with our surroundings than we used to be, there is still much for us to learn, especially about life in the townships.

We landed here on Thursday the 13^th, and spent the next few days recovering from I don't know...  a 2-day-sleep-deprivation-marathon.  The following Monday, Mike went back to work with ridiculously red blood-shot-eyes and started a new Faith Discovery Group.  I don't know if anyone noticed how "terrible" he looked (he is always handsome, I'm just kidding).

He writes:

"What a huge privilege to come back to SA and join a new Faith Discovery Group class. I love being able to present the good news of Jesus and seeing how God uses these times to build His kingdom.  Sometimes this is difficult, as we saw in our faith discovery group class last week. 

There was one student the same age as me (33), and she came to me to ask if she could leave early one day.  I asked her what she needed to go and do, and she tells me that she had to go to the hospital because her daughter had just had a miscarriage.  My heart broke for her, and we spent time as a class praying for her daughter during this difficult time of loss.

Later I couldn’t help but think how grown up many people have to become in the townships.  She is the same age as me, and yet she is already a grandmother!  She is the same age as me and she needs to already be learning and adjusting to a new role/responsibility in life that many people in Canada wouldn’t think at all about until they are much further along in life.  She is coming to study computers so that she can hopefully get a job, so that she is able to take care of her family.  I am also really encouraged by how her fellow classmates are caring for her at this time.

Each day of Faith Discovery Group, as we went through the life and teachings of Christ, it was awesome to see how God was moving and preparing hearts.  On Friday we spent a lot of time talking about John 3, and what it means to be born again.  Praise the Lord 3 out of our 14 students stepped forward to follow Jesus for the first time.

Then at our first FDG follow up group last Wednesday, 2 more of the 14 also decided to repent of their sins and turn to Christ!  I don’t think I will ever get used to ministry here in South Africa, my expectations are sadly too low of God.  So I pray for more faith, I pray for faith to believe that God really can change many, that he can the townships, that he can change the city, and that he can change the country of South Africa.  As Jesus said in Luke 18, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”  I need so much more faith about what God wants to do; his plans are just so much bigger than I could ever dream.  How amazing it is to serve Jesus! 

Challenges and blessings seem to happen much faster here than at home, in just the first 8 days since being back here in SA, we have this huge joy and privilege in ministry, and the heartache of a hurting family.

Please continue to pray for us as we share the gospel and minister to the Xhosa people in Cape Town."

He is powerful to save!

Wow oh Wow, God is good!  God is so faithful, His desire is that none should perish but that all come to repentance and faith in Jesus!  This was so apparent as we taught FDG (Faith Discovery Group) for the second time in early March.   

Just like in the 1^st class, the Holy Spirit was powerfully at work right from the first day, opening the hearts of our students (26 of them) to the gospel.  My heart breaks as the students share about being abandoned or rejected by their parents, experiencing the trauma of violent crime, and trying to recover from the deep hurt of rape.

I (Mike) would like to share a couple brief testimonies from our group:

"At first I didn’t believe in God.  I had this anger that lived within me, and I asked myself that if God is as good as he is said to be, than why did he take both my parents? I always blamed God for everything that is going on in my life.  I am now a changed person.  I have found the heart to try and to let go and forgive.  I now believe in God, for he is a loving, caring, and forgiving God.  I can now proudly say that I believe in God.  It’s all thanks to faith discovery group."

"Firstly when I was here at the faith discovery group I was not myself because I have a sin [and do] not forgive myself for what happened to my brother and I blame God for what happened to my brother.  When I’m watching TV or movies and I see a story, I feel the pain and I will start to cry because I know how my brother die and I see him when he was stabbed.  But now I started to forgive myself and I also pray God that he must forgive me for blaming him for what [is] happening to myself.  My life has been change because of the session of the faith discovery group and like to thank Mike and Mawande for helping me and give me an advice to me that God is here for me."

God’s hand moved powerfully among this group, and on at the end of the class, 9 out of the 26 students gave their lives to the Lord for the first time.  

We are very excited to now be in the follow-up process with them to help them begin growing their new lives in Christ.  Please continue to pray for them in these early stages that their faith would be strong and they would daily draw near to God.

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!

Faith Discovery Group - "I want to apply him to more areas of my life"

As you might have heard already, in the beginning of February Mike had the huge privilege of teaching the first ever Faith Discovery Group at Hope Africa Collective.

Mike taking his work very seriously...

But first, during December and January, "my man" spent much of his time working with a Xhosa co-worker named Mawande Mani, to write the material for this course (see my sister-in-law’s post for more information about this man of God  http://charlenefast.blogspot.ca).  In case you don't have time to read it, it is safe to say that we have a special family bond with uncle Mawande, although he has yet to realize we're not actually related.

Mawande - A.K.A. Petti is Vincent's BFF

The goal of the course was to introduce the students to Jesus-Christ, as the large majority of our students are not following Him, even though some of them might call themselves Christians.

Mawande loves teaching students and using white boards.

This is what Mike had to say about how the class went, and boy-oh-boy it’s worth reading (and not just because I said so)!!!

“Our first class was amazing!  We had 10 students and immediately on day 1, God was working in powerful ways.  We opened up the class so that everyone could share a little about themselves, and it was incredible to witness how the Spirit just opened up these students to share powerful and painful life experiences that they have struggled through.  We prayed and ministered to them, and praised God for how His hand was working early on.

Our students also engaged with us in what we were teaching.  For example, when talking about money, one of our students who is about a 30 years old said if offered the choice between money and his wife, he would immediately chose money and leave his wife.  And then if offered the choice between money and his children, he would abandon his kids.  

Xhosa girl in Phillipi near HAC

And from many conversations like this we presented how different Jesus teaches us to look at our world and our values.  We spent time teaching about how Jesus related to people and how Jesus desires to relate to them.  We spent time discussing the Kingdom of God and His magnificent plans for our world.  Finally, on Friday, we presented the finished work of Christ on the cross and through to the resurrection.

The group was quiet as we gave time for reflection and response.  Mawande and I then went person to person and just asked what was happening in their hearts and minds and how we could pray for them.  Here are a few of the words that they shared:

“I want God’s love in my life.”  (This was the student who had at the beginning of the week wanted to trade in his wife/kids for money)

“God has awoken my heart.”

“I feel more connected with God, I felt his presence.”

“I have felt abandon by God because of serious sickness in my life.  Now I feel encouraged that God loves me!  I haven’t been to church in 3 years, but I want to go back to church.”

“I want to follow Jesus, he has helped me to forgive people this week.  I want to apply him to more areas of my life.  I learned that God has good plans for me.”

I was so blown away by these testimonies and each one took significant steps towards God.  To hear a student on their own say “I want to apply him to more areas of my life” is massively encouraging for Mawande and I as we lead these classes."

Mike excited about how well the class went

So thank you for praying for Mike and Mawande, and please continue to pray for them as they follow up with these students over their remaining weeks in Life Development at HAC.  Please pray for them as they are seeking the Lord, that they will completely surrender their hearts and lives to him.