Bringing Hope and Joy

Sunrise at base

Outreach ministry with Noah

Going to the slums for outreach 

Rugby

Hey everybody! This blog will be about my time in South Africa so far. My team is stationed in Johannesburg with the other boys’ team. We haven’t gotten to explore Joburg a ton because of the fact that it’s dangerous to take public transportation and so we aren’t allowed to. From what I have seen, the main city is pretty nice. It’s very similar to America in many ways. For ministry both teams are working with a big organization called Impact Africa. They do a lot of incredible things to reach the people in Johannesburg. They have four main ministries: Impact Students, Impact Baby Rescue, Jablani Kids, and Community Outreach. Each of the ministries serves the people who live in the slums in Johannesburg. We’ve had the privilege of serving with each of these ministries over the past couple weeks we’ve been here, and they’ve all been awesome! Impact Students is a ministry where we go to local schools and teach the students from a curriculum which addresses things like identity, circumstances vs choices, respect, and the plans of the enemy. We play games with them, dance with them, teach them the lessons, share testimonies of how we’ve experienced the lessons in our lives, and more. Impact Baby Rescue is an incredible ministry that seeks to prevent abortion and baby dumping which unfortunately happens a lot where we serve. They offer free pregnancy and parenting counseling and baby safes where people can anonymously drop off their babies and an alarm will go off alerting the staff to the fact that a baby has been dropped off. Then the staff will take the baby to one of Impact’s baby homes where it’ll be taken care of. When we served with that ministry, we went to a local clinic and taught about what Impact does to save babies and then passed out flyers to locals and explained what we do and how to reach us if they need help with an unwanted pregnancy. Jablani Kids is a fun ministry where we go to certain locations and have short VBS’s for the local children. We play with them, lead them in dances, play games with them, teach them a memory verse, and teach them a short Bible story. My favorite ministry by far here and on the whole race so far is the community outreach ministry. We go to different parts of the slums and try to engage the locals in conversation. Then we share the Gospel with them and encourage believers we find. We’ll also pray with everyone we engage with if they’ll let us. The people of Joburg are hungry for the Gospel. Most have heard it, but some haven’t. Even those that have heard it don’t often understand the whole Gospel; they often have just heard pieces of it. There’s also so much brokenness, alcoholism, drug abuse, and hopelessness in the slums here and so through this ministry we get to bring hope to the hopeless and joy to the depressed. That’s why it’s my favorite ministry I’ve done on the race so far. I’ve witnessed many people being born again and sometimes then wanting us to pray for them to be freed from their addictions to alcohol and/or smoking weed. There have also been multiple healings we’ve experienced. And we don’t just share the Gospel with people, lead them to Jesus then dip. If someone accepts Christ, we’ll then give them a copy of the Gospel of John and point the new believer to a local church we know is preaching the Word of God. I have so many stories of God leading us to talk to someone, and then us sharing the Gospel with them, and then them eagerly accepting it. I’ve even had the privilege to lead some people in praying to accept Jesus! It’s also really cool to experience being in a conversation with someone and then God giving me a Scripture or word to speak to them. Ministry here is so powerful and it’s incredible to be part of a ministry where I can literally see the impact we’re making. One really cool thing that also happened at outreach ministry was that I was given an African name! My African name is Cosikona (or something like that). It means God with us. It was also in this ministry where I engaged in the most disgusting thing I’ve done on the race. I helped a lady and her son clean chicken feet she had boiled and was going to sell for food while we talked with her. It was nasty and so weird! Anything for the Gospel though! Some of the fun things we’ve been able to do here so far have been getting to go to a race where there were multiple different kinds of vehicles that raced and going to Joburg’s theme park, Gold Reef. We also got to go to an awesome rugby match today! I don’t fully understand rugby yet, but it was still super fun! Another awesome experience I had recently was with a fast I did. I’d been struggling with prayer a lot before I did the fast, not knowing what to pray for and whenever I did pray, it just feeling empty and pointless. I’d also been struggling with just feeling empty in general. Then I had the idea to fast. Through my time of fasting and really focusing on prayer, I felt a lot of joy and fulfillment and when I went out to pray during the fast, I don’t know what happened, but I just started praying and everything I’d been struggling with came out. It was my best time of prayer in a while and ever since the fast, I’ve actually enjoyed prayer and felt a lot more at peace, joy, and fulfilled whenever I pray and just in general. The Lord has also grown me a lot in boldness in this season. It was prophesied to me in Eswatini that the Lord wanted me to walk in more boldness the next season of South Africa. I’ve really tried to press more into that and walk in more boldness, whether that be engaging strangers in the outreach ministry or speaking up whenever the Lord gives me a verse or something to say to anyone at outreach ministry. I also had the opportunity to walk in more boldness and teach one of the Impact Students classes. That day we were teaching on identity and because the Lord has grown me so much in that in this past eight months, when they were asking for a volunteer to teach the classes even though I don’t like public speaking, I decided to step out in boldness and volunteered. The Lord has continued to grow me a lot in this season as He has done the whole race, and I can’t wait for whatever He’s going to teach me next! Until next time!

-Luke