This video should give you a better flavor of the environment we are living in. The voice you hear is Stephen Murray. He is one of the local leaders of the church plant.

This is a general post to begin casting the vision of where we are and where we are going. There is so much to say here, but I will try to keep it concise. I would love to chat with anyone individually if they would like to know more or if you would like to be involved on a deeper level. 

Confirming the Vision – Defining the Vehicle

So much has happened in the last 6 months. Being in Africa has taught us a lot about the Gospel, our lives and ministry. Our vision of seeing the Gospel change lives was powerfully affirmed, but we did not have a clearly defined vehicle of ministry. During these last 6 months we were courting 2 awesome organizations, All Nations and  The Acts 29 Church Planting Network). The final decision has been to join the Acts 29 efforts happening here in South Africa. The major reason for this decision was our home church, Sojourn Community Church, is part of the Acts 29 Network. It was at Sojourn that we experienced the initial inspiration to move to South Africa to live and work. We have also been impressed by the Acts 29 Network as a whole, it was recently named by researchers the most influential church planting movement in the world.

Who are we working with? What will we be doing?

The Acts 29 Director of Africa, JD Senkbile, has invited us to join him in planting a church in the heart of Cape Town. We have accepted the invitation. We really like JD, his family, and his vision for planting city churches that are transforming the city through the Gospel.

Along with living as missionaries to the city of Cape Town, I am being asked to contribute my technology, communications and networking skills to the mission of the church plant and Nichole will be involved in the administration of the church i.e. making it legal, setting up financial systems, etc.

Early Stages of an Urban Church Plant. Learn, Learn, Learn…

Cape Town is an incredibly cosmopolitan/diverse city. Though it looks NOTHING like most of Africa, you can find almost every African country represented. There is a huge opportunity to have an impact on all of Africa from this city… To our dismay, the city center has almost no evangelical churches and many churches are closing and or moving to the outlying suburbs. This should not be happening… We are working with JD as the team takes the initial steps for strategically planting an urban church. At the moment we are burying ourselves in the culture. Attending key cultural activities, doing demographic research, networking with leaders and building relationships with locals. It has been very exciting. There has been little or no opposition to the proposal of a new church plant in the city center. I had a local business man get really intense when I told him what we were planning to do. “This part of the city needs a church badly, there are so many drug addicted, lonely and lost people in this area and there is no church to meet them”.

We want to meet them.

Missionaries to Africa live in rural villages, eat caterpillars and sleep in mud huts…

The next several months may look very strange to some of  you. It actually looks strange to us. In our minds, missionaries to Africa live in rural villages, eat caterpillars and sleep in mud huts. Though there is a place for missionaries to go to such places, God is leading us to be in the city. We believe the city is a strategic place to be with the potential to affect the entire continent. That being said, many of the pictures, videos and activities we share with you are going to look much different from what we have been sharing and what you might expect.

To all of our friends, family and supporters… Thank You for being a part of this journey with us. If you have any questions or comments we would love to hear from you! Feel free to contact us directly or leave a comment below…

Photo Attribution http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvdmerwe/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Amazing, difficult, profound, adventurous, turbulent, challenging, awesome, character-building, revealing, educational, radical, enlightening, frustrating, life-giving and eye-opening. Thats a decent stack of adjectives to describe the last 6 months of our lives in Africa. The first 3 months we were in Cape Town, South Africa with a missions organization called All Nations. We worked in an inner city market place called Green Market Square, making relationships and sharing the Gospel with shop owners and locals. At the end of those 3 months we went on a short term outreach to Zimbabwe with a team from All Nations where we worked for 2 months in a crowded township connected to Victoria Falls. It was the best worst thing that ever happened to us.

Heavy Dose of Hard African Realities

We were unprepared in many ways for what we faced there… Along with a fragile team structure, it was a heavy dose of hard African realities. Broken families, poverty, prostitution, HIV/AIDS, poor medical care, economic instability, racism, severe injustice and blatant church corruption. There were times when it was literally nauseating to see. We became acutely aware of evil. Grasping for how we could serve the community and inspire transformation we felt defeated on multiple fronts. Strategies and ideas seemed to crumble right in front of us. It forced us to question everything we had learned. I would like to say that we handled everything with grace and strength, but we didn’t. Confused, bitter and powerless we were forced to the cross.

Clearer Understanding of His Death on the Cross

It was in this hard place that God showed up in a big way… Through a hailstorm of relevant scriptures, some good books and the guidance of our mentors, he opened our eyes to unrealized power in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our minds were seared with a clearer understanding of his death on the cross. Intellectually we knew the Gospel, but our lives reflected an understanding that it was something that we hear once and then move on to more important things. This weak understanding was shattered. The Gospel became an all-day/every-day message that is essential to every dimension of our life. The moment by moment reflection of Christ’s death and resurrection became the bedrock from which we could stand and build. 

In the end the outreach turned out to be very fruitful. We had 19 baptisms and a bunch of Zimbabweans who were really experiencing freedom through the Gospel. It was also very defining for us personally on where we felt God would have us focus our efforts.

Two videos from our time in Zimbabwe:

Life and Ministry in Chinotimba

Footage of the Local Wildlife and Victoria Falls

We always love your comments. Let us know our thoughts! Also, we still need to raise more financial support in order to stay in Africa. Please consider joining our support team.

These are a few our favorites. If you want to see more you can go to a set that we put up on flickr.

There are 10 christian tv channels and an infantry of churches and cults in Vic Falls, so the environment is very “religious”. Strangely though there is a huge shortage of bibles here. That being said there is much heresy and false doctrine floating around. It was very discouraging at first, especially at bible studies when people would start voicing false statements about God and the Gospel. A few of our team members attended a crusade where the leaders were blatantly scamming the people for money in the name of Jesus. Nearly everyone believes that they earn their way to heaven and that if they have enough faith God will do anything for them. Many people lean heavy on the TV evangelists, who focus on healing, prophecy and prosperity twisting biblical truth and forming “religious” idols.

Teaching God’s Story

Our strategy initially was to lead inductive bible studies as we began to focus on a few key people. Once we discovered the goofy doctrine floating in we shifted gears to teaching God’s story and personal stories and that is when things began to change. Telling the story helped the people see that they didn’t really know the Gospel. Telling the story also made them hungry to know more. We are now teaching them to tell the God story, with good initial results. We hope to record some of them and share it with you. We are using 5 chapters; Creation/Rebellion/Sacrifice/Redemption/Commission. We give them verses under each chapter and help them to summarize each scripture and combine all the summaries into a story. It’s powerful to watch them help each other expand the story from their own personal study. Occasionally a new section will pop up in someones God’s story that we didn’t teach them ourselves.

Addressing Sin with Story

When we discover a specific idol/sin that the group dealing with, we integrate scripture into the God’s story aimed at that issue. For example, Munya told the God story to a group and placed special emphasis on sacrifice, addressing the issue of traditional animal sacrifice for ancestors. The results were immediate and a man who is a “church goer” repented of having sacrificed chickens that week to his ancestors. He is now one of the key guys that we are working with, and he craves to hear the Gospel explained. Last night we read Galatians with him and unpacked the first several verses that discuss false gospel. Being a common false belief here, we talked extensively about not being able to earn your way to heaven. With glazed watery eyes he responded by saying this “right this very second there is a preacher in Vic Falls that is preaching that I have to go to church and tithe or I will go to hell, what you guys are telling me is just melting me, its amazing”. Needless to say you can see this guy being set free the more and more we explore the Gospel with him.

Freedom in Christ

We have redefined our strategy a bit. Rather than focusing on starting reproducing communities we want people to have a rich understanding of the Gospel. We don’t want to start anything that doesn’t start and end with the Gospel. You can see the freedom in peoples eyes, they are at the foothills of adoring Christ.

To be totally honest I think we all feel like we are in the foothills of adoring Christ. There have been times of severe discouragment for our team as we battle through dietary issues, team tension and totally foggy vision of what we are suppose to be doing here. Repeatedly hearing the Gospel and attempting to share it has been the redeeming element of everything that we have done here. God is loving us, He is showing up at just the right times, and He is making a difference in the community.

This is a guest post from our team member Danielle Kittinger.

I was in the midst of falling into a deep sleep when my dreams became influenced by outside noises. Dogs were barking, followed by a heavy scuffling and blowing, joined by the sounds of running, clapping and calling. Suddenly reality broke through the dreaming as the Tandis knocked on our doors, calling out “Girls! Girls! Elephant, elephant!”

In a state of disorientation and excitement we hastily threw aside our mosquito netting and flew outside. Tersia forgot about her netting entirely and just about took the whole bed with her. We ran into the yard to find Aaron and Nichole with Mama and Papa Tandi, all in our pjs in the pitch black night without lights. I climbed atop our truck trailer to see. Across the street a great shadow stood out from the rest, swaying and blowing heavy gusts. Not ten meters away was an elephant!

Our excitement and awe was beyond measure, even without being able to see it clearly. It was delightful to see Mama and Papa behave like little children over it, though they are used to these happenings. Some neighborhood men were in the road, yelling and throwing stones to drive the elephant away. That in itself made my breath catch, not knowing if that would drive it off or provoke it.

Eventually it turned and proceeded down the main road, but stopped at a house to feed on-and consequently destroy-their trees. Being the completely rational people that we are we immediately ran into the street to see. We moved down the road to within fifteen meters of the beast, nothing between us if he decided to charge. We were even laughing and making a joke over the fact that if we had to run for it, we’d be in a sticky situation with all of us trying to make it through our narrow gate at once. But standing there, exposed and unprotected in the presence of such power, even danger, I was struck by what it means to serve and be in the presence of our God. How great and terrifyingly wonderful! What an awesome God.

Upon returning to bed we were told that the elephants (there was another in the bush) would most likely come back. Less than an hour later we heard Aaron outside our window, “Girls, they’re back, they’re back!!” Leaping up on our beds we swept aside the curtain and looked out. Christine was standing on my bed behind me, her body between my nets and the bed frame.

Outside the first elephant was passing by our wall, while Aaron jumped around taking pictures and we whispered excitedly. Bats swooped around in the dark; Aaron laughed, “I’m living the Discovery channel!” But what followed caused our very hearts to stop.

Coming just after the first was the largest elephant I’ve ever seen, not seven meters from where we sat in the window and a mere meter from where Aaron stood at the wall. Twice his height, it’s head was wide as he was tall. As it came across from us it turned it’s mighty head to look directly at us; you could hear it’s heavy breath and the flap of it’s ear as it turned, it’s eyes shone bright in the night. For a moment my breath was stolen from me, never have I experienced anything like it.

As the elephant finally moved on, Aaron voiced the only possible thought. “What do you do, what do you do?” Indeed. As we finally lay down to sleep again, Tersia summed it up. “THAT was a gift from God.” Amen.

Our first day of outreach we met Bruce. He shared a bit about himself and we shared our vision. He was receptive and really grasped what we were trying to do. He promptly led us to his entire family which was scattered all over Chinotimba. The last stop was his home. It was a 6 by 6 square in the foundation of an unfinished home. Their walls were blankets and their roof was scraps.

Bruce’s wife came out to greet us. After talking for a bit we asked if there were any needs that they had. He pulled a list of medical items from his pocket. Rubber gloves, bed liners, wool cotton and umbilical cord clamps. He explained that the hospital will turn them away if they don’t bring the supplies for the birth. He then told us that his wife had been having contractions and they expected to have the baby very soon. We offered to take him and purchase the items he needed. We also bought nappys, a baby cap and a blanket for the baby.

On the way back to Bruce’s home, I dropped Nichole off so she could start dinner. When I arrived at his home, his wife came out and her water broke. I sprung into action, feeling excited that I was there to help them have the baby. I helped them into our vehicle and drove them to the hospital. I dropped them off at the entrance and parked the car. We had not purchased the rubber gloves yet, so they had to buy them from the hospital. When I came in they were meticulously counting out 12 pairs of gloves as the birthing mother stood there wincing and bleeding everywhere. The hospital was dilapidated and broken down. There were mosquitoes every where and the smell was stale and balmy. There were ominous signs everywhere that had disturbing health awareness messages. There was a sign that warned people that having sex with a woman or child that was Albino would NOT cure HIV.

We still needed a bed liner and cotton wool and the hospital wouldn’t provide any, so Bruce and I had to call a pharmacist at his home and meet him at his shop. When we returned to the hospital with the supplies I followed Bruce back to where his wife was. I followed him into a big empty room with a lonely bed in the middle where his wife was laying naked, crying and unattended. I exited the room immediately and stood outside in the hall. I told the nurse in the hall way that I was here with Bruce and his wife. She went and fetched a sheet for them, and I went back into the room. Bruce explained that the nurses had yelled at his wife for not having the wool and bed liner. Not knowing what to say, I asked if I could pray for them. Being respectful I stretched my hand towards her but I did not touch her. My heart sunk when I realized that her husband would not touch her either…

Sitting with Bruce, the nurses and no doctors; they explained to him that the child was very small and probably only 5 1/2 months old. This was contradictory to what they had told him a week prior. They told us that they didn’t have incubators but they had a room that the kept very warm with all of the doors shut. Knowing a bit about premature babies, I swallowed hard. I was not sure why we began to review feeding options until I realized that the mother had HIV. Again I swallowed hard.

They would not allow him to stay with his wife overnight at the hospital so we left and I dropped him off to find his uncle in a bar.

The next morning, Bruce came to our house to let us know they had a baby boy that morning, but he was very small. Hope for the baby stirred in my heart. Nichole and I took him back to the hospital to see the child. There was a window into the premature birth room and we saw the little boy. He was tiny, and weighed less then a can of coke. Just after seeing him we sat in the hallway. Bruce came out 2 minutes later to let us know that the baby had just died. We tried to comfort him, but he left the hallway promptly. Nichole and I sat there staring at the wall in front of us. I knew we needed to be strong for the family so when I looked into my wife’s watering eyes, I gently encouraged her that God had us here for a purpose and asked her to be strong and hang in for just a little longer.

The next hour felt like an eternity. We sat with the family, searching for words but found nothing that seemed to fit, so we just sat there with them and prayed. The hallway was filled with solemn faces but there were no tears. Our hearts were breaking… The hospital staff explained to Bruce and myself that they don’t bury babies this small and that we would need to go fetch two liters of petrol and firewood for the incinerator. My soul ached. I became acutely aware of luxury.

They asked if I would like to see the baby again and I sensed that Bruce did not want to do it alone so I accompanied him. I prayed over the child and as I prayed I lifted my eyes to see a working incubator in the corner of room. I became acutely aware of injustice.

It’s a bit soon for us to say with confidence how we should respond. One thing is certain, a fire has ignited deep inside of us and there is an burning craving for righteousness and justice. The Gospel offers both, and that is where we are headed to find our answer. We intend to share what we find, but we are also intersted to hear your thoughts on how we should respond in light of the Gospel.

We are hitting the road to Zimbabwe this saturday! This is a blog post to give you a little info on what we will be up to there. 

Church Planting Experience (CPx) is the name of the the training that we have been in for the last 3 months. The first 3 months has been the teaching phase and the second half (3 months) is the “Outreach Phase” and “De-briefing Phase”. Earlier in the training our team was given multiple options for where we would go for the outreach phase. We chose Zimbabwe. The specific destination is near Victoria Falls in a community called Chinotimba. It is a strategic place for us because there are 3 major tribes in Zimbabwe and all three can be found in this area.         
 

Bad Situation, Good Soil

Zimbabwe has been in major hardship for the last several years due to political corruption. Prior to the hardship Zimbabwe was very prosperous and considered the “Bread Basket of Africa”. If you watch the news you have probably heard quite a bit. If you would like some info you could read this article to get an overview of the crisis. The bottom line is the these people are without hope, and true hope can only come from the Gospel, so that is what we will bring. 

The Vision, Mission and Values

Our major objective while in Chinotimba will be to find and train leaders that will start gospel-centered communities focused on making disciples, planting Jesus, and starting a reproducing movement of churches in Zimbabwe. There are three core values that we will be functioning from; Love God, love each-other and love those who don’t know Christ. Our hope is to see many Zimbabweans meet Jesus, worship God and multiply.

Social Action Objective

One of my personal objectives is to discover ways that we can assist native Zimbabweans in restoring their nation, so during this trip I will be assessing needs and looking for opportunity. We have some vision for inspiring citizen journalism to combat further political corruption and also finding opportunities to bring EDGE Outreach in for water purification training. I will unpack those in some later blog posts, they are big topics.

Our Thoughts on Zimbabweans

We love Zimbabweans. We have had the opportunity to meet many and we have been thoroughly touched. Specific reasons aside, we both feel that God will enable us to serve the Zim people. There are budding visions about helping the refugee Zimbabweans to make there way back to Zim to reconstruct their country with the Gospel at the foundation. This outreach will serve as an excellent opportunity for us to practice serving them and see if God would have us work long term with them.

Please keep us in your prayers! We will be in Zimbabwe until July 10th (over 2 months). We do no know if we will have consistent internet connection but we will try very hard to keep you all updated.

We were placed on an awesome team for CPx, and we would like to introduce them to you. These are the folks that we have spent the last 3 months with and will spend the next 2 months in Zimbabwe with.

Munyaradzi means “comforter” and that could not be any more accurate of what Munya is like. Munya is from Zimbabwe and oversees multiple house churches happening around the City Center of Cape Town. He has an uncanny ability to encourage people and is a skilled evangelist. Nichole and I forsee working with Munya after the first 6 months. City Centre and an outreach to Tanzania is in discussions.

Tersia is from Pretoria, South Africa and she speaks Afrikaans. She has introduced us to an array of fantastic South Africa cooking. Tersia is the nurturer on our team, caring deeply about everyones heart and actively seeking harmony in our group. Her personal story is a true testimony to God’s love, we are excited to see where God takes her!

Siya is a South African native, and speaks “Xhosa” (the X is pronounced with a click). He is the performer in our group, put him in front of a group of people and he lights up! He is an emerging drummer too, always tapping and making a beat on any hard surface. Siya also has a powerful personal story that clearly magnifies God’s grace.

Chris is from Nigeria and speaks “ebo” ( i am sure a mispelled that). He is a gifted communicator and has taught Nichole and I very much about Africa cultures. He is kind of a multi-cultural coniseur, he loves being in enviornments with people from all over. Watching what God is doing in his life has been amazing.

Danielle is the fellow American on our team, she is from Oklahoma and she speaks english. She is an excellent story teller and has a passion for drama. Hardly a covnversation goes by that she does not recount a scene from a classic movie. She has a steadfast heart for God, I really dont think anything could derail her from serving God with her whole heart.

We laugh a lot, pray a lot and face  A LOT  of challenges together. Send your blessings to them in the comments!