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.

When crime becomes normal

Turns out the things that happen here in an average week have become our "new normal,” and so since these things don’t surprise us as much anymore, we have been lacking the ambition to write about them!  Eeek, we are the "sorryest".

A significant part of “normal” life here is crime.  In the last 5 days my sister Char and her new husband Mawande had their place broken into and their copper piping was stolen so they had no water when they woke up Sunday morning.

On Tuesday morning when we arrived early for our pastors training morning, we found one of our windows at Beautiful Gate (the ministry we rent space from) had been smashed and the office broken into during the night.

On Wednesday morning we found out one of our 4 hair salons that we have built for our new small business students was broken into and her hot water tank, chairs and various items were stolen.

Yesterday night a local business in our small suburb we live in was broken into and robbed.

And as you might have read on our Hope Africa: Mike & Marie-Eve Facebook page, the Pastor I work with, Bishop Nyanga was robbed at gun point last month, as he pulled into his driveway in broad day light.  This has been a hard time for him and his family who was also with him during this incident.  Please continue to pray for them.

Meet Portia

Meet my friend Portia.  I met her in March during street team.  She was helping her neighbor who is renovating her house.

Portia has been coming to our Hope Africa office for some time now, visiting our prayer room for much needed prayers, counsel and love.  She told me: "I always feel so much better after [they] pray for me and can sleep."  She also said how she feels "happy and able to not focus on everything that is going wrong for a few hours" after receiving prayers from our staff.

Portia has a 6 year old son, who's father chooses not to be in the least involved.  He wanted nothing to do with the child since he found out Portia was pregnant.  You see, dads don't have to help their children financially here as they do in Canada.  They can just pretend they don't have them, leaving the women to take care of their children alone.  

Portia lives with her son in a small shack with no running water, no fridge & hardly enough space for the double bed they share.  When I visited her, there was no place to sit inside, so we ended up chatting outside, sitting on the ground.

Without a job or a way to make money & desperate to be loved, this leaves Portia at the mercy of not-good-for-you-men.  It's not hard to understand why a woman like her would stay in an abusive relationship(s) "just not to be alone" or for the few dollars this person might provide.

Helpless situations birth hopeless choices.

For Portia, her life is at a cross road right now.  We have offered for her to join our programs at Hope Africa, so that she can learn skills and get a job.  During her time with us, she would also grow as a person, and learn to stand on her two feet better.  She would meet Jesus in a new way as well.  But for many students like Portia, when their lives have been in pieces for so long, it's not as easy as one would think for them to take hold of the hand that is trying to help them. Truly help them.

There are always more obstacles than we can foresee.  Some real, some not.  People like Portia are so used to things not going their way, so used to failure, that sometimes it's easier not to try at all. Especially when it sounds too good to be true.

After discussing our programs and having her promise to come on the following Monday, the day our Life Direction course started, we left at peace.  I felt confident that she would come, despite the obstacles, which we had talked through (I thought).

But Portia didn't show up on Monday.  And it is hard for a person like me, who's never ever faced the kinds of challenges she has faced, to understand why not?  I want so bad for her, and many like her to know freedom from poverty.  To be able to stand on their 2 feet and tell those no-good-men to get lost.  To hold their heads high.  To feel loved by the King of Kings.

Because they are indeed loved.  And completely loved.  And as I write this I sigh.  A LOT.  Because I don't know the answers to my questions. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.  To my knees I fall and pray and ask my Papa for help, on behalf of all the people, like Portia, who are suffering, feeling their obstacles so heavy on them they can hardly see past.

With hope I say this story is to be continued.  Because you bet I will storm up to heaven's door for this woman and I know you will too!