Showing Jesus's love through serving in Mukuni

Here is a wonderful testimony from one of the gals in our Advanced Missions Training classes:

"On our second expedition to the Mukuni Chiefdom one of the many experiences I was pleased to be apart of and so blessed to be used by the Lord was with a young mother named Gertrude a single mother 18 years old with an 8-month old baby girl. The first day I met her was in her mother’s garden. She was very reluctant to talk to me. She would not make eye contact and just was not interested in talking or engaging with myself or the other missionaries. I felt in my spirit she was struggling with shame and guilt. I invited her to our night meeting where I hoped she would go to hear the word and be part of worship.

The group I was with was able to serve Gertrude and her family in their garden tilling the ground and pulling weeds, preparing the ground for planting a garden. After being able to bless them in a physical way the message was given on the parable of the good soil and bad soil (Mark 4). This family heard the word and was grateful for it. Leaving that place I just knew the seed fell on good soil.

 

The next day while ministering at an influential elderly woman of the villages hut, I saw Gertrude walking past the hut about 3 times. I got up knowing she came to speak with us, I asked her to come in so we could talk. I was able to encourage her and tell her how much Jesus loved her, and how special she is in the Lords eyes. Her eyes brightened up, and her down cast head was lifted; she was seeking after more of the Lord. She was seeking His forgiveness and approval and He gave me those words to speak over her. The importance of her role in the village and in the Kingdom of God was spoken over her that day. I also had the privilege to pray for her and her baby that His provision and protection would be upon them. I prayed that this women would see herself as the beauty that God see her as, so that she my step into the abundant life He has for her, and not settling or turning back in the opposite direction. That day she followed us to other huts and listened to us minister. Each place we went I was walking hand in hand with her. What a beautiful thing in my life to walk with a young Zambian woman down a dirt road taking the message of life, hope and redemption to all Gods people. I am learning Gods love is shown and shines through words, deeds, smiles, hugs, laughter and relationship.

 

I was able to say by to this young woman before leaving; in her I saw a new spirit one of strength, hope and joy. She was renewed in receiving his goodness, and I am confident that she will walk in His righteousness. She will be a great mother and will impact many lives in her village around her.

He bore our sin and shame. He took it upon himself and we receive his full forgiveness and approval when we accept and understand that his blood has covered us once and for all. There is nothing in our lives we have done that we cannot receive forgiveness for. There is no sin that is to great for our great God."

It is such a great delight to see God at work here!  As you can see, sometimes it is more powerful to spend time doing daily life with the villagers then just preaching to them at meetings.  Spending quality time serving them communicates great value to the people we meet and softens their hearts to hear about Jesus.  Trust, the daily life of African villagers is CHALLENGING.  They carry heavy water containers (usually on their heads, with a baby strapped to their backs!), they cook over an open fire, they hand wash laundry, they water huge gardens a bucket at a time, and care for livestock.  Having a Westerner "get dirty" helping them is a massive blessing and they will never forget it because it communicates great care and love for them.

We asked the students to carry water one evening to experience how challenging getting water is.

Spending time in the bush has challenges, but it is a far greater reward to be a part of what God is doing here, seeing how He is moving,  how many people receive salvation, and are set free from things that burden and bind them.
Glory to God!

Beauty's Story

I am still processing some of what God did during our few days of ministry a little over a week ago in the Simwatachela chiefdom.

I am going to do my best to tell you what I know about the life story of a little girl named Beauty.  What God did for her imprinted her on my heart, and for the rest of my life, I will never forget her.

We were in the area for 5.5 days and I believe on our second day, a mother approached Overland staff and students and asked them to pray over her 10 year old daughter, named Beauty.  Apparently, a few years ago, Beauty had been very sick and her parents had taken her to the witch doctor for a remedy.  Her health had improved for a few months, but then after that she became gravely ill and had been fully paralyzed for around 2 years.  Members of our group prayed over Beauty several different times over the next few days and didn’t see any change in her situation.

Our group a few hours before praying over Beauty.

On Thursday, I was hiking with a few students and we had been meeting person after person who requested that we pray over them – a few for salvation and many for healing.  We finally got our lunch break around 3pm at the truck, and then headed back to where we had left off.  As we walked, I prayed that God would direct our steps to those He wanted us to touch for Him that afternoon.

Quite literally, a few steps later, a lady had asked our translator Lucy to stop and have us pray for her daughter.  We agreed to do so and then as we followed her to the mat made up of cornmeal bags sewn together, my heart sunk a little.  There in a pool of urine lay the little paralyzed girl.  I honestly didn’t expect much from the Lord as we were now the third team of Overlanders to pray over her, but we knelt down next to her and prayed simple prayers asking the Lord to heal her and restore health to her body.  Then, I asked Lucy to tell Beauty to squeeze my hand.  About 30 seconds later I felt a small twitch.  Wondering if it was involuntary, I asked her to do it again.  She did!  Words fail to describe fully how incredible that little tickle felt on my hand!

Of course, I was a sobbing mess as we continued to pray over her and the Lord slowly increased the strength in her hands, arms, feet and neck over the next 20 minutes.  She was squeezing our hands, lifting her arms, moving her head from side to side and was pushing with her toes – absolutely incredible!

Then all of a sudden, her eyes got huge and her body began to convulse.  After about a minute, a demon came out of her.  I don’t have any special training or experience in things like this, but we just continued to pray over her, speak Scripture over her, and declared the authority of Christ over all powers on earth.  There was no fear at all in the situation, and at the end, when it had left, Beauty’s dazzling smile was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. 

We continued to pray over her and for the next hour we saw great progress as her back grew strong enough for her to sit up and she even took a few steps with gals holding on under her arms to support her.  With their hands under her arms, her shirt came up a little bit and we could see that her back had been scarred by a witchdoctor’s knife – there were cuts and marks all over.

God was doing amazing things and we were so excited!  However, Beauty seemed to get tired and was crying a little bit.  As we set her down to rest, she leaned back into one of the Overland gal’s lap and curled back into a fetal position with her hands and arms curling back in.  It looked like she was regressing back into the paralysis position we had initially found her in.

I prayed, asking God to show us what to do from here, and I felt an impression in my spirit to pray over her mind.   So, we did.  We also had a suspicion that perhaps there were more demons and sure enough, after about 15 minutes, a second demon manifested, and then quickly left.  After that demon was gone, Beauty was exhausted and just wanted to curl up in her mother’s lap.

We talked with her parents about trusting in Jesus alone for Beauty’s healing and how they must not take her to the witch doctor any more.  They agreed and we prayed with them for a little while too.

We asked them to bring Beauty the next day and we would continue to pray over her, but the parents said that they stay very far from where we were and that they needed to go home.  Apparently they had been sleeping near our campground for several nights already and the nights were really cold.  We commended them for their faith and perseverance and asked them to try to send word to the June team Overland is sending into the same area regarding how Beauty was doing.  At that time, we had a sense of peace over our group knowing that we had done what God wanted us to do that day and we felt like it was okay to go.

Honestly, I don’t know the end of her story.  I don’t know if Beauty is fully healed and running around again or if she is still struggling.  I continue to pray for her and ask God to continue the healing that had begun in her body.  Will you join me in the tension of the unknown ending to Beauty’s story?  Will take a few minutes right now to ask God to touch her body with His healing power and that the seed of faith that is planted in her parent’s hearts will grow to maturity and that they will continue to trust in God alone?

As you give to us and pray for us as we go, you truly are partnering with us, so you can join in the celebration of what God is doing in Beauty’s life with us.  We are so grateful.

Ministry in Mapatizya

Thank you so much for all of your prayers as our family joined the Advanced Missions Training students heading into the bush last week.  We were gone 5.5 days and traveled 12 hours round trip on some bumpy roads as we went to find people to share Christ's love with.  We ended up in the community of Mapatizya in the Simwatachela chiefdom.  As I mentioned before, the hills in this area contain a massive amethyst supply and the majority of the people we ministered to were miners or had a business somehow connected to "the stones".  We literally picked up beautiful purple rocks all around the soccer field that became our campground and the roads were sparkling with amethyst and quartz rocks.  It was a beautiful area and very green in comparison to the dry, dusty area near our base.

Dan and I served the team in various ways – I oversaw meal preparations and Dan did all the technological set up to show the Jesus Film two of the nights we were there.  We also took turns alternating who stayed in camp with the kids and who went hiking to do hut to hut evangelism/ministry with the students that day.  Miesha  and Titus did great and really seemed to have fun although there were some challenges as we had an audience of between 20-75 kids most of the day who just wanted to hang out and watch us!  (have you ever washed your hair using cups of water and a bucket while 75 people stare and giggle at you?!)

It was an amazing experience.  The headman of the area came the final night we were there and told us that people were coming to him all week sharing of the truth they heard from us, their new life in Christ, their freedom from demonic spirits, and of the healing they received as our teams prayed for them.  He gave us an invitation to come back any time to minister – we truly had great favor in the area.  Hundreds of children gave their lives to Christ after a school program, hundreds of people came forward to receive salvation after we showed the Jesus Film, and many of the huts we hiked to had people with hearts that were prepared in advance to hear the gospel and respond to the news of their Savior's great love.

We marked locations on our GPS as we hiked and made relational connections with leaders in the area as Overland intends to begin doing formal ministry here within the next year.

There are SO MANY stories, but I'll share just a few highlights this time so that this can get out to you.  I promise to share more stories soon here on this blog.

One afternoon, we were hiking and came to a hut where an older lady, her adult son, and several young ladies were.  They invited us to share with them and we sat down in the dust in the shade of their big tree and talked for about an hour.  The Advanced Mission Training students took turns sharing about creation, fall, our great need for a Savior and what Christ accomplished on the cross to restore us back to God.   Their hearts were already softened and they joyfully accepted Jesus as their Savior.  We asked if we could pray with them for anything, and the older lady asked for prayer for pain in her body.  As we prayed over her, her joints moved and popped.  When we were finished, she stood up and danced as she was completely pain free! She is with us in the above picture.

This next testimony was written by one of our students:
"My favorite story from this time of ministry is the story of Chris ‘Cucumber’, his last name was a Tonga name which meant cucumber but I have no hope of actually spelling the Tonga name. Chris was a witch-doctor, who began his career 16 years ago because of a dream he had in which a spirit came to him and told him to gather some materials and make charms and use them to heal people. In this dream he was also told that one day some people would come to him and tell him about God and spirits, when we came he said we were those people. We first met Chris on Tuesday as we traveled through the village in a team of five. We talked with him for a time and learned about his past and what he did, we shared what we believe about Jesus. On Wednesday we went back to Chris’ house and brought along Pastor Jake to aid in our conversation. He explained the difference between good and evil spirits and articulated the power of Jesus and the need to follow Jesus and Jesus alone. By the end of the conversation we had not appeared to make very much progress but we had spoken truth and done what we could to plant the seed.

Saturday morning as we were packing the truck to head out, Chris came up and asked to speak with a couple of us from the team that had visited his hut. We asked him what he wanted and he told us he wished to accept Jesus as his Lord and to follow Jesus and Jesus alone. With the assistance of Pastor Dragon, a local Tonga pastor who partners with Overland, we made sure he understood the decision he was making and he was sincere in his desire. Then we helped him to pray to accept Jesus and we encouraged him. I am so thankful for this opportunity and for the chance to have partaken in the salvation of Chris 'Cucumber'." - Jonathan

It is such a privilege to serve in Africa and a delight to meet so many people who are ready to respond to the gospel.  Honestly, we just show up, share God's love and many respond.  When we pray for healing, God often answers and I continue to be in awe. 

We are excited to continue investing our lives into these students and seeing all God has for them in the next 10 weeks! 

On another fun note, we were surprised by a large donation towards our house project last week and we are now at 92%of the finances we need to build our home in Zambia.  I am SO SO SO excited!!!!  Thank you to all of you who have given towards our building fund.  We talked through house plan details with the president and he and Dan are taking a walk today to finalize the site where we hope to build.  Dan has been doing a lot of work to make our tent more livable in the season we still have left until the house is ready and now we are excited to officially start to build our house project SOON.

If you'd like to contribute towards the house fund, go to www.overlandmissions.com/donate  and put "Hartley house fund" in the MEMO line.

Thank you for your love and prayers for us and your generosity to us - we couldn't do any of this without you!

Settling back into life in Zambia

It has been almost two months since my last blog update and boy, has a lot happened!  It has been quite the emotional roller coaster.  I got this quote in an email earlier this week and it seems to nicely sum up what I have been processing:  "God is still on the throne. He’s controlling the mix of joy to sorrow, peace to conflict, loss to gain, want to satisfaction, tragedy to triumph, with your best interests always foremost in His mind." - Pastor Emeka Mbelu


We transitioned from the States back to Africa in early April.  We had an easy international flight with the kids and were able to spend time with supporters in Germany for 48 hours on a long layover, which was really fun!  Dan also passed a kidney stone while we were there = OUCH!


We spent almost three weeks in South Africa and enjoyed connecting with friends  and taking a family vacation during that time.  We were blessed with an offering for our house project from a church where Dan preached and then that money was stolen when someone busted our truck window and rummaged around inside while we were playing on the beach. 


Seeing the ups and downs?!


We feel like we have been blessed beyond measure with 72% of what we need to build our house already in our account.  Thank you to all our friends and family who have given to us!  We are settling back into life and ministry in one of the most beautiful places on earth.  God is moving in the ministries all around us and we are thrilled to be here.


On the other hand, jumping back into the rugged life here is a process for me.  I gave myself a couple days of grace as this city girl shrieked and jumped at spiders (I killed 20 big ones in one day, Miesha killed 1!!), and now I am slightly more at peace about the remaining ones living in my space since they do eat mosquitoes.  There have also been more snakes than usual around.  Dan, the mighty hunter, has “relocated” a torantilla/baboon spider to a place further from our tent, he killed a scorpion, and two spitting cobras in the last week and a few other guys have killed several snakes also.  (Dan skinned the 4ft cobra and the skin is now in our freezer till he figures out something cool to make with it!)  


This one is the gold medal winner: this python was killed in Sukuke by these Zambians last Wednesday not far from where our friends are ministering and building a home.  (No, we weren’t there!!)




We are blessed to be able to house sit for two weeks while we get our tent sorted out and ready to move back into.  As you can imagine, in dusty Zambia, a tent left standing for 5 months needs a little scrubbing before it is inhabitable again.  Also, while we were gone - our tent was burgled.  They used a knife to slit a gash in the side and took about $1500 worth of things.  This was not the best way to be welcomed back to the base, but I have almost finished washing all the muddy footprints off of our bed and linens and even as I write, Dan is at the police station because they believe they have identified the thief.  There is a chance a few of our things may be able to be recovered.


We were also intensely blessed to have visitors from the states already!  Tom and Bonnie Kopp  with their pastors from Radiant Church John and Pam Vredevelt came to spend a long weekend with us.   Tom and Bonnie introduced Dan into missions and Zambia in 1994 on a mission trip they led and it was amazing to have them visit us as our lives have come full circle to living and ministering in Zambia ourselves.  Bonnie and Pam asked great questions and helped me process some of the recent challenges which was such a wonderful gift.  We went to the Victoria Falls with them and the Musi oa Tunya Game Reserve and saw some amazing wildlife.  Dan and John went into Sukute on Saturday and did some hut to hut evangelism and we also went to a women’s meeting on Sunday evening which was really fun.   We have been talking about Zambia for months with you all in the states, and it is just wonderful to be back and be here to minister.

We are currently in a preparation mode as our first class with 14 Advanced Missions Training students arrive on May 9^th.  We are also trying to figure out some house details – we’d love to begin building soon!

Will you please keep us in prayer?

-       for peace and joy in the final transition into the tent

-       for our 14 AMT students

-       for wisdom and insight as we teach and coach them

-       for our visas– our request for our two year business visa is currently under review.  We would love to have a hassle-free and quick approval!

-       We hold our belongings loosely, but it would be really nice to have back what was stolen from our tent.

We are still needing about $200/mo in monthly support.  If you’d like to contribute towards a part of this or give a one time gift for our house building fund, please email me at Janell@overlandmissions.com for details.

 

Thank you for your love and prayers for our family!

Love,

Janell   

The biggest fight in my marriage was over...

...tent camping.

Our first year of marriage, for our summer vacation, we went tent camping and water skiing at Lake Shasta in northern California for a week.  It was a hot one (over 100F the whole time) and Dan and I had loaned our nice big tent to a pregnant friend and ended up sharing a one-man tent.  It was pretty miserable, all cramped and sweaty in that small space.  I told Dan on our 16 hour drive back home that I would rather rent a cabin or do a different sort of a vacation (like a cruise!) next time.  As my husband thrives on roughing it and had invested tons of money into super nice camping equipment, he didn't like that at all.  We had a huge fight and then it was a very long, quiet, tension-filled 16 hour ride back.  

Don't you just love the delicious irony?!  For those of you who have been following our family’s transition journey the last year, you are probably chuckling with us.  Dan loves to say, “I have seen the Lord do incredibly miraculous things while doing ministry in Africa, but the biggest miracle of all is that my wife chose to live in a tent in Zambia!”

Our family of four lived in a 10' by 15' safari tent for 3 months just outside of Livingstone, Zambia while we went through Advanced Missions Training with Overland Missions.  It was the hottest season in Zambia in 12 years and was in the 120s for almost a month.  Our hottest day was 131F and when it cooled off to 80F after a storm, many of us put on jeans and jackets because we were freezing.  I know you are all laughing, but seriously, that was a 50 degree swing in temperature.  If your weather went from 90F down to 50F in 24 hours, you’d notice it too!  

We are in the states until the end of March, in South Africa for three weeks, and then plan to head on back to our tent in Zambia in late April.  While living in a tent is definitely still not my favorite thing, I am excited to get back to Africa and be a part of what God is doing there.  The tent will continue to be our home until we are able to build a house on base.   

We hope we will be able to complete a house by the end of 2012.

This is one of the homes on base and we hope to build one very similar to this by the end of 2012.

We’d love to invite you to be a part of building our home with us!  Here are some details for contributing to our house project fund:

We will need approximately $53,000 for this project.

 We recognize this is a large sum of money, but we are confident that Zambia is where God wants us to serve and live.  For those of you would like a cost breakdown, contact us - we are happy to share those figures with you.

We have already been blessed by the generosity of many of you.  Even before we have officially asked, we have already been given 15% of what we need.  God is so good to us!

Will you please consider donating towards our house fund?  Any amount would be a blessing.

You can donate online here www.overlandmissions.com/donate

please type “Hartley House” in the memo line to indicate it is for our project account. 

________________________________

By check - please write “3074 House Acct” on the memo line and mail to

Overland Missions

P.O. Box 566 

Cape Canaveral, FL 32920

_______________________________

 

South Africans – our acct details are:

Daniel Hartley. 
FNB - Cresta/254905  
 

Acct: 62099953393

______________________________

About 2 years ago someone shared with us that they believe the Lord wanted us to know that moving forward, our ministry was going to be funded by new sources and that places we’d expect funding from would change.  Boy, has this been proven to be true!  Already we are being surprised at almost every turn with who God is bringing forward to partner with us.  We look forward to sharing more stories of God’s faithfulness to us in this process.

Also, we need a few more monthly partners to join us to reach 100% fully funded status.  If you are interested in joining our monthly support team, you can go to www.overlandmissions.com/donate to set up a reoccurring payment with your card, of you can send checks to the address above and indicate on the memo line it is for “3074 monthly support”.  

Thank you for your prayers for us and for your partnership!  God bless you.

Janell

Furlough...Home Assignment...Missionary Vacation??

Dan and I are career missionaries.  This means that missions is our job and we have chosen to invest our lives in this kind of work.  It isn't a very "normal" job and we don't work an 8 hour day, 5 days a week.  It is challenging to describe a "normal work day".  It is more of a all consuming lifestyle that you have to create careful boundaries for protecting family time and rest otherwise you burn out because of the great needs we see around us all the time.  We end up transitioning from "event to event" rather than having a predictable life.

Now that we are back in the states for a few months for furlough, we deliberately carved out some time with our immediate family and for rest as we had just concluded a pretty challenging season of training as a family.  December was our "down time" month.  We borrowed winter clothes, then went to see the Zoo Lights (amazing!), we went to the aquarium, we played with cousins, Dan went to I-Fly (a skydiving simulator) with his Dad and brothers, Janell went out with her sisters, and we made some fun memories with family over the Christmas holidays.

Now, since January, we have been moving at a pretty fast clip.  We've met with a bunch of life groups, we were in FL for 10 days of missions conference and staff retreat with Overland Missions,  we have done meals with approximately 35 families, and shared with 3 different churches.  It has been a delight and the conversations have been full of meaningful connections, but I have to admit, some of it is becoming a bit of a blur too!  It is truly a miracle that we have done decent at recalling the names of our supporters and friends.  Ha ha!!  (you have to decide if we are truly on "vacation")

All the transitions are sometimes challenging, but I think there is a GRACE from God that covers that too and we also have had pockets of rest along the way.  Our kids have done super great with all the time driving in the car with us and with meeting with a million new friends.  We are so thankful for them. 

What I have learned along the way...
America is still "home" and is my "home culture" but I like the many ways that God has taken us down a slightly different path during our time living in Africa.  There is much about my thinking now that is "African" just below the surface.  I have to THINK all the time...as I am driving, I have to think carefully about which side of the road to pull into (we drive on the opposite side in Africa) and I often turn on the windshield/windscreen wipers since the blinker/indicator on our truck/bakkie in Africa is on the opposite side of the steering wheel.  As you can see from the last sentence, in Africa, we say things slightly differently too and especially when we first got back to the states, I'd have to process which way to say what I was thinking.

We have different priorities now and see life through a different set of experiences after living in Africa.  One simple one - we were expecting to see American families struggling more with the downturn in the economy, but honestly when we compare American families who are struggling to African families who are struggling...well, "struggling" has a vastly different definition to us now.  "Comfort" has a new definition, "Holy Spirit" has a new definition after seeing God move in new and different ways than we had grown up understanding, "Thunderstorm" means something different to us after living in Johannesburg, "Hot" has a new definition after living in a tent in Zambia during a heat wave that had us between 100F-131F for most of the month...you get the idea.

This isn't a criticism, more of an observation about how my own ways of seeing the world have changed.  Americans are still the most generous people on the planet and we are so grateful to so many of you for giving so faithfully to make sure that we can continue to live and work in Africa. 


Our family is exceedingly blessed to be surrounded by such a generous group of friends, both in the states and in Africa.  We've been blessed with clothes, with financial gifts, with an awesome truck/bakkie to borrow the whole time we are home, with meals, with encouragement and counsel from mentors, and Dan even won a season pass for snowboarding to Soldier Mt.  (Too bad we are only in Idaho for 10 days!)  We are so grateful for you all!


We are in the states through the last week of March and look forward to connecting with many more of you along the way. 

We are sharing at Fairfield Community Church (Idaho) this Sunday the 12th, and at Summit View Church's Felida Campus (Vancouver, WA) on the 19th.  Please contact us if you are interested in details for the times/locations.  We'd love to see you!

Refections on living in a tent...

Although it has been 3 weeks since we left Zambia, I wanted to write a bit so that I can process on paper and let you in on a few things I learned while going through an intense season of missionary training.  

We moved up to Zambia from South Africa in July and house-sat for some friends in Livingstone for a month before moving out to Overland Mission’s Base.  We had a chance to explore a little bit and absolutely fell in love with the wild beauty of Zambia.  Often on our 35 minute drive from town (where we were house-sitting) to Overland’s base, we would often see baboons or elephants by the side of the road.  Our record was seeing 74 elephants in one sighting!  You also are right alongside the Zambezi River for a bit of the drive and in several places you can see the mist from the mighty Victoria Falls from the road.  It was absolutely amazing!

Our Advanced Missions Training class began the last week of August and our class of 15 was filled with extremely high caliber people who also have a heart for the lost.  I think we may have learned equally as much from living in community with these people as we did from our formal lectures.  They are now life long friends!

In the last 3 months we have lived in a tent, we have changed car tires,  we’ve written papers, we’ve written and preached multiple sermons, we’ve read lots of books, we’ve sat through hours of classroom lectures on a variety of topics, we’ve worked on trucks, we’ve gardened, we’ve fixed up multiple injuries in our medical  class scenarios,  we’ve cooked over fires, we slaughtered goats, killed and plucked chickens, we completed survival skills training, and we survived a pretty intense heat wave for a month (hottest day was 131F/55C).  But, best of all - we have ministered in villages and seen God move in really amazing ways.

It has certainly been the most challenging and rewarding months of our lives.

The Challenges: Living in a tent was definitely not my favorite part.  In high school, I went on 5 summer missions trips and spent a total of about 40 weeks living in a tent.  I felt like I had already "put in my time in the tent" for missions.  J  It really isn’t my thing.  However, it could’ve been worse.  We did have electricity in our tent and it was tall enough that adults could stand up in it.  About half-way through, our Johannesburg church blessed us with an “overflow tent” for the kids to move into as their bedroom.  It made things so much easier!  Having electricity there also meant we could use a fan which really did help during the heat wave we had in October and November. 

This year, the rains were unusually late, and the heat really made things challenging for quite some time.  For about a month and a half, we fluctuated between 105-125F/40-52C and the hottest day of my entire life, it was 131F/55C.  Wow, that was a challenging one.  And, no, there was NO air conditioning anywhere.  Our tents felt like ovens and sometimes even when the fan was blowing on you, it felt like someone was blowing a hot hair dryer in our faces.  We went to class like normal and ate meals like normal, but we got out of our Physical Training that day! J  A few nights it was still approximately 95F/35C in our tent at 11pm, but most nights it would finally cool down around 9pm so we could sleep okay. 

During that heat wave was when a large percentage our class fell sick – we had a variety of chest colds, high fevers, diarrhea, and the 15month baby boy got malaria.  With prayer and proper meds, everyone recovered eventually, but that wasn’t such a great two weeks.

The only good thing about the extreme heat was that our laundry always dried on the line in about 10 minutes!  That was very handy.  J

We also had to be always on the alert for the wildlife – there were a couple spitting cobras and a python killed on base and both Dan and I killed scorpions, but God was good to protect everyone from harm.  There was a base cat that was stalking us and was always trying to get into our tent to eat our food.  It was so annoying, but one day it alerted people to a spitting cobra behind our tent on the path, and another day it dropped a dead snake piece “present” on our mat so we decided it was worth keeping around and started feeding it.  God used that silly cat to help protect our family from critters.  J

 The Joys:  We loved the people we were in class with – they were a blessing to us the entire time.  The classes themselves and our teachers were so very high caliber and the info will be incredibly useful to us moving forward in missions.  Also, the ministry we got to do in the villages was intensely rewarding.  You can read about them in previous blogs.

I can honestly say that the JOY of being a part of what God was doing in these rural areas so far outweighed any inconveniences that we endured.  Our group of 15 went into the bush 3 times, a total of 14 days of outreach, and we counted over 230 salvations!  We were also able to do some follow up and discipleship on a few days as well.  God is so good!

Also, God did some work in my heart too showing me that I rely too much on my senses.  I got annoyed when we were served bland oatmeal for breakfast 5x a week and my attitude fluctuated too much based on whether the food we were being served was good or not.  During our bush cooking class one day (cooking random stuff over an outdoor fire), our group decided that we weren’t going to say anything negative to each other from 4-7pm.  During that 3 hour time period, we had to go cut firewood, start a fire, boil water and make a lentil soup with polony (like a chicken version of Spam) eat it for dinner, and best of all - that day it was 124F/52C.  There were more than a few things that we could’ve complained about, but we sang, laughed, and ended up having a wonderful time together.  We managed to make some pretty yucky stuff taste decent that week.

 If I was too hot or didn’t get enough sleep, then I struggled so much to stay positive and be encouraging of others.  Not saying I am completely sorted out now, but the Lord and I have made some great progress.

Also, before we left God encouraged me about this big change for our family through several different things.  As our Johannesburg life group was praying for us as we were leaving, someone said that Psalm 23 was going to be very important to us.  During one of the Sunday messages given by a guest pastor from the states, he gave us amazing new insights from Psalm 23 that I am holding onto tightly.  God is so good – He will care for us and lead us and prepare the way for any new ground he wants us to go into!!  Also, a picture that was painted by someone in our Johannesburg church encouraged me a great deal.  It was of a tree planted by a stream of water – quite simple really.  As I was looking at it, God spoke to my heart that I am like that tree and he is going to take my roots down deep and that not only me, but my whole family is going to thrive in a new environment.  Then, God confirmed it to my heart again.  During preaching class we had an exercise where we were given a random verse, had 30 seconds to read it and then had to preach on it for a minimum of a minute.  (fun idea, huh!)  I was given the verse:  Jeremiah 17:7-8.

 “But blessed are those who trust in the LORD,
   whose confidence is in him.
 They will be like a tree planted by the water
   that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
   its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
   and never fails to bear fruit.”

It summed up exactly what that picture had been speaking to my heart and it felt like the Lord had given me a hug.  Thriving during a season of drought and “not fearing when heat comes” = pretty perfect, right?!

Through your partnership in prayers and financial support of our family, you can celebrate with us in all God has done for us, in us, and through us!

We love you – thank you for being on this journey with us.