The winter months, June through August, in the Southern Hemisphere, are traditionally very busy times in our ministry. For the first time in several years, this season has been approached with more excitement and anticipation as opposed to a sense of duty. Trina and I are eternally grateful for the wisdom from our spiritual oversight that encouraged a sabbatical time away from ministry to begin 2016. We are profoundly refreshed and very enthused about reaching out to pastors and the Body of Christ in general for the remainder of this year.
Our first significant ministry endeavor following the sabbatical was the coordinating of a Holiday Bible Club during the first week of the South African school holiday. This event continues to astound in every facet. Despite several significant changes to the daily schedule of events and many new participants, the time was awesome. The daily average in attendance is around 300 children ranging from age 4 to age 10. Because some don’t attend every day, the total number of children reached throughout the week is closer to 400. This year we distributed around 100 Bibles to kids who prayed to receive Christ.
While we are very excited about what the Lord does in the hearts of the children, the ministry only starts there! We have moved to illustrated Bibles because the children are very eager to have their parents and grandparents read to them about the bible characters they have seen during the week. We have had great and numerous testimonies of children introducing the Lord to unbelieving households through the illustrated bible stories. Participating in the Lord touching the heart of a child is truly a profound step in reaching an entire community.
This elections in South Africa have complicated our ministry in the local township near where we live. There has been significant, random violence on the route to the area in which we minister and while it has not touched us personally, the threat has been very real. We believe our prayers have been answered and we will shortly resume our evangelistic work in eTete on the last Saturday of July.
Trina and I will travel to Harare, Zimbabwe from July 18 – 25 for our annual Sub Saharan Africa Leadership Conference. This is a meeting of many influential leaders who come from many African Nations.
We will finish the winter period by spending several weeks of August in the Western Cape Provence of South Africa.
Please remember to pray for our efforts to know Christ and make Him known. We can’t do anything apart from His Grace and your prayers are a big part of that!