Lost in Faith

The 7th trip and I am leaving hopeful. First time the financial and spiritual poverty hasn’t been left me without hope.

Living in a village fro 3 days, visiting in people’s homes and seeing the ruthless conditions and stifling circumstances amazingly has given me a hope that the Mercy Alliance Strategy (see mercyalliance.com) has incredible traction.

Strategic to this is the leadership development process–Eastern Cape Bible School ECBC) to Leadership Experience (LXP) or Jabulani African Ministries (JAM) and on to Church Planting Experience (CPx). Being with Magwa, Moses and Lenny, black Xhosa guys who have the Transkei on their heart. They inspired me and have given me a passion to get the leadership development process funded and get the South Africans focused on training.

The Child Sponsorship Program is working well. We were able to work with the committee in Bukwini to turn over complete control of the list to them. They are going to make some adjustment to the list because we found people getting our food and government help while others were getting nothing. The leadership in Bukwini is taking the lead and making the hard choices. I was proud of their vision for their community.

My work with them has come along way. Instead of some members firing hard ball questions at me to put me on the spot, now someone on the committee handles the hard ball questions thrown at me. I have learned to keep my mouth shut. Quite the miracle.

David Stanley, who serves with his leadership gifts at Birchwood Church has been blogging this experience. Check his posts out at http://dmacstanley.blogspot.com/

Our team endured some tough stuff–dysentery, an outhouse with a memorable smell, hard floors, 3 inch cockroaches at night, dogs barking all night, rooster that get up before the roosters crow, non stop kids, activity and poverty that rips your heart out. They also got to ride on the Indian Ocean, climb Magwa Falls (See David’s Blog for pics), stand 100 yards from giraffe, rhino, zebra, jump Bloukrans Bridge (720 ft), and enjoy the company of Rufus and Almarie.

We accomplished some important things. We’ve started a database of stats on some of our orphans, given away water rollers to 37 people with 13 left give away, learned that the SA schools are all feeding children once while at school.

We are on the right track and need to pick up steam!