As many of you know, because Mike didn't get his Visa on time, he was unable to leave to go to Malawi. And because of that turn of event, we found some an unexpected treasure at a difficult time. No surprising though, knowing we serve an immensely wise God.
That week was a school holiday here in South Africa, and like we have done during the previous school holiday, we arranged a week of student ministry. This time, it was for 3 local churches and a group of 25 teenagers (our other programs work with post high-school students). We spent time in worship, prayer, and teachings times. We also got to go out into the community to serve at a disabled center and do some evangelism at a local mall.
On Friday, the last day, we took the group of young people to the beach and had a braai (BBQ). Myself (Marie-Eve) and the kids got to join and I had the opportunity to visit with one of the teenagers and hear some testimony of her week and... capture it all on video for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is really special to know this young lady was encouraged in her faith, together with many of the other students, and that this would probably not have happened had Mike gone to Malawi. Thank you Lord for unexpected treasures in difficult times.
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.
Sometimes when we minister cross-culturally, we hear the best (and funniest) stories. This one happened recently, during a meeting with a local group of pastors at our monthly church leadership gathering.
Mike was sitting with 3 other church leaders just sharing about life and specifically about what they were learning in regards to discipleship. One of the pastors shared how lately he has been struggling in his faith as he has not been able to get a job and so he can't provide for his family (most pastors here are not employed by the church). Responding to him, one of the others (Let's call him Pastor A. for the purpose of this story) shared a bit of his life story.
Pastor Vukile
Pastor A. said he had been following the Lord for over 20 years, and during this time he has had countless trials. He has experienced tremendous family pain, including having his father commit suicide, having family members lying and attacking each other and persecution for his decision to follow Christ. On top of this, there were many times of not having enough to eat and many challenges that come with living in poverty.
However throughout this Pastor A.'s faith remained strong. But about 10 years ago, there was a fight in his church as the woman he wanted to marry was not the one that the church wanted him to marry. He had gone back to his home province and community and had picked a Christian woman there he wanted to marry, but the church wanted him to marry one of their members.
[Marriages here involve a whole lot more than just 2 people!]
Typical Xhosa wedding
Being attacked by people inside the church left Pastor A. disillusioned, and even after years of trials that he had overcome in his faith, this became overwhelming for him to the point of him walking away from the church and his faith.
Songoma (witch doctor)
After spending some time not walking with the Lord, pastor A. was looking for some guidance about what to do next in life. He turned to the local songoma (witch doctor) and asked what kind of a job he should pursue. The songoma looked at him and said, "You have the Holy Spirit, there is nothing I can do for you. You must go back to the Church to find guidance." Slightly annoyed at this advice the former pastor went to get a 2nd opinion from a different songoma. However this 2nd songoma repeated "You have the Spirit of Christ, you need to search the Bible not ask me for guidance." Pastor A. however still wasn't convinced so he went to a 3rd songoma who said to him, "You are a coward, you have already received your answer, go back to the Church!"
So he humbled himself, repented of his ways, turned to the Word, committed himself back to the Lord and went back to the church. The pastor used his story to just encourage the other to trust in God, that even in the hard times the Holy Spirit is ALWAYS faithful and He is with us!
It was a cold winter day. The kind of cold day where you wonder if the Earth is still part of the Solar System (did you hear Pluto isn't a planet??). The kind of winter without snow, however, cold enough that heat inside your home wouldn't just be a luxury. The kind of winter South Africans know about and yet still build these uninsulated houses with bricks and mortar... and without adding central heating. (It's gotta be a prosecutable crime by now?)
And there I was,
bundled in 100 layers,
crying in my kitchen.
Heat was emanating from my electric oven. Which meant at this moment, we had electricity. For that, I was grateful.
Still.
Tears where streaming down my face,
hands covered with flour,
unable to shake the feeling.
The smell of bananas pungent in the air.
My hands were moving along like a well-oiled machine. My movements were rehearsed. My work unaffected by the tears. Peel bananas. Mash bananas. Beat eggs. Measure the flour. Cut down the sugar, no one will notice.
Tear drop.
Wipe face.
Mix the batter.
Smile.
Tears of gratitude streaming down my cheeks like white rapids. I was standing on Holy Grounds, in my very own kitchen, listening to God whisper to my soul "well done servant".
I found myself, serving my Lord, with something I actually loved to do. God had asked me to bake muffins (for pastor leadership training).
BAKE!!!
Making others go "oh! yum!". Making their tummies happy. Filling their bodies with nutritious food and perhaps some indulging too. He had asked me to be part of setting a feast for Him.
And He had equipped me for this moment. All these years bare-foot in the kitchen (which HAD heat...) were just practice time. In fact, my God-given talent, had grown with years gone by. And not because I'm awesome (although a factor?), but because this wasn't a talent I had buried in the sand. It was a talent I have put to use, even when it wasn't so awesome. And those are the talent the Lord chooses to increase, the ones we use again and again in faith that He can use anything for His glory. And so this is the talent I cherish because I've put a lot of work, dedication and sweat into it. I tuck it away in my heart and pull it out to bless others.
Add vanilla.
Fold in the butter.
Chop the chocolate.
Mix until moist.
I was crying because as "little" as we sometimes make these things out to be, they are far from little. Our God, our Lord, calls upon us to serve. YES. That is a good reason to cry and be thankful, in the most basics of ways. No shame in my game.
I'm baking for the King of Kings. I rebuke the lies that it's not important. The Creator of the Universe has equipped me with good hands, fabulous taste buds and a knack for baking. So don't mind if I cook up a storm and bless others in this God-given way, while not even bothering to wipe the tears streaming down my face. I'm standing on Holy Grounds.
What talent is the Lord wanting to increase in you today? Because there are tears in my kitchen for you too, for when He whispers into your soul "well done my servant".
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.
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.
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!
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.
