You turned my wailing into dancing

Every Tuesday, a new local church we have made connections with called Upper Room, hosts a meeting for about 20-25 pastors from a variety of denominations and backgrounds for prayer.  The time is intentionally focused on 2 things: reading the Word and spending time in prayer.

Last week Tuesday, when we arrived at the church, we discovered that just the night before the church had been broken into and robbed.  Their sound system, camera, tithe and office computer were all stolen.  The front door was smashed and the office specifically looked like a bomb went off with the thieves having ripped apart every desk and drawer searching for things of value.  The pastor of the church was devastated.  His face was downcast as he felt so violated and understandably so.  No matter how often this kind of thing happens here, one doesn’t get used to this feeling of being violated.

We stayed in contact throughout the week with the pastor and continued to pray for him and his church at Hope Africa.  

Another pastor from the meeting borrow him some equipment to host his service on Sunday.  As you can imagine, his church people were very angry.  So much so that they wanted to curse the people who had done this and take justice into their own hands.  This pastor now had a unique opportunity to speak about God’s undeserved grace and mercy, using their own church experience as an example.  

The next Tuesday, we gathered together for prayer again at his church.  The pastor’s face was beaming and full of joy, as he shared how God ministered to his congregation on Sunday, and how just on Monday he was offered a sound system for a fraction the cost that it should be!  When the seller found out his story, he immediately offered to drop the cost by another 50%, a church member came forward and covered the other 50% and another of the pastors from the prayer group offered a computer.  So in 8 days, God had provided that which was lost, even in the midst of poverty!  Praise the Lord.

And His praises we sang at our prayer meeting.

Just a little weekly pastor prayer meeting... :)
Posted by Hope Africa Collective: Mike & Marie-Eve Fast on Tuesday, September 8, 2015

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!

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.