A week and a half has gone by and I’m still alive! (sorry for not responding to texts and emails, my internet is limited). There’s so much to say, but I’ll stick to the awesome stuff. There are 27 of us total and we are so diverse (American, Afrikaans, Colored, Xhosa, etc). We speak 7 different languages and come from all kinds of different backgrounds and places. We live in community. We eat together, pray together, serve together. We are already a family. In a country recently free of Apartheid, our love in diversity speaks for us before we even open our mouths.
Our home base is an old World War 2 army base on the foothills of Table Mountain overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It’s Summer here and gorgeous! Camps of students filter through the campus pretty regularly and we’ve been leading activities and working with them. We’ve been doing a lot of training this week, team building, vision casting, and scouting out ministry opportunities in townships in and around Cape Town. Our focus is to build up and disciple young people in these communities and empower them to be the spiritual leaders where they are at. The kids in the townships flock to us when we come. We run around with them and love them as much as we can. Most are left by themselves while their parents work, and they are hungry for love.
What I love about this ministry so far is that it looks so much like the way Jesus chose to minister during His time on earth. We aren’t going out to show a Jesus film and evangelize village after village of people who won’t have a clue where to go next. Instead, we will go out and spend significant time with young people, ask questions, teach, model, love, disciple and show others how to live intimately with Jesus and serve in His reign. We will move around a lot (we’ve spent the night in three different places already), borrow a lot and give away even more. The sacrifice will be and has been hard, but when I think about the privilege of following Christ and working in His Kingdom, I feel more than blessed.
God has been rocking my world since I’ve been here. I was so confident doing youth ministry in the United States, but here, I feel so out of my element, unused to the many cultures and unsure of myself. I’m learning more than ever to trust in God’s wisdom bringing me here and embracing the fact that God loves to work through small broken people who are unsure of themselves, which is exactly where I am right now. I am pretty homesick and I cry daily. I know it will get better. Please pray that I will stay strong.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
quotes
I've been reading a lot lately, mostly to continue preparing my heart for serving in South Africa in two weeks!! I've been digging through my books and found some quotes that are too good not to share...enjoy.
Do you know when people really become spiritual? It is when they become the slaves of God and are branded with his sign, which is the sign of the cross, in token that they have given him their freedom. Then he can sell them as slaves to the whole world, as he himself was sold. For the foundation of this whole edifice is humility.
St. Teresa of Avila
You can’t separate God in his awesome power in heaven from the snotty, bloated kid with the fly in his eye in the ditch. God is not impressed by the size of our church. God is not impressed by how many times we go to church but by how much we become like Jesus. The world is on an accumulation binge—give me more and more and more—but God is a giver.
B.F. Skinner
Follow the example of the King by choosing to enter into broken worlds, not sit outside them with right answers. And when you arrive wherever you are sent, you will know what to do—love people until they can feel it, proclaim Jesus’ reign with words and actions and love.
The world is waiting for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order.
Henri Nouwen
To have accepted the love of God is to be armed and disarmed at the same time. No weapon is more powerful. But in using such a weapon it is the user who is broken wide open. This is a love that cannot rightly be kept in. It is a bursting out love. In its spilling out, it binds to others and when it binds to others, it heals, it knits hearts, it builds community and it brings everything together in perfect unity.
Invest in love. Yield to love. Be transformed by love. Allow nothing to stand in the way of your commitment to love. Don’t use overload as an excuse, and don’t spend your last moments on earth apologizing for your life. Set love in order, beginning today.
Richard Swenson
I want to be a missionary, leave everything for Christ and in the end, feel like I never made a sacrifice.
John Piper
Do you know when people really become spiritual? It is when they become the slaves of God and are branded with his sign, which is the sign of the cross, in token that they have given him their freedom. Then he can sell them as slaves to the whole world, as he himself was sold. For the foundation of this whole edifice is humility.
St. Teresa of Avila
You can’t separate God in his awesome power in heaven from the snotty, bloated kid with the fly in his eye in the ditch. God is not impressed by the size of our church. God is not impressed by how many times we go to church but by how much we become like Jesus. The world is on an accumulation binge—give me more and more and more—but God is a giver.
B.F. Skinner
Follow the example of the King by choosing to enter into broken worlds, not sit outside them with right answers. And when you arrive wherever you are sent, you will know what to do—love people until they can feel it, proclaim Jesus’ reign with words and actions and love.
The world is waiting for new saints, ecstatic men and women who are so deeply rooted in the love of God that they are free to imagine a new international order.
Henri Nouwen
To have accepted the love of God is to be armed and disarmed at the same time. No weapon is more powerful. But in using such a weapon it is the user who is broken wide open. This is a love that cannot rightly be kept in. It is a bursting out love. In its spilling out, it binds to others and when it binds to others, it heals, it knits hearts, it builds community and it brings everything together in perfect unity.
Invest in love. Yield to love. Be transformed by love. Allow nothing to stand in the way of your commitment to love. Don’t use overload as an excuse, and don’t spend your last moments on earth apologizing for your life. Set love in order, beginning today.
Richard Swenson
I want to be a missionary, leave everything for Christ and in the end, feel like I never made a sacrifice.
John Piper
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
