The Bulger Bulletin

Celebrating with style!

2012-02-09T20:08:00.028+02:00

Allow us to catch up a bit and share about a significant day this past November, a day in the lives of some students in the high school ministry that Cherie leads. But first, a little background to better understand the day…

Being south of the equator, we’re in summer, headed towards fall – and correspondingly, our schools match the seasons. At the end of 2011 students across the nation completed a school year and have begun their subsequent year in the last couple of weeks. This past year was a noteworthy year. The high school class of 2011 was called “Mandela’s kids” because its students were born in 1994, the year Nelson Mandela was elected president in South Africa’s first fully democratic election. Those students were the first to go through their entire schooling under the new government and system that entitles all students to the same opportunity for education and learning. However, that opportunity has not been the reality for the students in Impumelelo Phambili, Cherie’s high school ministry, nor for thousands of others like them.

Unfortunately, large numbers of South Africa’s students are subjected to schooling in inadequate facilities with overcrowded classrooms; under-skilled, under-paid and unmotivated teachers; and a lack of funding and resources for books and materials – in other words, they receive a very sub-standard education that is trying to play make-up from the educational wrongs of the past. Sadly, the students are the ones that suffer from this reality. In 2011, of all the high school students that wrote their exams to graduate from high school, only 70% passed, though this was cause for celebration as this was the highest ‘pass rate’ in the nine years we’ve lived in the country (at least as best as we can remember).

The South African schooling system is different in significant ways from the system we knew growing up in the US. Much could be written about those differences, but here we’ll simply highlight that 12th graders study and write national cumulative final exams, covering material they’ve learned throughout their high school years, in order to graduate. After completing their exams, students wait about one month to learn if they successfully passed their exams, and have graduated. How do they know if they have passed? They look for their results in a newspaper. On the national release date of the results, students gather at their high school with newspapers in hand and look for their student ID number in the paper to see whether or not they have passed and graduated. This is pretty much the extent of their graduation. No formal ceremony with cap and gown (or anything). No Pomp and Circumstance. (Can you read our cultural bias between the lines of this update? Shame on us…) Now, back to a special day last November.

On Saturday the 19th, Cherie’s high school ministry honored and celebrated its first five 12th grade students – young people with aspirations and dreams of graduating from high school. When the high school youth ministry began in 2008, it only included grade 8 and 9 students. Four years later, it had its first grade 12 graduates from Impumelelo Phambili (IP). On that morning, the five graduating students arrived to the year’s final gathering not knowing that a celebration ceremony awaited them. The five were escorted to a separate room and dressed in formal graduation gowns and caps (donated by friends during our US home visit last year). They then paraded in front of their peers to the traditional Pomp and Circumstance march music and were individually presented with a graduation certificate from IP. Small group leaders spoke prayers of blessing over each student’s life and for their future. Graduates then had the opportunity to share words of wisdom, encouragement and challenge to their younger peers, and in turn, their peers got to share words of thanks and affirmation to the graduates. It was an amazing, beautiful exchange of encouragement amongst the students! Cherie had tears of pride and joy for her five graduates – young people that she has known and watched grow since 2002.
The celebration ended with the graduates tossing their caps in the air and much cheering, followed by a pizza lunch and cake which said, “Congradulations Class of 2011.” What a festive way to end the ministry year and honor students that had gone the distance.

In January, Cherie phoned her five IP graduates to find out if they had passed their exams. Only one out of the five had passed all their exams. The other four students had failed a couple of their exams and therefore, did not graduate. Cherie welled up with anger as she knows those students are bright, and the reason they failed was because the education system had failed them. The students who failed were discouraged at first – but they have a second opportunity to re-write their failed exams, in March. All four have positive attitudes and are trusting they will pass on the second chance. They trust they will “achieve forward in life” (Impumelelo Phambili in Zulu)! Peter, the only student that did pass, was able to do so partly because he was sponsored by a family that paid for his high school education, sending him to a better school outside his informal settlement. Peter has been accepted to one of the major universities in Johannesburg and is starting his studies right
now. Cherie asked Peter what he plans to study…his answer? He wants to become a high school teacher! Peter, after having a positive educational experience, will now be able to pour into the lives of disadvantaged students and hopefully become part of the new generation of teachers that are desperately needed to affect change in the future. Please take a moment and thank God for Peter…

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jer 29:11, NIV – the verse inscribed in the students’ IP graduation certificates)

Praise Items

Thank you for your prayers for leaders of Cherie’s high school ministry as they have developed plans to re-format the ministry. New ideas are in place and are being implemented as we write. Pray for Charles, a local leader that has been identified and will now being equipped to provide point leadership to the ministry beginning in 2013. Pray for Philen, a key leader, as he grooms Charles for that role. Pray for Cherie as she’ll now be primarily focused on recruiting mentors for the students, and writing curriculum for the mentors to use in building into the students. Pray for all, leaders and students, as changes are implemented one step at a time.
Thank you for praying for David’s research trip within SA, from 29 January – 8 February. God answered prayers! David (and Cherie, who went as well) had an amazingly fruitful time connecting with leaders and returned with 40 completed survey forms from key pastoral leaders. Please pray for another trip that will take place sometime during the middle two weeks of March.

Prayer Points

Please pray for Nkele, Innocentia, Zacharia and Godfrey, the four IP students that will re-write exams in late March for the subjects they failed. Pray that they will grasp and retain whatever information is needed in order to pass their exams. And pray against the spirit of discouragement.
Pray for David as he meets with members of the TOPIC Global Leadership Team 16-18
February…the team faces serious decisions regarding TOPIC International’s future. More than anything, pray that each team member would hear God’s voice, in a unified way, regarding His intentions for TOPIC in the future.
Please pray for our hosting of a short-term ministry team 3-10 March, serving at the HIV + AIDS hospice home and Cherie’s children’s/youth ministries. Pray for a unified team that serves well, and pray that we can serve and host team members in a way that blesses them.

Language Lessons

A proverb from Guinea: Knowledge is like a garden: if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-11T09:51:00.025+02:00

Happy New Year! (Or, as people like to say here in South Africa, compliments of the new year!...though we haven’t yet found anyone that knows exactly what that phrase means…) We hope this update finds you coming off a blessed Christmas season and ready for 2012. We had a wonderful opportunity to catch our breath surrounding the holidays, and are feeling rested and ready for the coming year of ministry. Thank you to many of you that were in touch in the last month through emails, cards and otherwise.

In our January updates, we like to share broader areas of prayer for the coming year, and this January is no exception. With apologies for the length of this update, after a couple of brief updates since our last ‘normal’ update in October, following are areas where we would value your prayers, and God’s answers to them, in 2012.

Praise items: Thank you for praying for…

David’s participation in an OC International leadership conference and meetings in Brazil in October. It was a great time of connecting, integration, learning and encouragement. The conference provided a very strong sense of affirmation for us joining this agency in 2009. Please pray for one of the outcomes from the conference, David’s efforts to establish a leadership development network within OC.
Our local OC team’s efforts on financial planning issues – South African income tax and health insurance issues. We are still in process with this, attempting to find more affordable health insurance options and to reduce/eliminate our income tax liability to the South Africa Revenue Service. Your continued prayers would be appreciated.
The end of Cherie’s high school ministry year, in November. As last year was the first year she had 12th graders in the ministry, she planned and conducted a surprise graduation ceremony for five students graduating out of the ministry. It was an incredible time of celebration and affirmation!
We hadn’t announced this in advance, but in November we were blessed by a visit from David’s sister Karen and family friend Chana from the US. We had a blast being together and creating memories as we did some really fun things here.

Prayer requests for the next month…

Please pray for planning efforts for each of us.

Cherie will be having a series of meetings with other leaders of the high school ministry, to explore significant changes to the structure of the ministry. These discussions will continue well into the year, but several significant meetings will take place soon. A key national leader, one whom Cherie thought could take point leadership of the ministry, has just announced he will be moving to Cape Town in one year.
Please pray for this issue throughout the year (we’ll keep you posted) – for God’s guidance, for unity, good communication, and for Cherie to increasingly know what her role should be going forward.
David is working feverishly to make appointments with pastoral leaders through the first quarter, with a goal to complete the data collection portion of a research project he is conducting with a team of others (more below). He will need to make two trips to other South African provinces in the next ten weeks, including one beginning ~30 January to some remote communities. Please pray for networking and connections to find pastors in other parts of the country, and for open doors for appointments.
We will be hosting a short-term serving team the first week of March, and we’re ramping up our planning efforts for that week. Please pray for our coordination and communication with Pat, Charlene and Denise as together we put together a great week of ministry!

…and for all of 2012 (in random order).

Please pray…

For our intentional efforts to abide (Jn 15:5) and abound (1 Cor 15:58) in our walks with Jesus.
That Cherie would continue disciplines she began in December, to eat more healthily and exercise regularly (in anticipation of a milestone birthday next January J). And David too, and for his encouragement of his wife!
For David’s efforts, with colleagues, to sort out challenges facing TOPIC International. (TOPIC is the international pastoral training network for which David leads efforts in Southern Africa.) In mid-2011, TOPIC’s international director resigned, and it took the remainder of the year to initiate a process to address this challenge/situation. Essentially, David will be part of a global team that will work intensively, in the first half of the year, to bring substantial structural change to TOPIC. Please pray for David’s efforts with Otto, Philip, Ramesh and Paul – for wisdom, creative thinking, clarity, communication, unity, courage and more. Please pray in particular for our first in-person task force meeting 16-18 February, which should establish our six-month plan for this significant process.
That God would reveal a select number of girls from the high school ministry that Cherie can disciple and build into in 2012.
For opportunities for Cherie to facilitate HIV + AIDS workshops with church leaders around Johannesburg, and to travel with David to conduct workshops in other parts of the country and in surrounding nations. She would like to see these workshops becoming an increasing part of her ministry here, and would like to give this a lot of focus in 2012.
For David’s leadership of a task force conducting the training research project in South Africa. This project, surveying pastoral leaders about their need for more training and development, has been a huge undertaking and needs to turn a corner in 2012. About 750 surveys have been collected, and the goal is to complete around 100 more surveys in the first quarter of the year.
Please pray for David as he attempts to ‘crack the whip’ on task force members, keeping all members focused and moving forward. Pray that all would be intentional, disciplined and encouraged, moving forward.
That Cherie would have more joy in 2012. The 2nd half of 2011 was very difficult, especially due to putting out a lot of fires that developed in her ministries during last year’s home visit. She was pretty well worn out by the end of the year, and is trusting God for a different year of ministry in 2012.
For us in the midst of transitions within our Johannesburg ministry team:
A couple, dear teammates and friends, are moving out of the country in July/August, for a projected two years (we’re withholding their names here as this news hasn’t been publicly announced in the region). Pray for us as we release them and prepare for a new phase in our relationships.
We hope/expect to welcome a new couple to our team, Scott and Maggie, who are currently raising support and intending to join our ministry team this year. Please pray for us to be disciplined and prepared to welcome and integrate them. We’re excited! But we don’t want them to feel like their arrival is just another task amidst all our activity…please pray to help us make it otherwise.
Related to the couple that is departing from our team, the husband and David have worked closely together on an initiative the last three years, and the husband’s departure will necessitate changes to strategy, leadership, etc. Please pray for their efforts (together with others) in the first half of the year, to adjust their plans and make an effective transition.
One year ago we asked for prayer as we wanted to seriously consider whether we’d continue as a part of our local church in Johannesburg. Because 2011 was so unusual, with our long home visit, we never truly began that evaluative process. However, we did fulfill, by year’s end, the serving commitments we had made within the church, so once again we’re asking for prayer regarding our church future here. 2012 should be more of a normal year for us, providing us the opportunity to truly engage this issue. Please pray for and with us here.

Thank you for praying with and for us! We’re grateful for your partnership with us in this invaluable and strategic way.

Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving… (Col 4:2, NASB)

Lastly, if you’re interested, our agency, OC International, will be periodically sharing stories in 2012 to mark the 60-year anniversary of the mission. If you’re interested in a very brief story highlighting a bit of the heritage of our mission, we’ve re-posted that story below, in the next blog entry.

A bit of OC's heritage

2012-01-10T22:01:00.009+02:00

In 2012 OC International is celebrating our 60th anniversary as a mission agency. By the grace of God, beginning in 1952 with just three American missionary couples, OC’s ministry has grown and expanded into a worldwide ministry which last year served more than 1,000,000 national church leaders.

To celebrate these 60 wonderful years, throughout this year we will be highlighting various aspects of OC’s worldwide ministry. As we begin this year of celebration, I want to share with you the amazing story of four Chinese believers, apart from whose sacrifice there never would have been an OC International. Their story is below…
Greg Gripentrog, President, OC International

The year was 1950. The city was Shanghai, China. The Chinese Communists had taken over the city. Four American missionaries, Dick and Ruth Hillis and Paul and Madra Holsinger, were under house arrest because of an anti-Communist tract Dick had written. Over recent months Dick had repeatedly been charged with being an American spy or an agent of the Nationalist
army. A number of missionaries had already been executed by the Communists, and Dick knew that at any moment the dreaded knock on the door might come … the march into the street …
then a bullet in the back of the head.

The knock did come. However, the Communist leader did not bring a word of judgment and death, but rather a word of release and freedom. Two Chinese couples had approached Communist officials and offered to give their lives in exchange for the two missionary couples. Their offer was accepted, and within five hours the missionaries were on a boat leaving Shanghai. Within a year Dick Hillis was in Formosa sharing the gospel with 400,000 Nationalist troops who had fled the mainland, and the next year OC was born!

As a mission we owe our very existence to the sacrifice of these two Chinese couples. I am looking forward to meeting them one day in heaven and recounting to them the incredible things the Lord has done in nations around the world as a result of their sacrifice.

Dick Hillis, OC Founder, was fond of saying, “It’s amazing how much gets done when no one cares who gets the credit.”

Did You Know?

Sixty years ago OC began with one team of three couples on the island of Formosa, with no intent to become an international mission. Today we are:
• 10 mobilization centers (sending countries)
• 34 nations where we have resident personnel
• 74 teams
• 675 ministry personnel (60% non-U.S.)

Culture shock at the grocery store

2012-01-02T08:41:00.005+02:00

Heading into New Year's Day, we were without a product to complete a recipe Cherie'd been wanting to make - refried beans. Refried beans is one of those products that comes and goes on the shelves of certain grocery stores in Johannesburg. Cans can be found for a few months, and then for a few months they're nowhere to be found...as is true for certain other imported products. So on New Year's Day, we resorted to a new idea - to finally check out the Spar grocery store in Fourways.

The Spar in Fourways wasn't a new idea, as we'd heard about it for years. Other American ministry workers had shared about this particular store, speaking of it in excited, reverential tones. It was said that this store, supposedly located near a private school where many expatriates send their children, stocked many imported items. We had the idea that the prices would be on the high side, as we'd also recently read in a book that, supposedly, a nearby suburb was the neighborhood of choice for wealthier Americans living in Joburg - many in a gated community that featured herbivores roaming the grounds, such as zebra, various types of antelope, and others. Just a little different from our community!

So we ventured to the Spar late on New Year's morning, wondering what we'd find. In short, our experience was very similar to ones we have every time we're back in the US - we got hit with a blow of culture shock inside a grocery store.

The inside of the store was unlike any we'd seen in South Africa, and certainly beyond the grocery stores where we normally shop. The deli, bakery and flower sections combined were larger than one of the stores we normally shop. And the variety! The overall feeling was one of having been transported into a grocery store somewhere else, perhaps on another planet.

It wasn't merely an exeperience of thinking we were in an American grocery store, as there were, unexpected to us, many products that must have been imported from Europe. We encountered new languages, ingredients and food ideas at every turn. And yes, there were certainly American food products for sale that we'd never seen anywhere else in South Africa - with expected high prices to match. We found labels and logos with familiar names...Campbell's, Kraft, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, etc. Some of the items were products informally known as 'comfort foods - in our case, in more ways than one!

And most importantly, we found refried beans! Mission accomplished. It seemed a bit strange, after an hour of walking through the store with jaws hanging on the ground, to be walking out of the store with only four small products in hand (two cans of refried and one can of black beans, and some butter we'd remembered we needed). But we chalked up our morning to being part shopping, part cultural experience - perhaps the beginning of an annual tradition to be reminded that we can still experience culture shock here even after so many years.

A God of celebration

2011-10-16T20:53:00.010+02:00

A couple of weeks ago, David was blessed to participate in a celebration marking the 20th birthday of a family of churches in South Africa. The founder of the churches, Pastor Phineas, is a friend of ours and a ministry colleague of David’s, and David was only too happy to accept the invitation to attend the celebration and share a few words at one of the services. (Unfortunately, Cherie could not participate as she was too busy with prep for her high school camp.) It was a wonderful weekend of relationships, worship, encouragement, vision and remembrance. All who attended were in agreement that it was a great weekend together…but through it all, from David’s standpoint, was a question to be answered – was the celebration biblical?

Certainly God is a celebratory God. He delights in celebrations and parties (counter to the impression that some have that He is a stern taskmaster or chief of the behavior police). In the Old Testament we find the creation account, where God consistently took time to admire the things He had created, and “saw that it was good” – probably times of reflection and celebration. God also commanded His people to celebrate through several types of feasts. From the New Testament, we know that Jesus attended a wedding, and a party at the invitation of Matthew. There can be no question that God celebrates and wants us to as well. But do we find biblical examples of God celebrating milestones such as the birthday of a church – at least in the same way that we celebrate such things today? None come immediately to mind.

We do find biblical examples of God commemorating events in the establishment of His kingdom. The Old Testament cites several examples of altars being built to memorialize times and places where God intervened and demonstrated His goodness. One such example is found in Joshua chapters 3 & 4. After wandering in the desert for 40 years, God was about to bring His people into the land of promise, by crossing the Jordan River. You can read the story yourself to be reminded that, after the people crossed the river, God instructed the leaders to place stones in the dry riverbed to commemorate their crossing (4:9) – stones to commemorate God’s intervention and goodness. Interestingly, the verse states that the stones “are there to this day” – leading us to believe that they will yet be found some day, and will provide us with yet another reason to know the veracity of the Bible and to celebrate and worship God.

So, in the past, God showed that He commemorated ‘ministry milestones,’ as the Joshua passage demonstrates. Reflecting on these types of Old Testament passages might lead one to think that God’s celebratory nature is defined by various piles of stones – dead stones – littering the Middle East. One could think that those piles, that memorialize God’s intervention and goodness, are the extent of His sense of celebration…God was a celebratory God. But to believe this would be to fall short of what God wants us to understand about Him.

Know that in his first letter, Peter calls “you who believe” (2:7) “living stones” – living stones (1 Pet 2:5). You who believe are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people for God’s own possession, made to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. We who believe, today, are living stones! It’s a blessing that there are piles of old, ‘dead’ Middle Eastern stones that testify to God’s intervention and goodness. But there’s something even better to testify of Him – gatherings of His people, “living stones,” that come together to testify of His intervention and goodness in their lives – to celebrate!

When His living stones come together to commemorate God and His intervention and goodness (“to honor the memory of, to keep alive the memory of,” Webster) – whether to mark the birthday of a local church or otherwise – that is a true celebration. Those gatherings are amazing, present-day examples of God’s celebratory nature! God is a celebratory God! In this context, the recent 20th birthday celebration of the South African family of churches was exceptionally biblical. We pray and believe that as He considered that church birthday celebration, God “saw that it was good.”

…celebrate the Feast of God… (Lev 23:41, The Message)

Praise items:
• Thank you for your prayers for David’s and John’s trip to Mozambique and Malawi. The ministry was very fruitful – good connections and great feedback regarding Pastoring of Pastors in each of three cities. The trip included some logistical challenges as no diesel fuel was available in Malawi. Our tools of the trade (September update, below) came in handy on the trip; for a description of the mild adventure, see the 28 September post below.
• Thank you for your prayers for our recent visitors (it’s been a very busy stretch lately!). Our team had a very good visit with Stacey as we got to know each other and ask whether God would have her join our team. Now that she’s back home in the US, we’re debriefing and considering next steps. Our team was also blessed by the visit of Daniel and Ellen, a couple that spent a week with us doing team-building and providing life-coaching. It was a full, rich week. For one team member’s perspective on one day from that week, you can visit http://insteadbless.blogspot.com/#!/2011/10/becoming-spiritual-community.html. Cherie and David were also blessed to host Bill, a pastor from one of our supporting churches, for a three-day visit, and we also thoroughly enjoyed a dinner with a short-term team from our home church that passing through Joburg on its way to Zambia.
• Thank you for your prayers for the high school ministry camp that is concluding as this update is being written. Please thank God for the funds that were donated to underwrite the camp. Please pray for post-camp follow-up and next steps, as the ministry year winds toward conclusion in mid-November.

Prayer requests:
• Please pray for David as he travels to Brazil 17-28 October for leadership meetings with OC International. Please pray for clarity, communication, encouragement and unity regarding future steps for OC and our local team in Joburg.
• Please continue to pray for our local ministry team and our steps with financial planning issues, especially as we research South Africa income tax and health insurance issues. November could be a key month of decision-making. Pray for our next steps of researching options, and for wisdom in decision-making.
• Please also continue to pray for wisdom for David and other leaders as they continue to determine the best direction for TOPIC internationally as it is undergoing change. This will probably be a significant prayer request through the remainder of 2011; we’ll provide more info on this request in early 2012.

Language Lessons
A proverb from Ethiopia: Anticipate the good so that you may enjoy it.

David's Mozambique / Malawi trip, 11-17 September

2011-09-28T22:00:00.050+02:00

(On the road to Malawi.)

It wasn’t supposed to go like this!

In the middle of our conversation with our Mozambique pastors, my teammate checked his phone and his face changed expression. “I just got a text from Johannes (our ministry partner) and he says there is no diesel in Malawi. We need to bring diesel in with us.” One small problem; we were sixteen hours from home where our jerry cans that we often take on our ministry trips sat.

David and I had both remarked as we started on this trip, that this might be a more relaxed trip than normal (Big mistake on our part!). The vehicle was not packed as full as normal and we had none of the stress of last minute prepping and preparing of teaching material for any training that we might be doing. This was to be a different trip, where our goal was to go and get feedback about how the POP (Pastoring of Pastors) process was developing in their different communities. Thus, we didn’t have to pack lots of materials; we just needed good ears and good questions to generate responses for our evaluation process. Even the problematic Beitbridge Border post had been a breeze the previous day. Fuel issues had never been a problem in Malawi, until now.

All of our plans and schedules had to change and quickly. After some more time with the pastors, we excused ourselves and said we would have a follow up time with them on our way back through Mozambique. Since we were in a country that wasn’t an English colonial possession, we were also hampered by language issues as our Portuguese is pretty limited (David has more of this language than me). Yet we now had to search for jerry cans in a strange country, with a strange language and a less than familiar city.

(These are trucks parked along the side of the road in Malawi because they could not get diesel.)

Fortunately, we were able to somewhat communicate (a mixture of Portuguese, English and Spanish) with our leaders in Chomoio well enough that they gave us a lead on the jerry cans and we had a general idea of where the store was situated. The problem: it was now “siesta” time and the store was closed for another hour. This led to further problems. We were supposed to drive north that afternoon and get through the Malawi/Mozambique border before it closed and spend the night in Blantyre, Malawi with friends. That would not be happening.

When the store finally opened, they indeed had the fuel cans we needed and with prices that should have had them coated in gold (or silver at least). Unfortunately, we didn’t have much of a choice other than canceling a trip that we were already two days into. This day it was a seller’s market. Also problematic was the fact that the cans did not come with a “nozzle” to fill our vehicle. We had to use the old funnel approach and these metal jerry cans did not have any “bleeder” values to make the pouring of the fuel easier. We could add fuel, but it was a difficult and smelly process (made all the harder as you are trying to keep your “ministry clothes” and yourself free from reeking of diesel while you are meeting with people).

Our plan was now to drive to the border and sleep in the vehicle overnight there so as to be at the border when it opened at 6am. We had a meeting with a group of leaders scheduled for 9 am in Blantyre and needed to make that meeting. Driving north later than we had planned or hoped for also made us do something we try to avoid: driving on African roads at night. This time we had little choice. If there is any vehicle to be driving in at night in Africa, it is my teammate David’s. He has had some “auxiliary” lights mounted on it so that on high beam, you see the road and the sides of the road far better than any other vehicle I’ve been in here. And we needed every bit of that light.

Coming around one corner, a cloud of dust kicked up on the side of the road and out of nowhere, a donkey cart with a driver thinking he was perhaps Dale Earnhardt turning laps in the Daytona 500 came shooting off the side of the road directly in front of us. I was able to stop in time (and after attaching the defibrillator to get both my and David’s hearts going again), but without the advantage of having David’s lights, I doubt I would been able to avoid the cart, driver and donkey. Add to that the truck traffic that continually strays into your lane at night and by the time we got to Tete, Mozambique, about 1 ½ hours from the border, both David and I were exhausted.

(This is one of many roadside wrecks we passed by on our trip.)

We looked for a place to stay in Tete as well as fill our jerry cans with diesel so we could travel in Malawi. Tete, located on the banks of the Zambezi River, may be the hottest place on this earth I’ve ever experienced and it may be the mosquito capitol of the world, too. But while not my first choice of any place to spend the night, we could go no further without some rest.

We could not find a place to sleep at first. We finally turned onto a side dirt street and saw a sign in plain English “Guest House” and stopped to check it out. Again, despite the sign, we encountered language problems, but a very nice young woman politely told us again there were no rooms available. This seemed very strange as we saw a key holder full of room keys still on their pegs. It may have been that we stumbled onto a place that did not “rent” rooms out for the night, just by the hour, we hope not! However, the lady was nice enough to give us directions that directed us to two other possibilities and one of those worked out for us. Piling into our room and into our beds we tried to get as much sleep as possible before the 3:30 am alarm went off and we again ventured off towards the border in the dark.

Enough of the Travel notes, What in the bloody blue blazes were you doing in Malawi, John and David?

We arrived in Blantyre the next morning tired, but without incident and just in time for our first Malawian meeting. As noted above, we were going to evaluate the implementation of POP there. For those of you not familiar with it, POP (Pastoring of Pastors) is an initiative to bring health and relationship to pastoral leaders and spouses (as well as single leaders). Many church leaders are alienated from the body of Christ because they are a “leader” of the church and are not supposed to have problems. POP is designed to provide pastoral care to pastoral leaders who are used to giving care, but who don’t experience care themselves.

So far POP has been introduced into South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi. We are now in a season of evaluation to see how that implementation is going. Some key things we are looking at are: What is working well? How many groups have been started? How many spouses are taking part? What have been some of the challenges in starting to implement POP? How has the material provided to leaders assisted them or hindered them? How can we further help encourage those involved in the process? How has POP affected your own personal life?

Before we go further with POP we want to get feedback so we can adjust things as the POP process continues to roll out. We are looking for trends across the regions as well as situations unique to certain localities. Once this information is gathered and analyzed we will report our findings back to the all of the areas. They will see information not only from their nation but regionally as well.

The pudding isn’t good until you taste it! (What is going well!)

This was the comment of one pastor regarding his improved relationship with another local leader. He admitted he had had a poor relationship with this other pastor in the past (the leader spoken about was in the audience as this pastor shared). He confessed that he had often viewed the other pastor with suspicion. Yet, because of POP, he shared with great joy, how the man and his wife had become good friends! He had even invited this new pastor friend to share at his church. This former adversary blessed the socks off his church with his teaching!

Other comments:
“I see my life changing!”
“I don’t need to know everything, I have pastoral friends to ask and help.”
“Our leaders are now having “unplanned” meetings (they enjoy each other company so much informal meetings are now the order of the day).”
“POP gave me spiritual advisors.”
POP has “removed the fear.”

Clearly, we know that groups have started and those groups are still going in all three locations we visited on this trip and had done training in the last year. For quite a few, we know the depth of their relationships has grown and fear and distrust of other leaders has been eroded.

One pastor shared that his church was on the verge of a split. When he started using POP principles with his leaders, the split was averted and those leaders who were at each other’s throats have become part of a group and close friends who now “meet in each other’s home” something unheard of previously in the church. I also was encouraged by open disclosure of some leaders who had failed to implement anything and took reasonability for it; a rare thing in African culture (or any culture for that matter!) While we had made it clear we were there to “gather information” and to see how they were (renew relationships) and not to slap their hands if they had not done anything, the candor of some of these leaders was encouraging!

There’s still a lot of work to do (What are the challenges?)

On the flip side, the blending of genders in the process and the inclusion of females still is problematic. We have known from the beginning this would be an issue going forward and so we were not surprised to hear that inclusion of spouses is hard from both a cultural standpoint as well as issues of time management and literacy. Nobody said it was culturally unfeasible or inappropriate but just that such a change will take time and intentionality.

In Lilongwe, one group expressed that while the change to include their spouse had been and would continue to be hard, they also were beginning to see the benefits. We are also dealing with a few leaders who are teaching POP without being part of a group. One of the non-negotiable aspects of POP is that in order to teach it, you must first experience it in your own life. “Live it first; teach it later!” Yet for some leaders, POP is a new “tool” to put in their “teaching” tool belt, rather than an opportunity to deepen relationship and develop personal and ministerial health.

A morning at a refugee camp

After our last POP “debriefing” meeting in Lilongwe, Malawi, the next day we were taken to the Dzaleka refugee camp. According to our hosts James and Diamond, Dzaleka means “change” as the place used to be a location of a prison and when people heard they were going there, there was strong incentive to “dzaleka,” that is change! Currently it is home to refugees from around Africa. The majority of refugees come from Congo, Brundi, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Diamond and James are two local pastors from Lilongwe working among the refugees there and had previously started something most closely resembling what we would call “accountability” groups with some success.

(A child at the refugee camp)

Last year in November, they were exposed to POP and intrigued by the relational aspect of it, have implemented into their own lives and after practicing themselves are now trying to blend POP principles into the lives of these refugees. So that morning James and Diamond took us into the camp for their regular “monthly” meeting with church leaders and members they have built relationship with. We met in a small local Baptist church and listened as people told us of the hardships they faced in the camp, but also the hope that had come from the development of their small groups.

In a refugee camp full of people where many of them come from different countries, ethnic and language groups, it is easy to feel “alone.” Yet we heard story after story from both men and women how their “small group” has given them encouragement and hope despite the plight they share. Many times, the messages had to be translated a minimum of three times so that all of the locals and visitors could understand the message. And while some of the concepts of POP will blend nicely in with what Diamond and James had been previously exposed to, some of it is contrary and so in their attempt to move to a more relational type of care for the people in Dzaleka, our two Malawian pastors know they need to move slowly and carefully, but they seem determined to do just that!

A couple of “African Firsts” (Or things to alternately chuckle at and/or be horrified about!)

One first time experience for me came on our trip home and our return engagement with leaders in Chomoio, Mozambique, cut short a few days earlier because of our “diesel” issue. Meeting in the middle of town at the appointed place, our local contact looked at seating at a small outdoor café and seeing that it was crowded, motioned us across the street to another place which had a few small outdoor tables next to the street. As we approached the place, I noticed it was not a café, rather it was a beer hall and billiards place. Now to most of our American readers, that may not sound too risqué, but in Africa, at least in my limited experience, it is unheard of!

A local church leader would not be seen within shouting distance of any establishment that sold liquor or where smoking took place. Yet our local contact and the other pastoral leaders did not seem bothered at all by our venue and seemed to be on familiar and friendly terms with the older gentleman who ran the place. So it was both my and David’s first church/beer hall meeting in Africa.

If only you could listen in on some of the conversations we have! Another first came on the trip home and the enduring of 7 road blocks within a 100 kilometer span (that is not a first in Africa). We were traveling home along the eastern border of Zim, not far from the controversial Marange diamond fields near Mutare, which has been the subject of many human right abuses and atrocities (just Google Marange and you’ll understand quickly).

However, because the diamond fields are so close, the police and military of Zim are trying to curb the smuggling of the diamonds out of the area, hence another reason for lots of road blocks. People, desperate to make money, risk their lives sneaking into the area to dig diamonds and then attempt to slip out unnoticed and sell them. Some will even attempt to covertly sell them by roadside (we had one young man attempt to flag us down between roadblocks, making a hand signal that he had diamonds for sell). While that was a first, the real first time event came at the roadblock. A young man with an AK-47 slung on his back (remember he is “supposed” to be protecting the public), asked a couple of questions and then went straight to the point.

“I’m in trouble my friends, I haven’t had anything to drink since last night (alcohol), do you have any Castle or Lion in your vehicle for me (types of beer here)."

David later related that based on the man’s breath; it hadn’t been since last night that he had any alcohol. Can you imagine getting pulled over by the police and then being asked for some alcohol to help them out?? Answering the man’s request in the negative, we drove off anxious to reach the friendly confines of home in another 12 hours. Only in Africa!

On a more somber closing note, please remember to pray for Malawi on this coming Wednesday, September 21.

There has been a lot of political and social unrest in the country normally known as the “warm heart of Africa.” However, it would take a whole update itself to explain what is happening in Malawi. Suffice to say, there is talk of large demonstrations to protest the political and economic situation in Malawi on Wednesday. Just a couple months ago, there were demonstrations in which 18 people were killed, unheard of in this normally passive country, people are upset.

Please pray for the people and country in general and please pray specifically for the leaders who are attempting to integrate POP into their lives.

Blessings and thanks,

John

Tools of the trade

2011-09-10T16:29:00.014+02:00

What are your tools of the trade? Everybody’s got some things that they depend on to accomplish their daily tasks. What are yours? Yours could be a hammer, stethoscope, changing table, cell phone or a cash register, or perhaps chalk and a chalkboard, a procedure manual, guitar, drafting board or the internet.

Just as we have tools we use on a regular basis, the Bible makes many references to tools that were used in the normal course of life and work back in the day. Tools referenced in the Bible include, among others, the anvil, axe, compass, fire pan, fork, furnace, hammer, knife, plowshare, plumb line, pruning hook, razor, saw, shovel and wheel.

There are some tools that are an everyday part of our work in Southern Africa – our tools of the trade. More than anything, we depend on our Bibles. Without them, we have no point of reference and really nothing to offer. We use other tools that are ‘normal’ and to be expected…we heavily depend on our laptops, our cell phones and our GPS-guided vehicles (we easily admit that we’re we are completely soft in comparison to forerunners like David Livingstone). We use other tools as well. We affectionately refer to Cherie’s “bag of tricks,” a backpack full of items she uses on a regular basis ministering to the women at the AIDS hospice home. (How many of you regularly carry around a bag with Bibles in different languages, playing cards, a CD player with worship music, nail polish and other items?)

Our “tools of the trade” take on a new dimension when David prepares to go on ministry road trips. Most readers would know that on a regular basis, David joins ministry colleagues on trips to other parts of South Africa and to other countries in the region. Some have mistakenly thought that we fly on commercial flights for our ministry travel, but rarely is that the case. (We might fly once every 18 months or so within the region.) Rather, our ministry travel within the region is via the road, whether taking long day-trips to Swaziland for meetings (four hours in each direction) to, at the other end of the spectrum, extended trips to Malawi or Zambia, which mean three days driving in each direction.

On these trips, there are the normal ‘tools’ one brings for meetings, workshops and training sessions – Bibles, manuals, handouts and a flipchart (we try to avoid using PowerPoint – we attempt to do as much training as we can using tools and methods that trainers and leaders can use themselves). And we pack the items one would normally bring in their luggage on a business trip, such as clothing and toiletries. But our context is unique, so we also pack items that might be considered abnormal elsewhere.

(The back of our vehicle, packed for a Zimbabwe trip earlier this year.)

Following are some of our abnormal ‘tools of the trade’ when going on a ministry trip. (Some items may remind you of a camping packing list.) How does this compare with your tools?

Personal effects

Sleeping bag – we never know where, or on what, we may be sleeping
Medications (including malaria medicine) – we assume, usually correctly, that won’t have access to a pharmacy
Basics that we can’t take for granted, such as a towel, a mirror for shaving, detergent for washing our clothes, etc.
Toilet paper – you never know where you’ll need it, and where you won’t find it!
Battery-powered fan and light – air conditioning is a rarity, and fans aren’t typical; we can’t always count on electricity for anything

Miscellaneous

Foreign currency (on long trips a LOT of it) – we can only rarely use credit/debit cards or other cash-reducing strategies
Adapters for electric plugs that differ by country; extension cords; adapters to power laptops from the vehicle cigarette lighter (very helpful for getting computer-based work done during many hours on the road)
First aid kit
Flashlights

Food!

We can’t depend on finding a McDonald’s on every corner, so often we carry a lot of food with us, including clean drinking water. To make things easier, we typically bring a cooler that is AC/DC powered.

The vehicle

Paperwork – vehicle registration; insurance documentation; authority letters; police clearance certificates stating that the vehicle is not stolen
Fuel – in some cases we must carry 25-liter jerry cans of diesel for coverage between far-flung gas stations
Emergency supplies – tow rope; tire patch/pump/compressor; triangles; reflector tape; spare fuel and oil filter; spare belts; windshield crack glue; fluids (diesel oil, fuel additive, transmission fluid, anti-freeze)
Chains; padlocks; bungee cords; ropes
Tools (literal) – for vehicle repairs and other unique situations that arise
Fire extinguisher

These are some of our trip tools of the trade. We can’t imagine leaving home without them! In like turn, we’re sure that you have tools of the trade that we couldn’t imagine depending on – maybe even ones we’ve never heard of! Regardless, we can be grateful for the tools we have at our disposal that enable us to do what we are called to do.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men… (Col 3:23, NIV)

Prayer requests:

Please pray for David and our teammate John as they depart on a Malawi trip on 11 September (through the 18th). They’ll be conducting meetings and feedback sessions to evaluate the effectiveness of past Pastoring of Pastors efforts there. Please pray for their ministry connections, for safety and for Cherie (and John’s wife Heather) while the husbands are gone.
Please pray for Cherie and her teammates as they prepare for the annual youth camp 14-16 October – for creativity, wisdom and unity in their preparations. Please also continue to pray for funding to underwrite the cost of the camp for students and leaders. If you would like to participate in the funding of this camp, please email Cherie at cbulger@topicsa.net.
Please also continue to pray for our local team here as we continue to wrestle with financial planning issues, especially as we research South Africa income tax and health insurance issues.
Please pray for our time with Stacey, a young woman that’s visiting our team (and currently staying with us) as we jointly are exploring whether God is calling her to join our team in Johannesburg. Please also pray for us and our team during the week of 3 October, when we’ll be hosting Daniel and Ellen, a couple which will be spending time with us from the US. They’ll be doing team-building and counseling with the various families on our team.
Please continue to pray for wisdom for David and other leaders as they continue to determine the best direction for TOPIC internationally as it is undergoing change. (TOPIC is the pastoral training network David leads in Southern Africa.)
Please pray for Cherie’s friend Winnie’s recovery from back surgery. Specifically, pray for her rehabilitation, which has gone much more slowly than anticipated. She is currently in a wheelchair, and is scheduled to resume her job on 26 September. Pray for a more rapid rehab effort and for her as she is currently fighting an infection.

Language Lessons
A proverb from the Kikuyu of Kenya: Travelling teaches men their way.

We're back in Africa!

2011-08-22T11:08:00.021+02:00

We’re back in Africa! After a blessed US home visit, we are grateful to be back home in South Africa, having arrived in Johannesburg on our Women’s Day national holiday, 9 August. As Dorothy proclaimed with wonder at the end of The Wizard of Oz, “there’s no place like home!” Among other things, it’s great just to be sleeping in our own bed…we experienced wonderful hospitality during our home visit, but we stopped counting when we realized we’d slept in 27 different beds on our version of the Amazing Race – plus a few airline seats!

It didn’t take long for us to realize, upon our arrival here, that we ‘weren’t in Kansas anymore’ – that we were fully back in South Africa. In less than two weeks on the ground, we’ve been confronted with some things that have let us know, in no uncertain terms, that we’re back in our other reality:

Weather – we left late summer in the US, with daytime temp’s into the 90’s (30’s for you Celsius fans); we arrived in South Africa’s late winter, with nighttime temp’s near freezing and even snow a week after we returned. We’ve put away the shorts and short sleeves we wore in the US, and broken out our sweaters and overcoats. Locals are saying that this winter has been the coldest in two decades.

We left lush, green fully-leafed trees and grass in need of mowing. We arrived at the end of our dry season in Joburg, where everything is brown, bare and very – very – dusty.

Driving on the road – we left driving on the right side of the road, with the steering wheel on the left side of the car, and are now back to driving on the left, with the steering wheel on the right. We are amazed how easily we transition back and forth between these different realities. More than this, though, we knew we were back in SA when we were almost engaged in three different small vehicle accidents in our first couple of days on the road – we had to quickly adjust to different unwritten rules of the road!

Ministry – after setting in, we quickly began making phone calls and conducting meetings to assess where our ministries stood after our long absence. After weeks of ministry connecting with many people and churches in the US, we’ve quickly been thrown back into ministry on this side. Cherie’s already conducted a workshop (more below) and David’s led meetings of various teams he leads in South Africa. We even joined, mid-process, our OC team as it was completing the development of our ministry budget for the next fiscal year. You know what your stacked-up pile looks like in your workplace when you return from a week or two of vacation? Imagine what that pile looks like when you’re back from three months out of the country...

Accents – it’s great to again be in the midst of the many wonderful languages and accents of South Africa! We have a confession to make – please don’t tell anyone else. :) When in the US, it took us a while to regain our ears for English spoken with a Spanish accent! (This in spite of the fact that both of us speak a pretty fair amount of Spanish.) We’ve become so accustomed to hearing English with African accents that it was, early in our home visit, hard to understand those who spoke English with a Spanish accent.

Metric and currency – in an abrupt fashion, we’re back to thinking in terms of kilometers and kilograms and all things metric. (One great aspect of this – we can feel slightly less guilty when we think about all the weight we gained on our US visit, from all the good food and the lack of exercise and a normal schedule – our weight gain is a smaller number in kilo’s than it is in pounds!) We also quickly passed the initial shock that occurred when we saw prices in local stores…we had to jump back into another currency, the Rand. (Just remember, the price for six liters of milks is 53 Rands [about $7.50], not 53 Dollars...)

The Media – we departed stories in the US centered on the credit downgrading of the US and the ramping up of election campaigns for next year’s presidential primaries and election. We arrived in South Africa to news about an impending strike of local government workers (more on this in a future update) and the attempts to have a British man extradited to face a murder charge in South African courts. He is accused of bringing his bride to SA on their honeymoon and then having her murdered here…allegedly figuring that due to SA’s high crime rate, her murder would be more believable and easier to plan here than, apparently, in their home country.

Through these lenses, and others, we fully know that we are back in our home, on African soil, and stepping back into our normal lives and ministries. We’re back in our other reality, encouraged, strengthened and motivated by our great time in the US. We’re charging into the next chapter, ready to engage! Now if we could only remember how to find the post office here...

The back side of the Michelle Obama visit story (at least in part): We are starting to learn a bit more about the First Lady’s visit to Cherie’s ministry in June. First, there’s been some fallout in the community – community leaders have been upset that she came to visit the children’s ministry and community center without meeting them as well. Please pray for relational issues between community leaders and the community center leaders. Also, we’ve learned that her office somehow got connected to a local leadership academy that sends its students to serve at the children’s ministry. When told that the First Lady wanted to connect with a children’s program and donate books to it, the leadership academy pointed her to the children’s ministry. We’re still a bit in shock about the whole thing!

Praise items:

Thank you for praying for our time with our families in July, at the end of our home visit. We had a great time connecting with each of our families, and enjoying summertime fun together, making memories. Travel, swimming, ice cream (!), mini-golf, kayaking, the zoo, celebrating birthdays and more…we’re deeply grateful for every minute of it all!
Join us in thanking God for a very good HIV+AIDS workshop Cherie taught at a local church four days after our return. Earlier this year, Cherie accepted this assignment, believing that colleagues would teach most of the sessions since she’d have just returned to SA. Just before returning, she learned that none of them would be available, leaving her to scramble in preparation immediately upon her return. Praise God for His goodness in this situation.
Thank you for praying for our ministries in SA, and for protection over house-sitter Walter and our South African home. We have returned to find most everything in very good shape, making it easier to step back into life and ministry here.

Prayer requests:

Please pray for our re-entry into our ministries, that we would be able to fit right in where we left off, and quickly rebuild any momentum lost due to our absence.
Please pray for David’s Pastoring of Pastors initiative, where one of his key teammates is soon to leave SA through the end of the year – we have only a brief overlap between our two long absences from the country. Pray for effective hand-off issues.
Please pray for David and his TOPIC Board of Directors as they engage a developing process that could potentially see changes taking place within TOPIC on a global scale. Please pray for wisdom and God’s guidance in this process.
Please pray for three financially-related items:
Please pray for funding for the annual camp for Cherie’s youth ministry, scheduled to take place 14-16 October. A combined total of 90 students and leaders are to attend this camp; the cost per camper is $50. If you would like to underwrite one camper (or more), you can make a tax-deductible check payable to OC International, with “Bulger project fund, camp, account 110291” on the memo line, and post it to OCI, PO Box 36900, Colorado Springs, CO 80936-990 (or donate online at www.onechallenge.org/donate). If you have questions, please let us know.
Please pray for our OC team in Johannesburg as we conclude the development of our ministry budget for our next fiscal year. Pray for wisdom as our new requirement to file and pay income taxes in SA is posing some very significant challenges to our team’s financial situation.
Please pray for those, from our US visit, that are prayerfully considering joining our financial support team. Several have indicated their interest in joining us…please pray that they follow God’s guidance in a joyful fashion.

Language Lessons
A proverb from Egypt: God bless him who pays visits, and short visits.

The home visit shifts gears

2011-07-05T05:05:00.013+02:00

What an amazing home visit we’ve been experiencing so far! Since arriving in the US on 21 April, we’ve been blessed by God in several ways, for which we are deeply grateful. In the last ten weeks we have had the opportunity to:

Connect with many of you – the incredible members of the team of which we’re privileged to be a part. During our visit, we’ve done our best to share stories of what God has been doing in Southern Africa recently…and we’ve also been absolutely blessed by the stories we’ve heard from many of God’s activity in and through their lives here in the US and elsewhere. Team members have faithfully served us, and served with us, in Southern Africa via their prayers, financial gifts, practical acts of service and more. You can also be encouraged that God is actively at work through our team in many other places as well! We’ve been encouraged and challenged by stories we’ve heard of God’s work on college campuses, in neighborhoods, in retirement communities, in classrooms and elsewhere. How amazing is our God…

Make new connections and establish relationships with others. It has been a delight to meet new friends and invite them to prayerfully consider being a part of our team.

See a bit of the country, from Atlantic to Pacific: from North Carolina to San Diego, from Seattle to south Texas and parts of the Midwest…we’ve participated in (and successfully completed!) our own version of the Amazing Race. We’ve been reminded of the amazing cultural and geographic diversity of the US, and to celebrate it as we write this update on Independence Day.

We’ve been exposed to the ever-changing cultural aspects and products of Americana:

Almond milk, truffle oil and ‘epic’ burritos

Charter schools, groupon.com and woot.com

The “Friday” and “Pants on the Ground” songs

‘Helicopter Parents’ (and ‘Blackhawk Parents’) and ‘Tiger Moms’

Taking a picture of a check with a smart phone, and somehow depositing the picture into one’s bank account - ???

Have some initial time with our families – and more than that, we’re now headed into concentrated time with our families in July – woo hoo!

We thank God for this time we’ve had in the States. Thank you to so many of you that have made our visit possible, and a blessing!

Praise items:

Thank you for praying for our ministries in our absence. The reports we’ve received from South Africa indicate that great things are happening while we’re in the US. Thank God for those who are standing in our stead during our furlough, and please continue to pray for them and their efforts.

Thank you for your prayers for Walter and our South African home – everything is going well there.

Praise God for many aspects of our home visit – for the fact that we’ve been healthy; for our safe travels; for good connections with family, friends and supporters; for new connections and friendships; and for gracious hospitality that’s been extended to us by the provision of overnights, meals, use of vehicles and more.

Thank God for the late-June visit of First Lady Michelle Obama to Cherie’s children’s / youth ministry in South Africa (see our post below). Please pray that people living in the community of Zandspruit are being encouraged and uplifted by her visit.

Prayer requests:

Please pray for our family time in July – for fun, meaningful and memory-making time with our families.

Please pray for those that are prayerfully considering joining our financial support team. Several have indicated their interest in joining us…please pray that they follow God’s guidance in a joyful fashion.

Michelle Obama visits Zandspruit

2011-06-23T06:23:00.005+02:00

So on Saturday we were driving down the interstate highway from Chicago to Appleton, WI when Cherie had a unique phone call. She was on the phone with our dear friend Jeanetta, a fellow American that lives and serves in South Africa…and like us, she and her family are currently in the US for a home visit. They were having a catch-up call, mutually sharing about our collective home visit experiences.

We met Jeanetta in 2001, the year before we moved to Johannesburg, and upon our arrival there Jeanetta recruited Cherie to help develop the after-school ministry at Emthonjeni Community Center, in the Zandspruit informal settlement outside Johannesburg. Cherie has been one of the primary architects of what has become a vibrant after-school ministry that serves 250 children in that community; subsequently an accredited pre-school was developed and in 2008 Cherie then launched a high school ministry for students that have ‘graduated’ from the after-school ministry. Those ministries, and the community of Zandspruit, have been long-standing passions in both of our lives.

In the midst of Cherie’s and Jeanetta’s catch-up call, Jeanetta shared something neither of us believed. Apparently, plans were in place that would see, on Tuesday 22 June, First Lady Michelle Obama visiting the children’s ministries at Emthonjeni. Yeah, right. No, seriously, Jeanetta said, Secret Service personnel had been at the community center last week and that Mrs. Obama’s visit (with her mother and daughters) was supposed to take place. Both Cherie and Jeanetta agreed that they’d ‘believe it when they see it.’

We are here to report the amazing fact that yesterday, First Lady Michelle Obama visited Cherie’s ministry in South Africa! While we sorely wish that Cherie had been there for such an amazing event, even more we rejoice that the visit took place, and that, no doubt, the students and leaders were encouraged and affirmed by the visit!

Be encouraged by a few shots of the First Lady’s visit! (In one photo, with a number of children singing in front of a building with a mural, are pictured two of Cherie’s teammates in the work: Janet and Simphiwe [in the rainbow-colored sweater] – Simphiwe is the South African national that Cherie and others have groomed to now fully run the after-school ministry – yessss!)

http://theobamadiary.com/2011/06/21/zandspruit/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/21/remarks-first-lady-during-visit-zandspruit-township-daycare-center
http://newshopper.sulekha.com/michelle-obama-sasha-obama_photo_1871278.htm

Be blessed!

We're on the ground in the US!

2011-04-23T13:29:00.003+02:00

19 hours of flying time, two airplanes (including the amazing new A380), two cars, a couple of elevators, countless numbers of escalators and moving sidewalks, and some good ol' fashioned walking - and ta-dah! We're on US soil, in Chicago. It's great to have our first few hours of connection here.

After a couple of snags, we've got our cell phone number established for our home visit: (224) 622-3618. Please save and use it! We look forward to connecting with you - ideally in person, but over the phone as the next best alternative.

84 and still going strong

2011-03-19T16:31:00.005+02:00

In the last year, David has met an interesting array of pastoral leaders, and one from last week was no exception.

In the last few years David has coordinated a team that is executing a much-needed research project. As we have shared before, pastoral leadership development is the number one issue facing the church in Africa. There are Bible schools, training ministries and other organizations that seek to address this issue, but there aren’t enough of them. Those that do serve pastors offer a variety of courses, seminars, etc. – but no one has undertaken the effort to understand what pastoral leaders say they need in the way of further development. Hence, the research project, which essentially is focused on answering a simple, but very important, question: what are the top three areas where pastors would like to receive training?

To date, David and his colleagues have surveyed approximately 750 church leaders from across South Africa. They’ve met with leaders from urban, suburban, rural, township and informal settlement communities. They’ve surveyed men and women; blacks, whites, Indians and coloreds (an acceptable term in this country for those of mixed race); pastors, elders, bishops, evangelists and other ministry leaders; leaders from Pentecostal churches, mainline congregations and evangelicals; and those that have received much theological education and others that haven’t received one minute of formal input. The variety of South Africa’s pastoral leaders is nothing less than astonishing. The task force’s goal is to collect 1000 responses.

David has had his share of interesting connections as he has met with leaders in different settings. Last week, he met one of the more unique survey respondents he’s come across.

David retrieved the name and number of Pastor Louis off our team’s database…Louis had attended a workshop sometime in the past. David made an appointment to see him in his home in a colored community near our home. During their 45 minutes together, David conducted the survey interview, and they discussed some other items…through it all, David learned some unique things about Pastor Louis.

Louis is a pastor of a Nazarene church – and has been one for 58 – yes, we said 58 – years, as Louis has just turned 84 years old. Louis graduated from a Nazarene Bible college in 1953 and has been a local pastor ever since. (You might choose to pause for a bit now, and reflect as David did as he drove away from Louis’ home – what are the similarities and differences in pastoral work between the mid-1950’s and 2011?)

In spite of Louis’ age and longevity in the pastorate, David didn’t have the impression that he has slowed down one bit in his senior years. In the interview, Louis’ mind was active and sharp, and he clearly loves his continuing role of serving people and his community. Louis’ small congregation is in the final stages of constructing a new facility in which to meet…several times during their meeting, the interview was interrupted by Louis’ cell phone ringing – in additional to his pastoral work, he is basically serving as the ‘general contractor’ for the construction project. From their interview Pastor Louis was to immediately proceed to a local store to purchase additional building materials for construction efforts that day.

One would think that someone in Louis’ shoes would believe that he’d arrived long ago, that with all his pastoral experience he didn’t need to be intentional in learning at this stage of his life. Louis was the exact opposite – the embodiment of a life-long learner. For the research survey, he eagerly shared in what areas he still wants to grow and be developed…he’s not done learning yet!

His hunger was evidenced in a couple of ways. At one point during their meeting, Pastor Louis retrieved a large, weathered log book from his study. He opened it to show David a journal he’d been keeping since the late 1940’s…this particular journal was where he wrote down his reflections on the subject of prayer over the years. It had over 5000 entries. He also had other journals containing his reflections on other subjects.

Pastor Louis also shared a little about what he’s currently teaching his congregation on Sunday mornings. David was expecting him to perhaps share that he’s teaching a one-month series on one subject or another. Well no, not exactly. Louis shared that he’d survived a cancer scare a few years ago, and the biggest thing he took from that experience was his belief that he’d been disobedient with God. God had asked Louis do to something, and he didn’t do it. Louis went through his cancer season wondering if he’d live to have another opportunity to respond well, the next time God spoke to him. He promised himself that the next time God told him something, he’d surely obey. Louis is now cancer-free; at some point after his illness God spoke to him, sharing something a bit unexpected. Louis, I want you to teach your congregation from the book of Leviticus.

Leviticus? If you know your Bible, you know that there are certainly some more interesting books to explore and teach from. But Louis obeyed, and began teaching from Leviticus. That was 2.5 years ago, and he’s still teaching from that book today. Pastor Louis has been on a slow, steady march through Leviticus; he’s now teaching from chapter 23 with four full chapters yet to go.

The twinkle in Louis’ eyes as he described his sermon preparation was a sight to behold. He is a man of preparation, spending hours every week pouring over his Bible and other sources to understand every nuance of the Leviticus text. It’s clear he’s learned some amazing things through this leg of his journey, and he’s not yet done. If there’s a dictionary definition of a life-long learner, certainly Louis’ picture must be the profile shot of one that fits that description.

Every time David completes one of these research interviews, he walks away with a spring in his step as he’s moved one step forward in the project – another interview that can be checked off in a project that’s been long and, at times, difficult. But on that rainy Wednesday morning after he met Pastor Louis in his home, David walked away feeling a different type of encouragement – the encouragement that comes from meeting someone that’s walking a good road himself, staying strong for as long as the Lord has him on this earth.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day - and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. (2 Tim 4:7-8, NIV)

Praise Items:

Thank you SO MUCH for your prayers for our interim facilitation of a small group in our community. God has already been at work in a powerful way. C, the woman we shared about with so many struggles (including suicidal tendencies), has given her life to Jesus! She’s already showing signs of being a new creation! Another woman, M, is growing like a weed. Thank you for your prayers – and please keep praying!
Thank you for your prayers for David’s ministry trip to Zimbabwe. It was a very fruitful trip, conducting three different Pastoring of Pastors events within five days. (For more on the trip, see the blog entry below.)
Thank you also for praying for someone to stay in our home during our upcoming home visit. We are all sorted out with Walter, who will move in as we depart for the US next month.
Thank you for your prayers for Cherie’s high school ministry. Her leadership team continues to explore new ideas for the ministry, engaging the students for their input and ownership as well. In the last couple of weeks a weekly Tuesday night drop-in event has begun, and is off to a good start. Please continue to pray for the leadership team’s wisdom, creativity, unity and focus as discussions continue.

Prayer requests:

Please pray for Cherie’s dear friend Winnie. In a fast-moving development, she has just had surgery to drain fluid from a sack and to correct some issues with her vertebrae. At the time of this writing she’s in recovery; in time, with recovery and physical therapy, she should be able to walk normally, something she hasn’t been able to do since her pregnancy and the delivery of her daughter in 2007. Please pray for her recovery and rehabilitation.
Pray for David as he teaches a Pastoring of Pastors workshop in Swaziland 28-29 March. There have been media reports that protests have begun in Swaziland in the same fashion as what we’ve seen in Egypt, etc. (though on a much smaller scale)…prayers for safety would be appreciated.
Please continue to pray for our preparations for our home visit – it’s coming up quickly! We’re buried with efforts related to that. Invitations to reception will be sent later this month, and more info about the visit will be included in our next update, in early April.

Language Lessons
A proverb from the Oromo of Ethiopia and Kenya: An old pot makes water sweet and quickly boils.

David's Zimbabwe trip, 6-12 March

2011-03-17T22:17:00.061+02:00

The following is a write-up of David's recent ministry trip to Zimbabwe, courtesy one of our teammates, John Witherow (thanks John!). Enjoy!

We are getting somewhere!

Actually, we had been “getting somewhere” since the start of our week in Zimbabwe. I was accompanied on the trip by two of my OC teammates, David Bulger and Jay Gerhart, and a pastoral friend from Soweto, Victor Khumalo. Despite having spent his entire life in Soweto and South Africa, Victor, a mentor of many pastors in the township, had never crossed the border to Zimbabwe. It was a new experience for him! We were on the outskirts of Bulawayo for our first workshop. Our trip had been without border crossings, police roadblocks, wrecks, slow trucks etc. It’s a 10 hour trip from Joburg to the second largest city in Zimababwe.

However, the comments “we are getting somewhere” actually had nothing to do with traveling. It was a response from one woman after the first full day of two and half days of a Pastoring of Pastors workshop. Her eyes gleamed with excitement as she evaluated in her mind the impact of the workshop on her spiritual life.

During the “training” phase of POP, the focus of the workshop is “what” and “how.”

What is Pastoring of Pastors?
What are the core values and characteristics of POP?
What is pastoral care?
What are essential needs and the biblical provision for those needs?
How do we (as pastoral leaders) then provide provision for those needs, as well as receive care for our needs?
How do we start the process?

How do we start POP groups?
What is the process for the “way forward?

It’s a lot of information that requires commitment to action and in the first hour of the workshop, we make it plain that if no concrete action is taken, the information provided is worthless. Those that aren’t committed to actually doing something after an introduction to the process, are given the option to walk away, no questions asked. We do not want to waste anyone’s time if they are really not committed to doing something.

Tomorrow will be a funeral for “me” and the start of “we.”

So many pastoral leaders and ministers work and exist in a solitary lifestyle, without support or friends. One of the premises of POP is that leaders, who work this way, do so in way that is contrary to the biblical example. So we spend a lot of time looking at the examples of Jesus and Paul to make the case that a leader was never expected or encouraged to do ministry “alone” without care and support.

This concept can be paradigm altering experience for many leaders. In fact, one of our organizers of the event shared with David and me that at the end of the workshop would mean a new reality for him. “Tomorrow will be the end of me and the start of we."

In other words, I have made a decision to stop ministering by myself and will begin to walk the ministry path with others by my side! Tongue in cheek this same leader mentioned to us that we needed to take him down to the dam (reservoir) below the venue and baptize him again!

During this training, David turned to me and shared “I love ministering in Zim.” The leaders are so sharp and this workshop was no exception. We were kept on our toes the entire time with this group as it had a high percentage of highly educated and high level leaders. They asked great questions and were not afraid to challenge us on some of our conclusions. It made for great dialog and “iron sharpening iron!”

“I have no time to pray”

From Bulawayo, we packed up and headed 330 kilometers northwest to Matabeleland North and Hwange, the home of our Zim partner, Emmanuel Nkomo (The big Ndebele). Hwange is a “company town” and exists primarily because of the coal mine and a power plant that are situated there. The mine feeds the ailing power plant, which, while working at only 60% capacity, provides erratic electricity to much of Zimbabwe. An advantage of being in Hwange is that it is, usually, the one place you can count on to have a consistent power supply.

As we came closer to Hwange, my view of the place changed considerably. I’ve been in Hwange several times, usually in winter time (North America summer) and this was my first time visiting the town anywhere close to the rainy season. My previous visits revealed to me an arid, barren, landscape, with little vegetation and always blazing hot. Yet, to my amazement, I saw grass, healthy looking mealies (corn) lots of vegetation and actually a little water in river beds that were always dry in my previous visits there. There is always something to learn in Africa!

Our audience in Hwange was much different than Bulawayo as was our focus. This was an introduction to POP, basically answering the question “Why do you need pastoring of pastors?" A lot of junior leaders were present, sprinkled in with a few senior leaders and during the first session of the day, the environment was difficult. It was hard to get interaction. The audience was cautious and timid. However, as the morning wore on and as they got more familiar with us and the material, they began to warm up and open up.

At the “tea break” I had the opportunity to sit beside a young “gun,” with big dreams and ambitions for the kingdom and little regard for himself or his family. As he shared about his church, his desire to reach others in the rural areas, his passion shone brightly. When I asked him about challenges, the usual answers came out: finance, transportation, poverty, AIDS. In dealing with these issues, he said “I have no time for prayer, I have no time for reflection.”

I then asked him how he could sustain this pace and drive.

“The Holy Spirit will help me,” he quickly answered.

I then inquired, “Do you minister alone when you go to the rural areas to evangelize?”

He answered in the affirmative.

I then asked him if Jesus traveled alone and relied “only on the Holy Spirit during his ministry on earth.”

He looked at me with a puzzled look.

I then smiled and gave him two examples of well known Christian leaders who did great things and lost their families by “doing” well but neglecting their families. “Is that the legacy you want?“ I asked.

“No” he replied, and I then told him I thought the next session was tailor-made for him.

That session was taught by my teammate David on the biblical basis for pastoral care and examines the context in which New Testament leaders and Jesus ministered. The conclusion of the session is simple: the pattern of these leaders was that they walked with others as they ministered so that they could both give and receive care, and that pattern included Jesus, who had direct access to the Father. My young friend was literally on the edge of his seat and at the end of the session, he turned to me and our eyes locked for a second as he nodded his head at me. He got it! My prayer is that now he will now apply it.

“Rompay”

Our last training session was deep in the bush in Zimbabwe in the village of Pashu. Pashu is in the heart of Tongan country, an ethnic group that used to live in the Zambezi river valley years before, but had been forcibly resettled when the construction of Kariba Dam and filling of Lake Kariba was completed in 1963. The land they live on now is marginal and their lives are full of hardships. I had been in Pashu about two years ago and as we drove in on the dirt roads, I was concerned about what we would encounter. On that previous visit, we had great attendance, but few leaders, we were more the local side show, “Come see the mulungus: (white people) but few people from our target audience were in attendance. Neither David nor I wanted to repeat that.

When we got to our venue site, my concerns seemed legitimate. Few people were present and amongst them were only one or two pastoral leaders. We were also running late getting started and while we had originally been told that we would not be doing translation there, it became very apparent as we greeted people, that many of the people spoke only Tongan. David and I huddled under a tree with Nkomo and began to make preliminary, alternate plans if few leaders attended.

As we huddled under the tree to avoid the already oppressive heat, I was also reminded that I had forgotten an important aspect of the environment around Pashu. As we exited the vehicle, I heard the hum of what I initially thought were bees, but as I looked up in the trees and looked around me, it all came back to me, the flies. I remembered that in all the places I have been in Africa, Pashu had, in my opinion, the highest per capita of flies per square meter. The number of the ubiquitous flies clinging to a person’s back was in direct proportion to their hygiene factor. Even the cleanest person still always had a minimum of 6-8 flies clinging to the back of their shirts whenever exposed to the air. I remembered one man on my last trip whose jacket was literally covered from top to bottom with flies as he walked.

With the reality of that situation sinking in, the heat, the potential of changing our entire focus for the day, it could have been time to pack up the truck and head home. However, Africa does build some measure of patience, persistence and flexibility into a person if you hang around long enough (even one as stubborn as me).

About an hour after the original start time, more people began streaming into the small single room designated for the training. Nkomo informed us that a larger number of leaders had arrived and we should now go back to our original plan. David and I now just had a few minutes to plan for six hours of training (in English) that needed to be cut by an hour and half while also dealing with the translation factor.

It’s great working with a talented teacher like my teammate David. We adjusted at the beginning and continued to adjust all day long. While there was still the “mulungu” factor, people streaming in to see the white people, over half of the participants turned out to be leaders and spouses. They crammed into the hot, small room where the training was taking place. There were few chairs and many did not have backs. Most sat on the hard concrete floor, many of them women caring for infants as they prepared for us to start. The cacophony of noise and voices merging with ours during the entire workshop was amazing, men, women, crying children, while cattle, goats and chicken noise came from just outside the room along with young boys and girls anxious to hear, see and comment on the “mulungus.”

Yet, these people were spiritually hungry. We had great participation at all three workshops, but the people deep in the bush around Pashu were by far the most enthusiastic and passionate. The highlight of the day for me was again the session on the bibilical basis for pastoral care. One scripture highlighted is Acts 20 where Paul says farewell to the leaders of Ephesus. Starting in verse 28 he warns the leaders “to watch over yourselves” and then also warns the leaders to watch out for savage wolves that will come from both outside and the inside to attack the church. David does a great job facilitating this session and imitates a wolf snarling and growling. But, of course, there are no wolves that are indigenous to Africa; however, wild dogs are and most closely approximate the behavior of wolves running in packs like in North America. (Actually wild dogs or “painted dogs” kill their prey faster and more efficiently than either the lion or a leopard).

As David illustrates the need for leaders to be vigilant to look for “wolves both with in and outside of the church” he uses the lesson to demonstrate the point that we all need others to protect us from “the wolf” that resides in each one of us. In the midst of this dialog, he asked what the Tongan word for wild dogs was. “Rompay” was the translated reply and so David continued his lesson and substituted the Tongan word Rompay instead of wolf as his finished his explanation. The audience loved the story and the small attempt to use their vernacular, and they got the message!

Only in Africa!

As we finished the day and our participants headed off to late lunch, early supper “lupper,” compliments of local chickens who had sacrificially given themselves earlier in the day for the afternoon meal (last time I was there, a goat fell to the knife!)

As we packed up to leave, Nkomo approached us and asked us if we could give a ride to two people who lived in the direction we were traveling. According to Nkomo, they had gotten up at midnight that day to walk to venue in order to be present for our presentation. A ride home would be greatly appreciated and we figured it would be the least we could do.

A couple minutes after this exchange, Nkomo approached us for a second time and said another man from the same village had asked for a ride. David and I looked at each other and told Nkomo, we only had room for two, his vehicle will carry five people in terms of seats and the back of vehicle was full of our stuff. As we walked to the car, however, we had a change of heart. We decided to see if we could rearrange things in the back enough so that one more person could squeeze in. Emmanuel told our three guests to finish their food and then we would depart.

I should have known something was wrong as our guests showed up at our vehicle with pots full of rice and chicken (they had brought their own bowls to the workshop) and while I’m getting old, I can still count to three. I noticed not three people preparing to get into the vehicle with their food, but 4 people and one baby. We (including Nkomo) had been taken in by the old “stone soup” ploy. There wasn’t much we could do at this point other than shrug our shoulders and let them pile in. Until, they tried to make the lady with the baby get into the back. While we have to bite our tongues on many cultural things in Africa, this time we did not. We told our guests plainly that the lady and baby would not be crammed into the back luggage area. They would ride in the back seat.

Smiling broadly, two of the guys proceeded to wedge themselves in the back. We shut them in, piled into the vehicle and down the rough, jarring road we went. The smell of chicken and rice merged with Tongan, Ndebele and English voices attempting to talk over one another.

All seemed fine in our crammed vehicle for the first 30 minutes until Nkomo turned to David and me and said “one of the guys has a runny tummy” (in other words diarrhea, stop the vehicle IMMEDIATELY!) I ran to the back, threw the door open and handed the poor guy some TP as he ran for the bush. Apparently, the chicken was having its revenge. As my teammate David had told me about 40 minutes earlier, “There are some advantages to being a vegetarian.” He had only a couple of bites of his food (wisely it turned out) before deciding to eat no more.

After a few minutes, our afflicted leader returned to the vehicle, crammed himself into the back and we continued our journey. I noticed, immediately, that our mother in the back seat with me was covering her face. I thought maybe the AC was bothering her, though in my opinion the vehicle was hardly cool even with it running. After a few more kilometers down the road, however, I noticed the woman not only had the scarf covering her mouth, but she was actually getting sick into it. She only spoke Tongan, so I was frantically but quietly trying to get Nkomo to ask her what she needed. Nkomo, his normal jovial social self, was busying engaging the others in conversation and when I finally got his attention, could not get him to understand what was happening. “Nkomo, she’s puking” I wanted to shout. David, without waiting for Nkomo, stopped the vehicle and the poor woman piled out with baby in hand. I ran around the side to see if I could help her, but by the time I got to her, she had finished her business (that was some vindictive chicken or group of chickens) and was now strapping her young child to her back! Everyone else piled out of the vehicle and unbeknownst to David and me, he had hastily pulled the vehicle over at the exact place everyone needed to get out, not that we knew that at the time! Only in Zim!

Enjoy your chicken tonight! Seriously, thanks for your prayers and partnership which make all of this possible.

Blessings,
John

Unexpected assignments

2011-02-19T18:07:00.004+02:00

We thought it would be a simple, ‘extracurricular’ assignment – a favor in a certain sense – but now are realizing it might be something else altogether. We could be in for a more-interesting-than-expected couple of months before we head back to the US on a home visit.

It all began in November, when one of David’s pastoral friends, Pastor A, called with a different kind of request. Pastor A, whose church facility is 20 miles across the city from our home, shared that he found himself with a handful of people attending his church services that live in our neighborhood. Two families even live within walking distance of our place!

Pastor A shared that those two families, and a few others, had expressed interest in beginning a small group together. He described individuals that each want to grow in their relationship with God and be a better support to one another. Normally, Pastor A would take the first few steps with such a group, helping it to find direction, establishing a first level of community among its participants and building positive momentum within it. However, in this case there was the distance factor, and therefore the request: David and Cherie, we know you and trust you, and you live in the same neighborhood as some of these folks – would you mind meeting with the group a few times to help it get started in a good fashion? We briefly discussed some logistical constraints and agreed that we would pray about the idea.

After a bit of miscommunication and some scheduling speed bumps, we eventually had dinner with Pastor A and his wife, along with P and M, the proposed group leaders, to discuss the idea. (Apologies for the use of initials…you’ll understand why we’re not divulging full names as you read a little further.) We all resolved that David and Cherie would help the group get going, but only in an abbreviated fashion as we’d be heading to the US in mid-April. This last Tuesday we had the first gathering with five group members (with another two that could not attend due to illness). In that gathering we realized that this might be a different ‘assignment’ than we had been expecting.

Going into the gathering, we thought our few weeks with the group would be concentrated on helping group members get to know one another; helping them to establish group values and norms; identifying collective desires for the group and pointing the group in that direction; and assisting the leadership couple, P and M, in their facilitation of the group. Our two hours together that night told us that this could be a very different experience.

After introducing ourselves and sharing about our backgrounds (to this group of strangers), we facilitated time for each person to introduce themselves and to share where they were at on their journey with God. P and M introduced themselves first, and following our lead, did a wonderful job of opening their hearts and creating a warm, inviting atmosphere of sharing. (Although we both had wished that P, the husband, would have shared a bit more…he appears to be a quiet, reserved person and is in for an interesting experience, as he will be the only male in the group!)

Next up was A, a young, career-oriented woman with a bright smile. In a very quick way, A openly shared about her family’s struggles since the death of her younger brother, two years ago. A seems to have come out of that tragedy fairly well, but certainly is not past the point of lasting after-effects of her brother’s death and its impact on her family.

After A, another young woman introduced herself, S. S is a twenty-something divorcee with a young daughter; she shared about the effort to rebuild her life after her philandering husband abandoned the family. We both admired S’s willingness to, in a first-time gathering, share openly about her difficult journey, and we found ourselves appreciating her ‘victory story’ – until she began sharing from her recent life chapter, where she revealed that her current boyfriend, a boxer, got drunk one night and beat her to the point where she was hospitalized. We were now absolutely amazed at the level of intimacy and vulnerability in this first-time gathering…but there was still one last person to share.

The last woman, C, summoned up her courage and began to speak. C is a woman in her mid-thirties, married with three children at home. Her story began in her childhood, where she told of the emotionally-crushing experience of attending a school for children with ‘special needs’. C told of her feelings of rejection and ostracism, and how those feelings were linked with the problem of alcoholism she’s battled her entire adult life. Lastly in her story, C shared of her off- and on-again tendencies towards suicide, admitting that there have been times that the only reason she was still alive was because of her children – that she couldn’t leave them alone to raise themselves. She has had suicidal thoughts as recently as three weeks ago.

By the end of these testimonies, we’d already realized that our time with this group – our assignment – would be a bit different than we anticipated. We don’t yet know what this will all look like, so we’re wide open, praying and talking about how God would have us serve this newly-formed group. We invite you to pray for us on this issue as well – and equally if not more, please pray for the group members, P and M, A, S and C. God knows their names.

Much more could be written about all of this, but we’ll leave you with a closing comment. As sobering as those two group hours were together, there were equal measures of two other aspects in that living room on Tuesday night: hope, and hunger for God. To a person, every person in the room expressed a measure of hope that would defy explanation save for the other dynamic at work – that every person present expressed a very strong desire to know God more fully, and to know His presence in their lives in unmistakable ways. There were figurative growling stomachs around the circle that night, as each person plainly expressed their need for more of God in their lives. As we drove home that night, there was no mistaking: we were sobered, challenged, incredibly blessed and realizing that our ‘extracurricular assignment’ was going to be something different than we’d expected.

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Heb 11:1, NIV)

Praise Items:

Thank you so very much for praying for our situation with the South African Revenue Service. Our local accountant filed our tax return on 31 January and we do not owe any income taxes this year! Please continue to pray as some of our teammate families are still in the process of filing their returns. It would appear that some of our teammates will have to pay taxes; please pray they would be minimal and not disruptive to our team’s life and ministry in South Africa.
Thank you also for praying for someone to stay in our home during our upcoming home visit. We are amazed that it’s likely that a young man named Walter will be able to house-sit for us the whole time we’re gone. We are due to meet him on 25 February for initial planning…please continue to pray for our process and planning.
David had a very good meeting with the Board of Directors of the Zimbabwe affiliate of TOPIC on 1 February. Specific plans were put in place to see TOPIC Zimbabwe’s viability continue in spite of the loss of a key leader in that country, and David has already been pleased with the follow-up steps that have been taken to strengthen the Board and prepare for a significant training project in the country. The meeting and immediate result have gone better than David anticipated – thank you God! Keep praying.
Thanks also for praying for David’s one-day workshop in Limpopo Province on 8 February…it went better than anticipated; now we’ll see about follow-up and next steps. David’s one-day workshop in Mpumalanga Province was postponed to 22 February, and Cherie’s HIV + AIDS training course at a Joburg church was also postponed due to unforeseen circumstances. We await word on whether that training will be scheduled in the next couple of months, or only after our return after home visit.

Prayer requests

Cherie’s high school ministry kicks off on Saturday, 19 February. Last month we’d asked for prayers as we believe 2011 will be a year of transition for the ministry. Little did we know that one change would be challenges with the ministry’s meeting space. Two weeks ago Cherie learned that the community center hall in which the ministry meets would only be available every other Saturday this year, half the dates she was anticipating. Please pray for creative thinking, adjustments and wisdom as she and her team begin the new ministry year.
Please pray for David as he travels with teammates John and Jay to conduct pastoral training events in Zimbabwe 6-12 March. Praise God for apparently good on-the-ground planning by Zimbabwean partners; pray for effective events and great next steps in pastoring of pastors in southwestern Zimbabwe.
Please pray for our sanity as we’re in the thick of planning for our home visit, in the midst of our normal life and ministry here. Lots of time in email exchange, travel planning and coordination!

Language Lessons

A proverb from the Ndebele of Zimbabwe and South Africa: When deeds speak, words are naught.

2011 - off and running!

2011-01-20T21:42:00.009+02:00

Happy New Year! We are off and running into 2011 after a wonderful Christmas break. We had a restful holiday window including a get-away to celebrate our birthdays, for which we are grateful (although half our time on the Indian Ocean coast was overcast and rainy…South Africa has experienced significant flooding in the last three weeks, like several other countries around the world).

We are now moving full-speed ahead through a first quarter of busy ministry before heading to the US on a home visit. As is our custom, rather than sharing a story we’re beginning the year by listing significant areas of prayer focus for the year. Feel free to keep this update, and use it as a prayer reference through the year. Before outlining our major items for 2011, allow us to follow up on prayer requests from our last normal update, in October:

Thank you for praying for Cherie and the leadership team of the high school ministry. They have made some progress in thinking about strategic directions for the ministry, and will continue dialog in early 2011. There’s a lot that’s still fuzzy at this point…your continued prayers would be most appreciated.
Thank you also for praying for the two days David had with TOPIC’s International Director in Johannesburg in late October. They had good meetings and time for planning, and it was a blessing for us to get to know him better (as he is new to TOPIC since March 2010).
Thank you for your prayers for funding for Cherie’s high school ministry camp in December. Funds were provided that enabled all the students and leaders to participate in the camp – and significantly, for the first time students were challenged to raise funds to underwrite the camp cost as well, which they did. That was a breakthrough!
This year’s camp was a five-day experience (previous years had only been weekend-long events), and the theme was Love Matters. Every day there was biblical teaching and group discussions on love, dating relationships, sex, marriage, and purity. At the end of the week students were encouraged to take a vow of abstinence until marriage. And of course, there was fun – afternoons were filled with activities and plenty of swimming, and the evenings included campfires with worship and time for sharing. We’ll hear more feedback as the ministry resumes in the next few weeks!
Thank you for praying for the Pastoring of Pastors training David and three colleagues conducted in Malawi 16-18 November. It was a very good event and set the table for significant POP steps in that country beginning this year…follow-up will take place soon to see that 2011 gets off to a good start from the training that was provided.

Prayer requests for the next month include:

Please pray as Cherie conducts HIV + AIDS training at a significant Johannesburg church on the nights of 2, 9 and 16 February. Please pray in particular for her and her team’s ability to connect with workshop participants in this primarily white church. Many times, members of white congregations think of AIDS as an issue only for blacks within the country; if that is generally true of this congregation, Cherie’s team might have some unique challenges conducting training within such a context.
Please pray for a strategic meeting David is conducting with the Board of Directors of the Zimbabwe affiliate of TOPIC (which he oversees from a distance), on 1 February in Harare. The key leader of TOPIC’s efforts in Zimbabwe is preparing to move to Johannesburg to launch a church, which could potentially lead to a crippling result for TOPIC in Zimbabwe. This meeting will be strategic in re-thinking and restructuring efforts to minimize the impact of his absence.
Please pray for David as he conducts POP one-day events in the South African provinces of Limpopo (8 February) and Mpumalanga (9 February)...in each of these provinces we’ve had false POP starts in the last couple of years. Please pray that these events would truly launch movement and momentum in these two provinces.
In recent months we’ve learned that laws have changed in South Africa that necessitate that we (and other members of our team) begin filing tax returns with the South African Revenue Service. We are working with a local accountant to file our first tax return, by the 31 January deadline. We do not yet know if we will be liable to pay taxes…if we must, needless to say that will have a significant financial impact on us and our team going forward. Please pray for our accountant’s ongoing efforts to (legally and ethically) minimize our tax exposure, and that the financial effect of this new law would be minimal at most.

Broader prayer requests for 2011 include:

Prayer for our US home visit, beginning in late April. Later we’ll share specific prayer requests for the home visit…for now, please pray for our preparation in the next three months. Please pray for our efforts to find someone to stay in our house while we are gone (especially for security purposes); for our calendar planning efforts to maximize our time in the US; for pre-trip communication and coordination (no small thing for such a lengthy trip); and for exploration of possible travel to Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.
On a related note, please pray for our ministries and their momentum while we’re on our home visit. They always suffer when we take a home visit…pray for our effort to have them in a good place by the time we depart for the US, and that they would be well sustained while we are gone.
Prayer for our ministry team in 2011 as we begin implementing some of the changes we have been discussing in recent months, related to our care, prayer and support for one another. We’ve got some ideas we want to pursue, and 2011 marks the beginning of where the rubber meets the road. Please pray for our team’s implementation process this year.
Prayer as we are both seeing 2011 as a year for seriously evaluating our membership in our local church in Johannesburg. We are both feeling restless about this church and our involvement in it, and need to prayerfully, intentionally and carefully understand if we should be moving towards another congregation. Connected to this is Cherie’s desire to hand off part of her leadership role of the HIV + AIDS ministry of our church…regardless of our church future, please pray for that process as well.
Related to probable transitions in Cherie’s high school ministry (referenced above), it’s highly likely that Cherie’s particular leadership role will change in the ministry. Please pray for the ministry transitional process and for Cherie’s efforts to continue identifying and grooming a successor to fill her shoes.
David is entering year two of a two-year commitment to mentor seven young leaders in our local church here. Please pray for David’s efforts here…after a good year together in 2010, this year looks promising save for the challenge of being gone during our home visit.
Prayer for David’s Pastoring of Pastors efforts in 2011. He is currently meeting with co-leaders to finish establishing priorities for the year. Please especially pray for ongoing efforts to raise additional leaders and trainers to keep up with ‘growing demand’ for this ministry initiative.
Prayer for David’s pastoral research project to be concluded in 2011. 2010 was a year of great progress in interviewing pastors about their training needs…please pray that 2011 would be the same, in spite of our home visit absence.

As you can see, we have much to be praying for in 2011! We are grateful for your prayer support as we’d be in trouble without it (and you). We’ll keep you posted on all of these items as we move through the year.

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Heb 4:16, NIV)

Language Lessons
A proverb from the Zulu of South Africa: The sun never sets without fresh news.

Hawkers are people too

2010-12-02T18:27:00.003+02:00

One of the minor irritants of driving around Johannesburg is the presence of 'hawkers' at many of the stoplights (or robots, as they're called here). Hawkers are people, mostly young men, that take red-light opportunities to sell motorists all kinds of different products - fruit, cell phone car-chargers, cologne, wall maps (?), toys and more. (For more on these types of informal businesses, see our September 2006 post below.)

For me (David), at times the hawkers become more than merely minor irritants. No one of them is cause for major irritation, but the collective drumbeat of constantly being approached, haggled and more gets a bit old...it takes intentionality to respond to them with respect and a positive attitude.

Confession time: even when my exterior display is one of respect, often the interior is filled with a lack of it. I find myself wishing that these guys would just go away and bother someone else.

The other day I took a proverbial arrow right between the eyes. A few weeks ago our Spring rains returned to Johannesburg, a cause for celebration after an overextended dry Winter season. I was driving down the road listening to the news radio when one story caught my attention and zapped me. The brief report stated that within the first two weeks of the Spring rains, five hawkers had been hit by lightning during rainstorms, and two of them had been killed - on a road I frequent at least two days per week.

Just a couple of radio story sentences reminded me of the thing that I so quickly forget as I'm being 'harassed' while sitting at stoplights - that hawkers are people too. They're not simply automatons that have been placed at street corners to make my life inconvenient. They are men and women with names, people with families, and they're simply trying to make a living. (Many hawkers are illegal immigrants that have taken these jobs that are deemed to be 'below' the standards of local workers.)

So there it is. Since hearing that report, while on the road I'm doing what I can to bring to memory the reality that our stoplight friends are not just a nuisance - they are people too.

Whoonga??

2010-11-01T22:17:00.002+02:00

OK, so this was a new one for us. We're watching the news, including a report on the latest findings surrounding some grisly murders in a poor, rural community outside Durban. One week ago, six people were murdered (most from the same family), and a few nights later three more were killed in the same general area.

On the news, the police shared that they are speculating that the murderers were under the influence of a drug they called "whoonga" - a new word and name for us. The police explained that those under the influence of this drug, growing in popularity, are hallucinogenic and very violent, which would explain this horrific crime.

So what is whoonga? Anti-retroviral drugs (used in combatting AIDS), mixed with rat poison and/or powdered detergent, combined with marijuana (or 'dagga,' as it's called here) and smoked. Cherie is familiar with the fact that some ARV's have hallucinogenic, and other, side effects, but those effects are certainly worth the benefit that they bring in extending health and lives. But we hadn't heard that ARV's are being combined with other elements to produce highly-addictive, violence-inducing drugs, whoonga among them.

How utterly sad, confusing and disturbing...

Freedom-setting truth

2010-10-19T17:39:00.009+02:00

Many people have gifts and talents that never get noticed or unlocked. Allow us to share the story of Dudu, who had the recent opportunity to use her gift and live out her passion.

Back in July, Cherie was at the HIV + AIDS hospice home for a visit with the patients. Dudu was a newer patient that Cherie was getting to know. Each time Cherie would visit the home she noticed Dudu sitting by herself, writing in a spiral-bound notebook. One day Cherie approached Dudu and asked what it was that she liked to write in her notebook. Dudu shared that she was keeping a journal of the events of her life, and that she was writing them down in story form to tell the story of her life and illness. Today, Dudu is living with HIV and is very open about her status, though she hadn’t always been. She wanted to put her story on paper in order to share with others some hard lessons she has learned. Cherie took note of this and then got an idea.

Once a year, another of Cherie’s ministry engagements, the after-school program and high school youth ministry, host a Parent’s Day Concert. On a Saturday morning, family members assemble to watch the students from both ministries show off their talents in song, dance, poetry-reading, playing of instruments and acting in skits. Ah-hah – this was where Cherie’s idea was born: Would Dudu be willing to take her story and write it as a drama script? Would she assign characters with lines to her story? And would she be willing to allow high school students to dramatize her life story, the story of her finding out she is HIV+, in front of adults and students? Dudu didn’t hesitate for a moment – yes! She looked forward to the challenge. Dudu has a gift for writing and wanted to use her gift and passion to enlighten others on the issue of HIV + AIDS.

A deadline was established to complete the writing of the drama, in order to give the high school students the necessary rehearsal time before the performance. As she wrote, Dudu would not let Cherie see the script until it was complete. The day came when Dudu was ready to hand over the script – several handwritten pages. The title Dudu gave to the drama was The Truth will Set You Free.

The drama script, sharing a part of Dudu’s life story, shared:

Dudu found out she was HIV+ when she got pregnant. She didn’t immediately disclose her status...she didn’t share the news with her family or the father of her baby. Dudu told her family and friends that when the baby would be born she would name the child Ndabezinhle, “good news” in Zulu. Dudu didn’t share why she chose that name with her family and friends, but she had hope that everything about her baby was going to be good and that the child would be born without HIV. Dudu believed this because she had a good doctor and counselor that helped her through her pregnancy with her HIV+ status. Dudu gave birth to a healthy baby girl and fulfilled her promise – she gave her the chosen name of Ndabezinhle. And the baby tested negative for HIV! Dudu lived with the secret that she was HIV+ for more than three years after her daughter’s birth. Even when she began to get sick at work, experiencing shortness of breath and weight loss, she did not disclose her status.

After three years of secrecy, Dudu did finally disclose to her sister that she was HIV+. But she pretended that she had just learned about her status. To her family, her friends and to her boss, Dudu pretended that it was only recently that she knew her status, not that she really had been living in secrecy for over three years. After Dudu chose to disclose her status to others, she began feeling better and began gaining weight. Dudu began taking antiretroviral treatment and made a lot of progress. Today, Dudu is happy; she’s able to stand and share of her status with her family, her friends, the church, with co-workers and even with strangers. That’s where Dudu’s conviction stems from – “the truth will set you free.” By telling the truth and not keeping her status a secret any longer, it released burden and stress in her life and she began to see improvements in her health. She also received the love and support of family and friends, which was a contributing factor to the improvement in her health.

This story, Dudu’s story, was the drama that was performed by nine students and a narrator at the Parent’s Day Concert on September 18. But here’s the icing on the cake. As the concert date approached, Dudu’s health at the hospice home was improving…so permission was given and arrangements made for Cherie to bring Dudu to the Parent’s Day Concert! Dudu was able to watch her story unfold and come to life for all in attendance to see. At the end of the drama, Dudu stood in front of everyone present and shared that she had written the drama, and that it was based on a true story – her story. She then went on to give her testimony and encouraged everyone in attendance to get tested, to know their status and to not live with a secret as she had. The truth will set you free! Get the proper help and get on antiretroviral medication because you too can live with HIV! When Dudu finished her testimony she received much applause and many hugs from adults…many expressed gratitude to her for her message. Dudu left the Parent’s Concert feeling that she had accomplished her mission and that God had used her that day.

One week after the Parent’s Day Concert, Dudu shared with Cherie that she was being discharged from the hospice home. Her health had greatly improved and Dudu was stabilized on the antiretroviral medications. Phone numbers were exchanged and Cherie prayed over Dudu, that she would continue to tell her story to others and not stay silent on the issue of HIV + AIDS. Dudu has a story to tell. The truth needs to set others free.

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32, NIV)

Praise Items:

Thank you for your prayers for us and our OC ministry team in Joburg. For the last six weeks, we’ve been intentionally discussing how we can better provide support and care to one another. Conversations are going well, even as some hurts are coming to the surface. The good news is that we are united in our desire for what we want to become, even if it’s taking some work to get to that place. Please continue to pray for us.
Thank you for praying for Cherie in light of her follow-up mammogram in September. Her recent scan showed no difference from what was observed earlier this year…we continue to monitor her health, while believing that her recent news indicates that she is fine.
Thank God for a very good pastoring of pastors workshop David conducted with bishops, pastors and leaders of the Free Methodist church in Southern Africa. Please pray for follow-up and plans to be developed to reach additional leaders within the denomination.

Prayer Requests:

Please continue to pray for strategic meetings that are currently taking place surrounding Cherie’s high school ministry. Cherie continues in dialog with ministry and community leaders as they explore ideas for implementation in 2011.
Please pray for two days (26 & 27 October) David will have with TOPIC’s International Director, Rick Kingham, in Johannesburg. Please pray for effective meetings with pastoral training leaders, good communication and for effective planning.
Please pray for funding for Cherie’s high school ministry camp, due to take place in December. Pray that additional funding would be made available to enable all her leaders and students to attend the camp.
Please pray for David and three colleagues as they travel for a pastoring of pastors training event in Malawi 16-18 November. This event has great potential to launch significant momentum in that country…please pray that God would bring the ‘right’ leaders to the event (‘right’ by His definition); for good connections; for solid training; and for safety in travel (travel dates: 13-15 and 19-21 November).
Please pray for us as we finish our ministry season in mid-December – that we would finish well in these next two months!

Language Lessons
A proverb from Tunisia: Better to blush than keep the burden in your heart.

Cherie's health update - no changes

2010-10-01T16:25:00.003+02:00

Thanks for your prayers for Cherie's follow-up mammogram on 28 September. The new scan revealed that nothing’s really changed in the last six months. As it happened, we both had appointments with our GP the next day to renew scripts for chronic medications, and he suggested that Cherie see a specialist to be 100% sure that nothing’s wrong. She's not in a hurry to take this step, and we're both at peace with this report. We’ll keep paying attention, and will keep you posted with any particular steps for your awareness and prayers. Thank you again!

An update told through pictures

2010-09-21T18:42:00.005+02:00

As in past years, we are headed towards Cherie’s annual camp for her high school students. Please see our paragraph below if you’d like to participate in sponsoring young people to attend camp in December.

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s true, this month’s update will be the longest we’ve ever sent – for something different, we’re going to let pictures tell our story this month. The brief facts:

David traveled with two ministry colleagues, Johan and Müller, to Zimbabwe and Malawi 15-28 July. The trip encompassed over 3000 miles and passage through five border crossings. They conducted four one-day pastoral training workshops, setting the table for future training and ministry opportunities – including discussion with a seminary about developing coursework focusing on the health of pastoral leaders. It was a very fruitful trip.

We have posted pictures from the Zimbabwe/Malawi ministry trip on our pictures site, and invite you to join us on a virtual ministry trip via visual images! The collection of trip shots that we’ve posted isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but will provide a unique peek at different aspects of the ministry and trip. Feel free to join us by clicking www.picasaweb.google.com/davidgbulger, specifically looking at the folder entitled “Images from a ministry trip”. We’ve also added additional pictures to the other folders that we’ve posted on our site. (Special thanks to colleague Johan Combrinck – many of the trip shots are ones that he took.)

Aside from the pictures website, let us remind you of a couple of other media we use, or are beginning to use, to remain in touch:

We post our e-newsletters on this site - and addition to posting the newsletters, we’ve also begun jotting briefer items on this site. For example, in May, the week after the murder of Moses, we posted additional short updates to provide updates. We hope to continue with that type of communication, allowing you to check in when you want, rather than having us add more emails into your inbox. If you’d like, you can also be ‘tickled’ by this site when we post something, using the RSS feature.
David has established a Twitter feed - @dgbulger. Our thinking is still developing on how we’ll use this. One thing’s for sure: we’re committed to not waste anyone’s time via Twitter. One idea is to use it for short, timely prayer requests. We’re open to other ideas as well – feel free to pass them along.
And we each maintain an account on Facebook too!

Our attempt in all this is to remain in touch in a way that suits you and your preferences, without overwhelming you with communication (and without making communication a full-time job for us). We welcome your ideas, suggestions and input!

Camp!

From 6-10 December, Cherie’s high school ministry will be conducting its annual camp for students from the high school ministry. This camp, conducted annually since 2005, will be a little different from previous years – it’s moving from a weekend camp to a five-day experience that includes many typical camp experiences – fun, food, activities, small group discussion, Bible teaching and more. This year ~60 students and 10 leaders are expected to participate, and as in previous years, our goal is to provide this camp experience at no cost to the participants. Over the years supporters have generously allowed us to make that happen; if you are interested in helping to underwrite the cost of this year’s camp, please be in touch with Cherie (cbulger@topicsa.net). (The camp cost per participant is approximately $60.)

Praise Items:

Join us in thanking God for His provision for our vehicle. We have been able to purchase a Toyota 4x4 and our minds are at peace knowing that our days of roadside breakdowns have passed. As everything developed, we wound up trading in our Land Rover, so it was a quick and smooth effort to release it, even if we didn’t get as much from its sale as we’d wanted – but it was the right decision to let it go in a timely fashion and move on. Thank God for closure to this season of vehicle issues, and for the opportunity to move forward in a reliable way.
Praise God for the second very fruitful HIV + AIDS training session Cherie conducted with university students in September. Her training was very well received, and the students have been well equipped to take steps of their own in engaging the HIV + AIDS pandemic, and to lead other students as well.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for our Johannesburg OC ministry team as we are in a season of prayer, discussion and decision-making regarding the care and support side of our life together. With the addition of new team members (including us), the changing dynamics of life and ministry, and seasons of life, we’ve recognized our need to make changes to some of the ways we do life together. Please pray for our communication, for openness and sensitivity, and for wisdom and patience as we explore new ideas and attempt to land in a place that is blessing to every team member.
Please pray for Cherie as she has a follow-up mammogram appointment on September 28. In a routine exam six months ago, the doctor noticed something that isn’t worrisome or a cause for concern, but is something that’s worthy of attention. Please pray that this next exam reveals that the initial concerns were unfounded, and that Cherie has a good, complete bill of health.
Please pray for strategic meetings that are currently taking place surrounding Cherie’s high school ministry. Different stakeholders are coming together to discuss the next chapter of the ministry’s life, including some creative ideas, that could potentially begin being implemented in the new school year that starts in February. There is talk of moving from a once-per-week to a Monday-Friday program. Pray for new leaders to be identified, for existing leaders to step up and take on more responsibility, and for clarity about possible implementation. Pray for wisdom and direction for Cherie as she seeks to understand her best role if changes are made to the ministry.

Language Lessons

A proverb from the Congolese of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo: Great events may stem from words of no importance.

Today at St. Francis...

2010-08-17T17:09:00.002+02:00

Today at St. Francis (the hospice home for people living with HIV/AIDS), I witnessed a first time experience. As I (Cherie) was playing Jenga with some of the patients, two women that had come to visit a middle-aged male patient began to argue and fight in a language I could not understand. I observed them waving arms around, making cell phone calls, and obviously angry with each other. One of the nurses in charge had to step in and tried to take control of the situation. By now, all eyes were watching this drama unfold. The man, who was recently admitted, was very sick and, while all this was going on, just sat there slumped in his wheelchair. He did not interject and paid no attention to the two women and the drama around him.

In the midst of the commotion, I asked another patient what they were arguing about. She shared that the women were arguing over the care of the man. One woman wanted the man to remain at the hospice home and the other woman wanted to take him out and bring him back home to nurse him. Then my friend shared these two women were his wives two of his total of four of them. What a predicament for the helpless and very sick man...

A Country That's Feelin' Good

2010-08-09T13:43:00.002+02:00

The other night, we were watching a film on TV that included a scene with some dialog that’s oh-so-true. One of the main characters was encouraging the other, telling her that she had potential. The woman, in response, stated that, “People put you down enough, you start to believe it…The bad stuff is easier to believe. You ever notice that?”

So what do those script lines have to do with the World Cup? After all, everything in this universe relates to the recently-completed soccer World Cup in South Africa, doesn’t it? :)

For the last several years, this country has been scrambling and preparing to host the World Cup, whose fans claim it’s the largest sporting event in the world. Preparations have included the massive construction, or upgrading, of soccer stadia, roads, airports, public transport systems and private enterprises, such as hotels. It has been a huge undertaking, involving billions of dollars, untold hours of labor and possibly the highest level of commitment to a single project the country has ever undertaken.

Through all the effort, there’s been a constant drumbeat, both within the country and from afar. The drumbeat was in the form of questions, questions that were repeatedly raised throughout the season of preparation. Could South Africa do it? Could Africa pull it off? Could the country successfully organize and host something on the scale of the soccer World Cup?

The questions weren’t new ones – they were only the latest version of the kinds of questions that have been raised about Africa for as long as anyone can remember. To borrow and paraphrase a line from John chapter 1, Africa! Can anything good come from there?

We two are like most Americans, in that we’ve grown up in a culture that tells us that we can do most anything to which we put our minds. Americans, in general, don’t suffer from a lack of confidence – or, as some would say, a lack of arrogance. We can point to a string of past ‘successes’ that form our belief that we can accomplish a lot. And sometimes, that mindset makes it difficult to fully grasp one aspect of present-day Africa – our observation that many Africans suffer from a lack of self-confidence. (In a research project David is currently conducting with pastoral leaders, many leaders have stated that an area where they most need to develop and grow is in the area of self-esteem.)

Our observation isn’t universal – it isn’t about all Africans – but we’ve encountered an unmistakable thread of a lack of self-confidence in the fabric of our life and ministry in this land. And understandably so: consider two giant defining dynamics of African life in the last 400 years: slavery and colonialism. (And before the reader jumps to conclusions, these comments aren’t about blaming outsiders for the woes of Africa – just a reminder of two overwhelming aspects of recent African history.)

For hundreds of years, Africans have been told that they don’t measure up. They’re inferior. And worse. “People put you down enough, you start to believe it…The bad stuff is easier to believe. You ever notice that?”

So when people, organizations and governments began saying that South Africa couldn’t properly host a soccer World Cup, they were simply marching in a long line of those who’ve gone before, questioning, blaming and opinionating about Africa and its challenges/opportunities.

But a funny thing happened when the tournament finally arrived – it went off without a hitch! The month-long tournament wasn’t 100% perfect, but the country did an outstanding job of hosting the tournament. Stadia were nearly full; crime levels were low; organization was thorough; spirits were high; overseas visitors were warmly welcomed and a nationwide feeling of euphoria and accomplishment was absolutely tangible. It was absolutely amazing to observe and participate in it. Several times during the month-long tournament, we found ourselves in tears as we would see or hear something that demonstrated that Africa can do it!

We knew in our hearts how important a victory this was for this country, and continent. That feeling has repeatedly echoed in the weeks after the Cup’s conclusion on 11 July, as the country has been lauded for doing such a great job (the best World Cup ever, according to many; a 9 out of 10 according to the soccer governing body’s president; etc.). To those of us that come from countries and cultures with a stronger collective sense of self-confidence, we cannot fully understand the significance of this feeling in the country – but we can join in celebrating and affirming the sense of ‘job well done.’ Many are talking about, hoping and praying that the successful hosting of the World Cup will turn out to be a defining event in the history of this country. May it be so.

Of course, at the end of the day our true sense of self-worth can’t come from successfully hosting (or winning) a soccer tournament (or winning any game), or building an economy (or landing a particular job), or winning a war (or an argument) or anything else. Our feeling – our conviction – that we count, we matter, that we truly are significant, will only come from knowing that there is a God who created us, and that He loves us without limit.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:38-39, NIV)

Praise Items:

Praise God for the fruitful HIV + AIDS training session Cherie conducted with 70 university students in late July. The students actively engaged with her and the material and are looking forward to more – the second session will be on 10 September, and your prayer for that session would be appreciated.
Thank God for a very good training trip that David took to Zimbabwe and Malawi in the second half of July. (More on this in another update.) Please pray for effective follow-up and planning for the next phase of training, to take place later this year or in the beginning of 2011.
Thank God for His provision – funding is being donated to assist us with the purchase of a vehicle. Please continue to pray for the necessary funding for the purchase; for the purchase process itself, and especially for our effort to sell our Land Rover – that a suitable and credit-worthy buyer can be found in a quick fashion.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for Cherie’s high school students as they, Saturday the 14th, serve at a nursing home and an orphanage for children infected by HIV + AIDS. The students will be putting into practice compassion, about which they’ve been learning and discussing in recent weeks.
Thank you, as always, for your prayers for our protection. Please continue to pray, as recent newspaper reports (and word on the street) indicate that we’re seeing an increased level of crime in our neighborhood (car hijackings, robberies, etc.).

Language Lessons
A proverb from the Kikuyu of Kenya: Having rain clouds is not the same as having rain.

Kids growing up

2010-07-12T17:15:00.009+02:00

Please note the prayer request and challenge we are facing regarding a vehicle situation, in the Prayer Requests section below.

Although Cherie’s high school youth ministry, Impumelelo Phambili, is only in its third year, Cherie has known most of its students since 2002. Most of her high school students participated in the after-school program she helped launch several years ago, so Cherie remembers some of the students when they were as young as eight years old. She’s had the opportunity to watch the kids grow and mature over the years, and in the three years of Impumelelo Phambili, she observes noticeable change in the students on a regular basis.

In the last few weeks, Cherie has (sadly) watched the Phambili students take steps of maturation due to all the wrong reasons – the tragic murder and loss of Moses, their friend and classmate. This event brought the entire ministry closer together, like family. Students extended compassion and love to one another and rallied together to develop ideas for how they could serve Moses’ family during this time. (Accounts of the week after the death of Moses are noted below in other blog entries.)

Since Moses’ death, Cherie and the other Phambili leaders have helped walk the students through the grieving process – although, by prior arrangement, the ministry has been on holiday break since 12 June because of the World Cup soccer tournament. It resumes on 17 July.

Cherie was asked to share some words at the funeral on behalf of the Impumelelo Phambili ministry. She shared the following:

I greet you in the mighty name of Jesus Christ – the same Jesus who died on the cross to forgive us our sins and become our Savior, so that we may have eternal life in heaven when we leave this earth.

My name is Cherie Bulger. I have been involved with Emthonjeni Community Centre in Zandspruit since 2002. I have had the privilege to help out with the Golang after-school program and three years ago helped begin the high school youth ministry called Impumelelo Phambili. Today at this difficult and sad gathering, many of the high school students from Impumelelo Phambili are here with me to show our love, respect, and support to Moses, his family, and this community. I speak for all of us to you to say, we are sorry for your loss.

I met both Moses and his sister, Sindy, when they were young people in the after-school program. I got to watch them grow up physically and also mature and grow into the fine young adults they have become.

What I remember about Moses is that he was a quiet guy. Moses had a gentle and kind spirit about him and people liked to be around him. Moses was always willing to help out and would put the needs of others before his own. Moses was also a peacemaker. The night of his death, he was attempting to bring about peace in the midst of others who wanted to fight. In his attempt to bring about peace, Moses lost his life. In the Bible there is a verse found in Matthew 5:9. There, Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”

I imagine today Moses is with his heavenly Father, God, who is looking Moses in the eyes and is saying, “You are my son, in whom I am well pleased.”

On Friday evening, May 21, 2010 the Impumelelo Phambili youth ministry lost a dear friend. We lost a brother and a family member. We feel that loss as Moses was part of us. We will miss our dear friend. All of us who had the privilege to call Moses our friend, we have been blessed to have known Moses.

Prior to Moses’ death, Impumelelo Phambili’s focus for the first half of 2010 was on discipleship. Leaders and teacher have been challenging the students to put into practice their faith, and to start living out their changed hearts, in their schools and community.

Some readers will know of and remember an annual event Cherie helped to lead when we lived in Chicago, called STRIVE (Students Turning Responsibility Into Valuable Experiences). Each year this event provided an opportunity for hundreds of students to get involved in their communities, by giving eight hours of their time and serving at various non-profit organizations. Students served on various projects at libraries, schools, retirement homes, fire stations, park districts, etc. Most of the work involved beautifying the community.

One week before Moses’ death, Cherie saw the Phambili students take a different step of maturation – for a good reason – as students and leaders participated in their first-ever community clean-up day. The intent was to provide students the opportunity to put into practice what they’d been learning through the ministry – to practice servanthood. Phambili leaders wanted the students to take responsibility for the community in which they live, to help beautify and make a difference in it. The hope was to have neighbors observe the students’ labor, providing students the opportunity to testify that they were serving without pay.

On the designated Saturday, students showed up wearing t-shirts from the previous year’s ministry camp, so they could all be ‘in uniform’ and noticed by the community. The morning began with a simple breakfast together, so students would have the energy to fulfill the three-hour commitment. The students read and recited verses together – Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving (Col. 3:23-24). Two working teams of twenty people were formed, and they walked to their job assignments.

One team went to a local church in the Zandspruit community, one that meets in a large tent. This church has had a partnership with the community center and all its kids’ programs since 2002. Some of the high school students attend this church. Students washed the inside and outside walls of the tent, and more than 200 plastic chairs (the church’s pews). The second team went to the only primary school in the community, to pick up trash, sweep and rake the grounds, wash windows and blackboards and to sweep classroom floors. The majority of Phambili’s students attended this primary school until they were 13 years old, so it was very cool that they got to give back to a school that had given to them. As they worked, they sang songs together and exchanged words of encouragement to keep each other motivated. The students were a beautiful picture of servants in community.

A few days later, Cherie was back in the Zandspruit community with a short-term team that had come to serve with the after-school program. As a part of the tour of the community, the team stopped at the primary school and its principal, Ms. Lebotsi, commented on the great work the students had done cleaning up the school grounds. She was impressed and very grateful.

Overall, the serving day was very positive and a great experience for the high school students of Impumelelo Phambili. The students gave 100% for the three-hour commitment and took pride in seeing the difference their efforts made. Cherie and the other leaders believe the serving day was a milestone event in the kids’ lives and in the life of Impumelelo Phambili.

Praise Items:

Thank you for your prayers related to the short-term ministry team that served with us in May – the team served very well at the hospice home and with the after-school and high-school ministries. Cherie’s ministries have been taken to another level through the service of that team!
Thank you for praying for Cherie’s 4 June HIV + AIDS training and for David’s ministry trips to Zimbabwe and South Africa’s Free State Province. Cherie’s event had its up’s and down’s (but hopefully set the table for future training sessions); the Zimbabwe trip was very fruitful for David; and the Free State trip was a very productive three days of research!
Thank you for praying for Evodia, Mandla and Dudu at the HIV + AIDS hospice care center…each of them have experienced stabilized health and have been released from the facility! Mandla even phoned Cherie this week just to say hello.
Thank you for praying for South Africa as it’s been hosting the soccer World Cup. The tournament has gone well in terms of safety, hospitality and more. All are grateful here for a successful national month-long event.

Prayer Requests:

Please join us in praying for a transport situation we are currently facing. After nearly eight years of hard service, we are needing to move our 4x4 into retirement and purchase a replacement vehicle. Our 4x4 has spent a combined nine weeks in the repair shop this year, and we need to take a step to position us for our next chapter of ministry in Africa. We are attempting to raise funding for this purchase…please pray that sacrificial financial gifts would be donated to help us with this purchase. If you would like more information about this, or have questions, please email Cherie at cbulger@topicsa.net (as David will be traveling and away from email for most of the 2nd half of July).
Please pray for David and two colleagues as they travel to Zimbabwe and Malawi 15-27 July. They will be conducting one-day workshops (17th, 20th, 22nd, 24th) and strategic networking meetings for future ministry involvement. Please pray for the teaching sessions, good connections with Zimbabwean and Malawian leaders, and for safety in travel.
Please pray for an HIV + AIDS training session Cherie will be conducting with ~80 students at a local Johannesburg university on 30 July, including for the struggles she’s currently experiencing in working with a campus pastor in planning for the session.

Language Lessons

A proverb from North Africa: Good actions are more nourishing to youth than words.

Ayoba!

2010-06-11T07:12:00.006+02:00

Celebration! We have never seen a whole country as amped up for anything as South Africa is for the World Cup beginning today. We went to bed last night to the sounds of vuvuzelas blaring at the conclusion of the pre-Cup celebration concert; this morning is cloudy, cool and breezy, but the vibe is the exact opposite, with the horns blaring again since early this morning in our normally-quiet neighborhood. (The vuvuzela [voo-voo-ZAY-lah] is the horn that blown by thousands of fans at soccer matches in this country, producing a sound that's not unlike that of an elephant.)

As pre-Cup setup teams have been arriving in the country in the last month, last-minute cleanup efforts have been underway. Many businesses are flying collections of the national flags of the teams competing for the Cup, and increasingly, vehicles are wearing flags and 'mirror socks'. Cup-related visual stimulation is around every corner.

On Wednesday, "United We Shall Stand" parades and gatherings took place in several cities around the country, in support of the national team, Bafana Bafana. The team went on a six-block parade tour in an open-air bus while tens of thousands of fans screamed and blew their horns to encourage and cheer them on - flags waving, songs being sung, jerseys worn and mania everywhere. One home-made sign board: "My blood runs yellow and green" (the team's colors), and one business' banner hanging from its building: "49 million of us vs. 11 of them" (the number of a team's players on the pitch during a match). The parade rivaled any parade of a team coming home from a championship - and this for a team that hadn't played its first tournament game!

In this country with such a history of division, it's amazing to watch, even if only temporarily and superficially, a level of unity because of all this. In recent weeks, many have wondererd about the possibility of long-term positive effects from hosting he Cup, including various media (http://g.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-cup/news/will-the-world-cup-unite-south-africa--fbintl,lc-southafrica060610.html). But now that it's all here, the serious reflection has been suspended - now it's all about ayoba!

Last night's pre-Cup kickoff concert was incredible and set the stage for a month of celebration. This morning, with vuvuzelas sounding, the attention turns to the opening ceremonies, with the promise of a fully African ceremony and a surprise element that's being held top-secret. Check it out if you can. And then, the opening match, South Africa vs. Mexico, and we're off and running!

Moses is laid to rest

2010-05-29T21:09:00.003+02:00

Today, family, friends, classmates, teachers, neighbors, the leaders and students of Impumelelo Phambili laid Moses to rest on a sunny, cool day in Johannesburg. It's never a joy to bury anyone, but even less so to bury a young person with their whole life in front of them.

Moses' funeral took place in the heart of his community, Zandspruit, right in front of his home. Following tradition, a tent was pitched in the street immediately in front of his family's home, a two-room self-made home constructed with corrugated iron sheets. The night before the funeral, extended family and close friends conducted an all-night prayer vigil in the tent, after Moses' body had been delivered to the home earlier that afternoon.

Approximately 300 people attended the funeral...a minority of them seated within the tent while 200 stood outside. Most of the young people attendng the funeral came wearing their school uniforms, as a sign of solidarity and, in many cases, probably because their uniforms were the best clothing they have. The somber mood included occasional tinges of anger over violence in the community.

The service included songs sung by choirs and others sung spontaneously by funeral attenders; comments from Moses' school principals, community leaders, a couple of pastors and from Cherie; and a poem read by its author.

Moses was buried in a simple plot (one of three graves that were to be filled today) in a hilltop, treeless cemetary, only ten minutes from his informal settlement community, but with a view of higher-end Johannesburg suburbs in the far distance. The lowering of his casket was a time of mixed emotions...some witnesses singing songs of joy in praise of God and His goodness, others (especially classmates) sobbing uncontrollably.

Many will terribly miss Moses, and today was a fitting tribute to him and his appeal to many. We join many others that are going to bed tonight emotionally exhausted, wishing we could have him back.

Friday...tomorrow's the funeral

2010-05-28T19:57:00.005+02:00

The week of remembering Moses continues in the community of Zandspruit and the high school ministry, Impumelelo Phambili.

On Thursday, the ministry conducted a one-hour memorial service for Moses. The community center was standing room only, and Moses' family was among those who gathered to remember Moses. Phambili students participated by singing songs and by sharing memories and encouragement. One student, Matshidiso, read a touching poem that she wrote (another of her poems appears in our October 2009 post)...we hope to be able to post her poem for Moses at some point. And Pastor Simon, pastor of one of the churches in Zandspruit, shared some thoughts as well.

On Saturday, Moses will be laid to rest. Students and leaders from Phambili will gather at 7:30am, all clad in black t-shirts from a 2009 camp. They will walk to Moses' home, where the funeral will be from 8-10am. Cherie has been able to hire a bus to transport the students to the cemetary, where it is expected that another 1-2 hours of ceremony will take place (including Cherie sharing some words).

The further we go into the week, the more that is learned about Percy. Apparently he has been on the edge of gang activity for the last few years, though a ministry colleague has shared that Percy seemed to have turned a corner this year. He had been more actively involved in serving, and had been making wiser choices. He remains locked up in a juvenile detention center about 20 minutes from the community.

Ministry colleagues have been planning to visit Percy and explore ways that they can minister to him and his family. Cultural tradition holds that the colleagues cannot reach out to him until Moses has been buried, so only on Monday will they have the opportunity to visit him for the first time. Also on Monday, leaders will go to Percy's home to present a financial gift from donations collected by students to help Percy's family with legal and other costs.

Thank you for your prayers. We'll keep you posted.

An update from a sad week

2010-05-26T19:39:00.003+02:00

Today (Wednesday), Cherie gathered with the leaders and students of Impumelelo Phambili to make plans for activity related to the death of their friend, Moses. As it turned out, word had mistakenly got out in the community that today's planning meeting was actually a memorial service for Moses, so many additional students and people from the community came to the meeting, dressed as if coming to a memorial service.

In spite of that, today's gathering was not unlike those times when families gather to plan and take care of details immediately after the death of a loved one...today wasn't so much about grieving or processing the reactions to Moses' death. At the gathering, Cherie learned a touch more about Percy, the boy accused of Moses' murder. Both of Percy's parents are dead, and he, along with his younger siblings, is being raised by his grandmother. He is apparently still in jail.

On Monday, several ministry leaders visited Moses' family to express condolences and solidarity. At that gathering the leaders learned that Moses' mother had previously been told of his death. She is obviously taking the news hard, but her health apparently hasn't been endangered as a result of her son's death.

At today's meeting, plans were made for Impumelelo Phambili to hold a memorial service for Moses on Thursday afternoon. This will complement a memorial service that will take place at Moses' high school that morning, and provide an opportunity for Phambili students that attend other high schools to attend a service for him.

After today's meeting, 70 students went to Moses' home and presented to the family funds they had collected to help with funeral costs. (Among the donors: one of Percy's younger sisters, who is a part of the after-school ministry - she gave the equivalent of $.30, not a small sum in a community like hers.) The students also presented to Moses' mother a framed 11x14 photo of Moses, which will no doubt be treasured...families in Zandspruit typically do not have good family-member photos. Also, the combined after-school and high school ministries will, from the ministry budget, pay for the food that will be served at the funeral.

The funeral will be Saturday morning, although there is still some confusion about the time it will begin. Regardless of timing, the whole of Impumelelo Phambili will be attending the funeral, in place of the normal Saturday morning program. Cherie has been asked to make some comments at the funeral service.

Please continue to pray for Moses' family, Percy and his family, for the leaders and students of Impumelelo Phambili, and for Cherie, including for her role in Saturday's funeral service. We are grateful for your prayers, support and encouragement in these days...

Tragedy in Impumelelo Phambili

2010-05-23T19:58:00.010+02:00

We are inviting you to pray as tragedy has struck Cherie’s high school ministry this week. On Friday night, one of the 15 year-old boys in the ministry, named Moses, was murdered.

Please pray for:

Moses’ family, about which we’re still learning the details. We do know that Moses has an older sister (Sindy, also in the high school ministry) and a younger brother; they are being raised by their single-parent mother, who is apparently seriously ill at this time. As of this writing, we believe Moses’ mother has still not been told about his murder, for fear that the news could cause her own death.

Percy, the 15 year-old boy that allegedly killed Moses.

The students in the high school ministry, Impumelelo Phambili. Needless to say, the students are in a state of shock.

This past week, we were hosting and deploying a short-term ministry team from the US…the team was due, on its final day in the country, to serve at Saturday morning’s Impumelelo Phambili program. Cherie received the call Friday night sharing of the incident. Apparently, Percy and another boy got into a dispute while playing soccer. The other boy went to retrieve Moses to defend him in a fight, and when Moses arrived and attempted to break up the fight, he was stabbed in the heart, allegedly by Percy. An ambulance only arrived on the scene after two hours, during which Moses lost his life, in the arms of some of the other students from Impumelelo Phambili. Percy had visited Impumelelo Phambili for the first time the previous Saturday morning. He was arrested Friday night at his home.

Saturday’s high school meeting was effectively a time of expressing grief and anger, and a time for initial steps of healing. The students have made plans to send a delegation to Moses’ home on Monday to share condolences, and on Wednesday they will gather to plan how they can participate in next Saturday’s funeral. The students are also collecting funds to help Moses’ family with the funeral costs. Please also pray for Cherie and the other leaders of Impumelelo Phambili as they lead the students during this time of tragedy – the students are a close-knit family and this event has really shaken their community.

We’ll share more later this week. We would appreciate your prayers this week for the families, students, leaders and the community.

An all-consuming event

2010-05-13T06:55:00.008+02:00

As we write this update, we are 29 days, 4 hours, 30 minutes and 42 seconds away from a defining event to take place in South Africa. Wait – now it’s 29 days, 4 hours, 29 minutes and 56 seconds, 55, 54, 53…see if you can guess what’s soon to take place from the following clues:

Over the last six years, preparation for this event has been the singular focus of South Africa – the largest ongoing issue/story in the country for that whole period.
This event will bring hundreds of thousands of visitors into South Africa within the next two months.
This event is expected to result in hundreds of millions (perhaps billions?) of dollars in revenues to the country in the next couple of months, and in subsequent activity in the next few years. [1]
This event has resulted in major infrastructural improvements within the country, including upgrading of airports and roads, and the construction of new hotels and other businesses. For most of the last 12+ months in Johannesburg, every single kilometer of freeway has been under construction, making it challenging to maintain a positive attitude when crawling to one’s next appointment!
Since the first of this year, one can go barely two minutes without being confronted with some ad for or indication of (billboards, newspaper ads, radio spots, TV coverage, etc.) the upcoming event.
In recent weeks, the country has been awash with the flags of different nations flying in businesses, from vehicles and in the hands of street-corner vendors, providing proud supporters the opportunity to show their allegiances. On Fridays, a noticeable percentage of the population wears the same type of clothing to work to show its support of the upcoming event. [2]

29 days, 4:15:26, 25, 24…do you have an idea what the upcoming event is? It is the 2010 FIFA (soccer) World Cup, taking place in South Africa from 11 June – 11 July. The countdown is the amount of time until the kickoff of the opening match, South Africa vs. Mexico, on the night of 11 June. As most readers of our updates are Americans, and since most Americans don’t know much about soccer (or football, as it’s called around the rest of the world), let us briefly explain what this is all about.

As with the Olympics and many sports, soccer/football holds a once-every-four-years world championship, the World Cup, pitting nation against nation for global bragging rights. For rabid followers of football, especially in Europe, Latin America and Africa, the World Cup is an all-consuming focus, a quadrennial pinnacle of the sport that is difficult for us to fully understand, or explain for that matter.

The World Cup is a month-long tournament for the 32 best teams in the world. Over the course of that month, there are 64 matches, with only six days with no tournament match played. The first two weeks of the tournament feature, typically, 3-4 matches each day – nirvana for the football lover!

As with the Olympics, the location of the World Cup changes every four years, and this year, for the first time in history, the Cup will be hosted by an African nation – South Africa. We can vividly remember the day, in 2004, when SA was announced as the host country for 2010. It was a day of national celebration, and since then preparations have continued with a frenetic pace. Matches will be played in nine cities across the country, with untold thousands of fans flying in to be a part of the festive atmosphere. ([1] - Between those tourists and expected follow-up tourism in the next few years, the local economy will get an incredible boost.)

In one respect it will be a month-long national party; in another, it will be a headache-inducing grind that has already seen some price-gouging, and could feature incredible traffic jams, strain on the national electric grid and potential food shortages (not on the scale of the Y2K scare, but enough that we’ve purchased some extra foodstuffs to ensure we’re not caught short during the month of the Cup). 29 days, 3 hours, 24 minutes, 49 seconds, 48, 47, 46…countdown clocks are commonplace in the country (including inside every McDonald’s!), though some folks are wanting to know the countdown until this is all over and we can get back on with life!

It has been absolutely fascinating to watch a whole nation preparing for a singular event as has happened in South Africa over these last six years. ([2] Every Friday thousands in the country wear soccer jerseys in support of the national team, or other country or club teams.) We’ve never been a part of anything like this before, and will continue to watch a nation strive to be the best it can be during its month on the world stage. The Cup is proving to be very disruptive for David’s ministry, as it’s difficult to put together pastoral training events that would inevitably compete for attention against daily matches on TV. Cherie’s ministries are less affected, although her high school ministry schedule has changed to accommodate an altered school holiday schedule – the national school system has changed the dates of the school calendar so that students (and teachers) have a holiday break for the whole tournament.

Churches and certain ministries are rallying and stepping up to the opportunity to minister to visitors from across the globe, and to South Africans as well. And you can join the effort from right where you are, by praying. Please pray for South Africa during the tournament (would you consider praying at least once per week?). Please pray for a safe and fruitful tournament: for reduced crime levels; for travel safety; for no terrorist activity (one seemingly ‘ideal’ target: US vs. England match on 12 June); for SA’s hospitality; for fun and joy; for successful and fair business; for effective ministry; and for SA hosting a great tournament! And pray we don’t go absolutely insane sitting in traffic. :)

Praise Items:

Thank you for your prayers for Cherie’s friend and children’s/youth ministry leader Bongi. She has returned to Johannesburg, and to our surprise and delight, has begun anti-retroviral treatment for her HIV, and is doing well! She continues to recover and will hopefully be back to the children’s ministry in the next few weeks. Please continue to pray for her!
Thanks for your prayers for Cherie’s HIV orientation/training for 15 new servants in our church. The session went very well, and the workshop participants are excited and more confident as they step into serving roles with those infected/affected by HIV.
Thank you for your prayers for David as he participated in the TOPIC Global Leadership Team meeting. The meetings went well, and were very helpful in our first steps with TOPIC’s new international director, Rick Kingham. Please pray for our meeting follow-through and ongoing effort as we move into a season with new leadership.

Prayer Requests:

Please continue to pray for our discernment regarding some challenges we’re experiencing with our 4x4.
Please pray for our efforts to host and deploy a short-term ministry team that will be with us the week of 16 May – for relationships, effective ministry and more.
Please pray for Cherie as she conducts (on 4 June) HIV + AIDS training for parents and children’s/youth leaders in the community where she leads the high school ministry. Pray for a good turnout of participants, for Cherie as she attempts to make the content relevant and ‘grasp-able’, and for heart transformation in the lives of the participants.
Please pray for Evodia, Mandla and Dudu, three of Cherie’s friends (and patients) at the HIV + AIDS hospice care center where she serves. Each of them love Jesus, and see their time at the home as a time where they can encourage and love the other patients. They are truly having a marked impact on others at the home – pray for their own health, encouragement and ongoing impact!
Please pray for David as he squeezes in two short ministry trips before the World Cup – for a trip to Zimbabwe 30 May – 3 June (safe travel, relationships and planning with Zimbabwean ministry leaders, time with visiting ministry leaders from North America) and a 7-9 June research trip to the Free State province of South Africa (travel and effective connections with pastoral leaders there).

Language Lessons

A proverb from the Swahili of East Africa: A good thing sells itself; a bad thing advertises itself for sale.

Volunteer?

2010-04-14T19:42:00.009+02:00

Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? This rule of thumb is used in a number of domains to capture the thought that 20% of something covers the remaining 80%, carrying the full weight of the 100%. You might know that, in church leadership circles, this statistic is commonly discussed. It seems to be widely believed that 20% of a local church’s members carry the weight of the whole church – financially, and especially in terms of serving in ministry. Interestingly, these 80/20 church discussions sometimes take place in situations where there are no statistics to prove them right or wrong.

In our experience in Africa, the 80/20 rule doesn’t seem to be descriptive of churches here. Admittedly, we don’t have any research to back up our thoughts. But our observation, in considering the percentage of a local church’s membership that is actively involved in serving in and through the church, is that we cannot speak of an 80/20 rule here. More realistically, we’d probably be speaking of at least a 90/10 rule, if not 95/5. (Some might say we’re talking about a 99/1 rule.) Overwhelmingly, local African churches are churches where very few church members, aside from the pastoral leader, are involved in serving in one capacity or another.

These comments are general observations and perceptions, and should be taken as such. We certainly are not saying this is true of all churches in our context. But one cannot spend time with African church leaders without bumping into this ever-present reality. There are a number of factors at play that feed into the 95/5 rule of African churches. Cultural leadership norms, power, economics and other issues all contribute to the 95/5 reality. From our observation, the 95/5 rule is deeply embedded in the African Church today.

But probably more than to the factors of leadership, power and economics, the 95/5 rule owes its existence to a basic misunderstanding of the functioning of the local church. How has God designed the local church to function? What are His intentions? Sadly, but understandably, this 95/5 dynamic within African churches is the result of the influence of church history…a history where we humans have taken God’s blueprint for the functioning of the body of Christ and modified it. The Bible clearly speaks of the body of Christ being one body, composed of many members. Within that body, there are various functions, and gifts deployed; each member serves with the purpose of growing and strengthening the body (Ephesians 4:4-16 and 1 Corinthians 12, among other passages).

In Africa, it’s sometimes easy to point fingers at missionaries from days gone by, wishing that they’d done things better or differently. But one must be careful in so doing, as no doubt future generations will say the same about ours some day. Yes, today’s African churches generally live out the 95/5 rule partially due to the efforts of mission workers in the past. But, many of today’s efforts only reinforce the 95/5 rule, and will provide future generations with opportunities to point fingers as well. To wit, consider the prevalent use of the terms “staff” and “volunteer” in the Church.

An observation of churches in the US is the continual, if not growing, use of the terms “staff” and “volunteer.” These terms are seemingly innocuous, but in actuality they’re not – they are revealing terms that reinforce an age-old (incorrect) mindset that there are hierarchical, positional distinctions within the body of Christ. They are our generation’s general way of referring to what has previously been called the ‘clergy/laity’ divide. To the detriment of the Church, and the world, churches have developed and maintained this mindset…and therefore, we have 80/20 or 95/5.

Americans, culturally speaking, are familiar with the concept of volunteering. Large numbers of Americans volunteer in any of a number of capacities, whether coaching kids’ sports teams, serving meals at homeless shelters or providing leadership on Boards of Directors of non-profit organizations. The volunteer (“a person who chooses freely to do or offer to do something,” Webster) is a wonderful part of the fabric of American life.

But volunteering, in the above sense of the word, is not a similarly common cultural practice in Africa, and neither is it, in the above sense of the word, biblical.

What the Bible does speak to is the servant (Jesus: I didn’t come to be served but to serve; the greatest among you will be your servant; serve one another in love; serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men; etc.). The servant (“a person devoted to another or to a cause, creed, etc,” Webster), while not minimizing the volunteer, is something else altogether.

So back to the 95/5, here’s the rub. In African church circles, when one uses the “volunteer” term, at best they’re using a term that has a lot more common cultural understanding someplace far, far away. Beyond that, they’re using a term that truly waters down the biblical concept of servanthood (don’t just go by Webster…do a biblical word study on volunteer and serve). And lastly, references to the “staff” / “volunteer” distinction point us in a direction away from the biblical understanding of the body of Christ. In this sense, today we run the risk of perpetuating the 95/5 rule in African churches, where only a very, very small percentage of church members are full participants in the life of the church and community. We are not helping African churches when we talk of “staff” and “volunteers.”

We must be transformed in our thinking, beginning with our language. We (David and Cherie) intentionally work (with resulting fits and struggles) at using our words carefully, doing our best, as a start, to eliminate the use of the word volunteer within our church circles. Your prayers for our efforts would be most appreciated as we face this challenge. And perhaps self-reflection will reveal if you are reinforcing, or combating, the 95/5 or 80/20 rule as well.

I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. (1 Cor 9:22, NIV)

Praise Items:

Thank you for your prayers for David and his March ministry trip to Mozambique. The two-day training there was very well received, and we’ve already received good reports of follow-up implementation activity from there! Please pray for David’s colleague Müller, who came down with malaria on the trip. Medication has stopped the malaria, and he is now in the long process of recovery.

Prayer Requests:

Please continue to pray for Cherie’s friend and children’s/youth ministry leader Bongi (BOHN-gee), who remains very sick in her HIV+ status. Because of her inaccessibility in another part of South Africa, we do not have an update on her status, although Cherie expects to receive some news in the next few days.
Please pray for this next school term in Cherie’s high school ministry. The leaders will be facilitating a strong emphasis on discipleship. Please pray for the relationships between students and leaders, and for significant steps of growth in the students’ lives.
Please pray for Cherie as she conducts an HIV orientation/training for new servants in our church on 18 April.
Please pray for David as he participates in three days of meetings with other members of the TOPIC Global Leadership Team. TOPIC has recently appointed a new international director, and this will be the first gathering of the GLT and the TOPIC Board of Directors under the leadership of Dr. Rick Kingham. Please pray for relationship-building, unity, clarity and progress in projects and initiatives.
Please pray for wisdom for us as we are wrestling with decisions regarding our 4x4. We’ve been through a spate of issues with it in the last few months. We are trying to discern if this is just a season of dealing with some issues to prepare it for the next major run of ministry travel, or if these are the first signs of its inability to be a dependable vehicle in remote and challenging situations. (David had some significant transport challenges during his February trip to Angola.)
Please pray for our preparations to host and deploy a short-term ministry team coming to serve with us in mid-May. We’re in the thick of planning and coordination…the plans are coming together well but we’d appreciate your prayers as we head into preparation crunch time.

Language Lessons

A proverb from Zimbabwe: If you can walk you can dance; if you can talk you can sing.

Snapshots of Angola

2010-03-14T22:24:00.010+02:00

What is the short-term result when a country suffers an agonizing, protracted civil war? If you want an idea, look no further than the country of Angola, on the Atlantic coastline of south-central Africa. Last month we’d asked for prayers for a ministry trip for David to that country, and for a surgical procedure for Cherie. Thanks for your prayers…God answered them both in ways hoped for and ways unexpected, as outlined below.

Angola, a former Portuguese colony, gained its independence in 1975. Unfortunately, but not so surprisingly, it quickly entered into a civil war as rival factions wrestled for control of the country and its rich stores of petroleum and diamonds. The civil war ended only in 2002. (Angola was also one of those Cold War battlegrounds where, among others, the US, South Africa, the Soviet Union and Cuba were involved in the conflict.)

David had only been to Angola once before his February trip. Past efforts to establish ministry presence there had not gone well. The February trip had its up’s and down’s, and provided for a few interesting snapshots of a country trying to redefine itself after a long, bloody war.

Media reports about Angola broadcast in South Africa typically paint the picture of a country experiencing significant economic growth. And there is much evidence to support these reports…new infrastructure is being built across the country and new developments seem to be spreading within the cities. But on the ground, it doesn’t appear that many ordinary people are seeing the effect of this growth. Poverty levels are still overwhelming, and David heard from some leaders that the population is tired of waiting for economic growth to trickle down to their level.

The physical evidence of a recently-completed war is not difficult to find. Whether rusted-out tanks or buildings that had been destroyed in the war there is ample evidence of the recent past of the country. One doesn’t have to go far to find a citizen missing a limb, or suffering from another war-related injury.

Just as pervasive, but not as easy to detect, are the war-influenced attitudes of many Angolans. How could it be any other way? If Angola’s demographics are like those in other African countries, its population is very young, meaning that probably more than half of its 20 million population was born and raised in wartime. One can easily understand a general feeling of mistrust in the country, where individuals are not sure who they can trust – the person next door may be an informer or enemy. This mistrust has found its way into the Angolan church.

In one city where David conducted training, there were two poignant moments that revealed the fractured relationships of Angola. At the end of the first day of a two-day event, a young pastoral leader stood to ask a question: “Why have we [pastors] never come together like this before?” Sadly, none of the ~100 pastoral leaders present could ever remember coming to a gathering with other pastors from that city.

The second moment came at the conclusion of the second day of training. After the training was complete – training that would facilitate the pastoral leaders getting into small groups to give and receive pastoral care to/from one another – the local organizer of the event stood to address the audience. This ~60 year-old pastor proceeded to share that he had had a falling-out with another prominent pastoral leader 10+ years prior, and that the two hadn’t spoken in years. He shared that God had been working on his heart, and that the training was the culmination of that process. In front of many pastoral leaders from the city, Pastor Eliseu called forward his ‘nemesis’ and apologized to him and asked for forgiveness, and committed to starting their relationship anew. That moment provided a tangible, crystal-clear look into two equal realities – the challenge of overcoming pain and division in postwar Angola, and the possibilities of reconciliation with one another in Christ.

We mentioned above that God answered prayers regarding this trip. Our February prayer request was that David’s colleague Müller would have his rejected visa application to Angola overturned. For whatever reason, God chose not to have that rejection overturned…Müller remained in Namibia while David traveled with Pastor Felix to conduct the training events in Angola. David and Pastor Felix experienced quite a few challenges along the way – 75 miles of some of the worst road David has encountered in Africa; vehicle problems that forced them to cancel half a day of training in one city; and more. But in spite of the challenges, God answered prayer in significant ways. Leaders were equipped and encouraged, plans were made, and a part of the Angolan church was strengthened. And reconciliation took place in a land where reconciliation isn’t cheap or easy…reconciliation that came with a price and was made possible only through God’s provision and answer to prayer.

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. (2 Cor 5:18-20, NIV)

Praise Items:

Thank you for your prayers for Cherie’s surgical procedure on 8 February, which went well. Test results came back favorable and Cherie was back to normal less than a week later. We’re sorry that we could not send ‘prayer results’ after the procedure, as we lost our phone line a day before the surgery and only got it back several days afterward. We were able to post a surgery update on this site below in a timely fashion, but not much more due to the phone problems. (On a side note, we continue to explore how we can more effectively communicate with you, so that in the future we could have potentially avoided a similar problem.)

Praise God for the 2010 launch (on 6 March) of Cherie’s high school ministry, Impumelelo Phambili. ~60 students have come the first two Saturdays, up 50% from last year, and Cherie is joined by 12 other leaders for this year, up from five one year ago. Please keep praying for this important work this year!

Prayer Requests:

Please continue to pray for one of Cherie’s children’s/youth leaders, Bongi (BOHN-gee), who remains very sick in her HIV+ status. The HIV has affected her mind, causing her to not think properly; her boyfriend has pulled her out of the hospital thinking that her mental state is the result of a curse. She has fled to a rural area where she has family, and where she is unlikely to receive adequate health care. Please pray that someone there will send her back to Johannesburg and that she will get treatment here. In her current situation it’s hard to imagine anything other than a death scenario for her…
Please pray for Cherie as she conducts an HIV orientation/training for new servants at our church on 18 April.

Please pray for David has he travels to Mozambique 17-21 March to conduct a two-day pastoring of pastors training on the 19th-20th.

Please pray for David as he conducts the first meeting (on 25 March) of a two-year mentoring process with young leaders in our local church. Please pray for this group as it comes together – for Simon, Peter, Mike, Jeremia, Siviwe (sih-VEE-way), Kenton, Julius, Andries, Mpho (mm-PO), Langa and Thabiso (tah-BE-so).

Language Lessons

A proverb from the Herero people of Namibia: A bitter heart devours its owner.

Update on our current prayer items

2010-02-09T12:57:00.002+02:00

Thanks for checking in and for your prayers. A quick update on developments from the last few days -

Cherie's procedure went well on Monday and she is back at home recuperating. The doctor was pleased with how the procedure went, but has some concerns about how things looked. Because Cherie's system has always looked and behaved a little abnormally (and this was this particular doctor's first exposure to Cherie's system), we are not yet concerned with the doctor's reaction. We expect lab results on Thursday; those results will help us understand whether there is anything to be concerned about and/or if there are any further steps that need to be taken at this time.

David's colleague Muller was not successful in obtaining the visa to enter Angola. Plans have developed where the travel logistics of this setback are being addressed - this isn't as much of a challenge as it could have been. But further prayer is appreciated for the ministry challenges caused by the setback - adjusted teaching responsibilities, including David and a pastor teaching new material for the first time, and training logistical issues because of increased translation that will be needed. Please pray that David and Pastor Felix can assimilate and teach a lot of new material in a quick, effective fashion.

Thank you again for standing with us in prayer!

Brothers in unconsidered places

2010-02-05T21:08:00.005+02:00

Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. (Heb 13:3, NIV)

On a recent Sunday, we were a part of one of the most amazing church services either of us has ever experienced.

On a particular Sunday every year, a bicycle race takes place in the city streets of Johannesburg. It’s one of the largest annual races in the world, attracting 20,000+ riders. For us, one aspect of this annual event is the challenge of getting to our church on that particular Sunday. Because of street closures for the race, it would take us 90 minutes or more to get to church…so on that Sunday each year, we devise an alternate plan for the day. On this most recent race day, we decided to attend a church service very close to our home. And what an amazing service it was…

The service began in a ‘normal’ fashion. The worship team led the congregation in a song. Then Pastor Leonard stepped forward to share some news. He reminded the congregation of the church’s involvement in ministry in a local prison, and thanked church members for their faithful prayers for that ministry and the prisoners. He then shared the good news of a big answer to prayer: after years of praying that the prison would allow some of the prisoners to come to the church for a Sunday morning service, this was the day! Pastor Leonard then introduced eight prisoners, seated near the front of the church, to the congregation. The eruption of applause, joy and celebration was spontaneous and heartfelt.

Pastor Leonard briefly shared of the long journey that led to the presence of the eight men in the church that Sunday…long ‘negotiations,’ advance security teams checking out the church building, etc. But the result was their presence with us, and not just as spectators: upon Pastor Leonard’s concluding comment, the eight men stepped forward to lead the congregation in the remainder of the worship!

The men played the instruments and led the singing of worship songs in various languages. These guys won’t soon win a Grammy for their musical abilities. But not one person cared, as they sang from their hearts and gave brief testimonies of the difference that Jesus has made in their lives. One brother shared, “I may be behind bars, but I am free in Christ Jesus!”. The two of us, and many others, sobbed the whole way through the time of worship.

Briefly, some other aspects of the service included:

The warden of the prison sharing his heart for ten minutes. This man loves God and is absolutely committed to his “calling” of being the warden of this prison. It is his firm goal that no man that is incarcerated under his leadership will, upon their release from prison, ever spend time behind bars again. This warden clearly works tirelessly to see that every prisoner under his watch is rehabilitated in the full sense of the term. He based some of his comments from a portion of Psalm 66:
Give blessings to our God, O you peoples, let the voice of his praise be loud / Because he gives us life, and has not let our feet be moved / For you, O God, have put us to the test: testing us by fire like silver / You let us be put in prison; chains were put on our legs / You let men go driving over our heads; we went through fire and through water; but you took us out into a wide place…Come, give ear to me, all you God-fearing men, so that I may make clear to you what he has done for my soul / My voice went up to him, and I was lifted up from the underworld / I said in my heart, The Lord will not give ear to me: / But truly God's ear has been open; he has give attention to the voice of my prayer / Praise be to God who has not taken away his good faith and his mercy from me. (Bible in Basic English)
An associate pastor of the church shared more about the church’s ministry in the prison. In just two years of work, a church (named Christ the Only Hope Church) has been planted inside the walls of the prison. One whole wing of the prison now houses the men that are being rehabilitated by that in-house church, and the relationships, environment and outlook is tangibly different in that wing than in the rest of the prison complex. Servants from the suburban church lead and participate in the prison church on a weekly basis – so the Sunday we were attending wasn’t nearly the first time that convicts and community members were worshipping together! (It reminded David of his time visiting inmates at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, serving with faithful men from our Chicago home church that, every week, served the men in that facility.)
A short video was shown, sharing the amazing testimony of one particular man, Johan, that could have been the whole service all by itself. This fellow, a teenage runaway, fell in with a bad crowd, leading to him spending 20+ years behind bars. Johan led gangs in prison, and escaped three different times, all of which led to him being placed, for three months, in solitary confinement in South Africa’s highest security prison. There, God revealed Himself to Johan, and his life was changed. There’s so much more that could be written, but due to space we’ll summarize by sharing that Johan, now released after serving his sentence, is now back in the prison every week, ministering to his former inmates. At the conclusion of the video, Johan was introduced to the church – he stood from his seat near the front of the church, followed by an introduction of the man seated next to him - the police officer primarily responsible for catching Johan and sending him to prison. At the conclusion of Johan’s trial, in a court-room scene straight out of a Hollywood drama, Johan had sworn that, upon his release, he would hunt down and kill the officer and his family. Today, Johan is reconciled to the officer and is truly a transformed man.

This short update doesn’t provide us the opportunity to do justice to what we experienced on that bicycle race Sunday. If we had to boil it all down into one sentence, we are left with nothing other than this: we were reminded, again and in a powerful way, of an amazing God and His desire and ability to truly transform people with love.

Praise be to God who has not taken away his good faith and his mercy from me. (Psalm 66:20, BBE)

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for Cherie this Monday morning (Sunday night overnight in the US), 8 February, as she has an outpatient surgery to do a biopsy on some ‘female plumbing’ tissue. This is solely the latest step in an area where she has had abnormalities most of her life, and we do not have any concerns about the procedure or results…but your prayers would be appreciated nevertheless.
Please pray for David’s planned ministry trip to Namibia and Angola, due to begin on Wednesday, 10 February. In particular please pray over a troubling situation where his traveling teammate Müller’s visa application to Angola has just been rejected. What should have been a ‘rubber stamp’ approval has turned into a last-minute nightmare – if he does not receive approval to enter Angola it means significant challenges for David (and Angolan colleague Pastor Felix) in terms of teaching load, travel logistics and translation issues. Please pray that Müller’s visa is granted by 9 February at the latest. Regardless of that outcome, please pray for three identical two-day training events on the 12th, 13th, 16th, 17th, 19th and 20th, and for travel days through the 27th (totaling ~3700 miles).
Please pray for one of Cherie’s children’s/youth leaders, Bongi (BOHN-gee), who has just learned that she is HIV+ and is currently very sick. Please pray that she will be bold and reach out for comfort and assistance in spite of the ever-present fear of shame, ostracism and rejection. Pray that Cherie and others would minister to her in a sensitive way given that Bongi has not yet ‘publicly’ revealed her HIV status.
Please pray for Cherie and she and her co-leaders are in an intense month of planning for the high school ministry, especially looking for good discipleship curriculum that can be used with the students.
Please pray as well for David’s planning efforts this month as he maps out the 2010 process and subject matter for the group of young leaders he is mentoring in our local church – that his focus would scratch the itch of the young leaders.

Lastly, after recommending the Invictus film in December, we became aware of and recently saw another film produced in South Africa, called Skin – based on the true story of a dark-skinned girl born to white South African parents during the apartheid years. It’s another well-made film and provides another good look into this country. Are you beginning to think we’re a couple of movie critics?

Language Lessons

A proverb from Rwanda: The walls of the house don’t tell you what’s going on inside.

2010!

2010-01-09T17:40:00.006+02:00

Off and running into 2010! Has it already been ten years since the infamous Y2K scare? We guess we can go ahead and eat or discard all that canned food…

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas season. We enjoyed a very relaxing break, and are now stepping back into normal life and ministry, looking ahead to a very full year. As we do each year, we begin our year of updates by sharing some of the major areas where your prayers would be appreciated over the next 12 months.

First, a few praise items from our last regular update, in October. Thank you for praying for:

Cherie’s high school camp in November. It was a success by every measure! The students had a lot of fun with different activities and deepened their relationships with one another, and with their leaders. Students were challenged by the teaching and testimony of a local pastoral leader, who shared his story of how he rose above very difficult circumstances to move forward in life – with Jesus. The camp also provided the opportunity to integrate students from the high school ministry with those that are ‘graduating’ into the ministry from the children’s after-school program.
Our planning and integration process with our new OC ministry team in Johannesburg. In October and November, we participated with our teammates in a planning process to outline our 2010 project priorities and objectives. This was a good and healthy exercise for us, even as a first-time experience with this team and its procedures. We were also blessed to celebrate the holidays with our team, getting to know team members better.
We had asked for prayer for a November ministry trip for David to Mozambique. That trip wound up being postponed to mid-March.

Our main 2010 prayer requests include the following…please pray for:

Cherie’s efforts at the HIV + AIDS hospice care home. After serving as the virtual chaplain of the hospice home for six years, Cherie is feeling the need to develop some new, creative ways of ministering to the adult patients there. Please pray for her efforts to implement new ideas in 2010.
David’s Pastoring of Pastors initiative. Please pray for David’s efforts to recruit and develop other POP project leaders and trainers, to grow this ministry. Please pray for continuing curriculum development and the translation of other materials for use in POP. Please pray for more opportunities to train trainers and pastoral leaders. Pray for more opportunities to provide training and mentoring to increasing numbers of pastoral leaders. Please pray for the POPnet network – for effective strategy, communication, planning and priorities. Pray for consultation work with denominations and networks within Southern Africa.
Cherie’s high school ministry. Cherie has been in discussion with her peer leaders about the next developmental steps for the high schoolers. Beginning in February, changes will begin being implemented, with a greater focus on discipleship. The particulars of these changes are not yet fleshed out…please pray for new ideas, creativity and for ‘change management.’ Please pray for wisdom in tinkering with scheduling and format of the Saturday morning programs, as well as the addition of components that will take place on weekday afternoons. Please pray for the recruiting and developing of additional leaders for the high school ministry. Please pray that older students will grow into leadership of younger students. Please pray for unity amongst the adult leaders of the ministry, especially as they negotiate and navigate anticipated changes in the ministry.
David’s TOPIC research project. This project lost some steam in 2008 but rebounded in the 2nd half of 2009, and there is renewed energy to complete the task of surveying 300 pastoral leaders in South Africa, assessing their training and developmental needs. Please pray for increasing commitment and activity from the project task force. Pray for open doors to find leaders for survey purposes (pray intentionally on this…we need to survey pastors in specific, often rural, South African communities). Please pray for cooperation and coordination with pastors’ fraternities, denominations and networks. Please pray for effective communication across language boundaries. Pray for effective networking to reduce the cost of traveling across the country to conduct research.
Cherie’s leadership of the HIV + AIDS ministry in our local church. Cherie has decided to withdraw from leading servant teams from our church to serve in a local hospice home (teams will continue to go and serve, just not under her direct leadership). Please pray for Cherie’s continued research efforts and movement towards implementation of an HIV + AIDS support group for our church and community. Pray for her ongoing efforts to develop the ‘campus pastors’ from our church that minister on local university campuses – pray for opportunities to teach on HIV + AIDS awareness and response at local universities, and pray for further efforts to develop HIV + AIDS ministries on the campuses.
David’s mentoring in our local church. David is in the process of establishing a small group of young pastoral leaders within our church, to provide mentoring and encouragement on organizational leadership and development in ministry. The group is in the process of forming and defining itself in the early part of 2010. Pray for clear direction, for strong commitment, for openness and for a good start. Please pray that the topics the group covers are relevant and helpful. Pray for David’s leadership – for good listening and learning from group members, for creativity, for intentionality and for consistency in the midst of his travels away from the group and church.
Our role with a new congregation within our church. We have both been invited to be on the leadership team of a congregation that is developing within our local church. This is in its formative stages. Pray that we would explore appropriate roles for us with wisdom and that we would step into this well in 2010.
Please continue to pray for our integration with our new ministry team in Johannesburg – for deepening relationships, effective communication, for our ongoing efforts to learn the culture and processes of the team, etc.
Please continue to pray for our health & protection and for our financial support to remain stable.
Pray for the nation of South Africa as, from mid-June through mid-July, the country hosts the soccer World Cup (more on this in a later update). This tournament, on the scale of the Olympics, has been the focus of preparation efforts in the country for six years, and will be the defining event of this country this year. Please pray for all things related to this in 2010 – success, safety, stability, against crime and terrorism, and for these last months of preparation (including the conclusion of a lot of infrastructure construction – roads, airports, etc.). We look forward to highways that are not under construction, for the first time in the last two years!

Know that we are always grateful for your prayers and for God’s answer to them. It’s difficult to explain, through the written word, how much we depend on God in our ministries and in our lives. We can’t be who we are, or do what we do, without the prayer support of others. Thank you for upholding us the way that you do.

On a different note, we want to share that we are going to begin experimenting with our communication to you, our valuable support team. (You may know that in addition to this blog site we maintain a pictures site, www.picasaweb.google.com/davidgbulger.) In joining OC, we are taking the opportunity to re-think how we communicate with you. We anticipate continuing to write our regular updates – but we also want to explore how we can be more timely in sharing prayer requests, smaller reflections, and more. We are working to become more aware of what’s out there (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), and how these technologies work, to help us remain in better touch with you. If you have ideas, suggestions or can provide us with any practical help along the way, we would be happy to hear from you! More on all of this later…

A movie recommendation

2009-12-18T21:02:00.002+02:00

If, during this holiday season, you have some extra time and are inclined to go see a movie, let us recommend a recent release currently in the theaters, Invictus. We just saw Invictus in the theater this week and recommend it to you! Invictus is directed by Clint Eastwood, and stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon (all nominated for Golden Globes). It tells the true story of newly-elected Nelson Mandela’s effort to build bridges within post-Apartheid South Africa, by doing the unthinkable: supporting and encouraging South Africa’s rugby team in the 1995 rugby World Cup. (Rugby was, and is, a passion of the people group that designed and implemented the Apartheid system). Invictus does a wonderful job capturing the feeling and history of South Africa as it was taking its first steps as a democratic nation. We believe you would enjoy the film.

Another film from 2009 where South Africa features prominently is District 9, in which extraterrestrials are situated in a South African informal settlement. We haven’t seen that film and can’t speak to it. But we have written a previous update referencing other films that take place in South Africa…if you’re interested you can find that update in the June 2005 blog post.

Movies or not, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Hope and heartache

2009-10-21T21:51:00.006+02:00

As some readers would know, Cherie often talks about the blessing she knows because of her involvement in two very different types of ministry. She loves the variety she experiences on a weekly basis, and she equally loves serving those that are sick and dying, and those that are young and full of hope and promise.

It’s been a while since we’ve shared about the high school youth ministry that Cherie and others lead on Saturday mornings. A couple of this year’s poignant ministry moments will reveal why she loves her high school students and their youth ministry.

The youth ministry is about to finish its second ministry season, in early December. Impumelelo Phambili (mm-pu-may-LAY-low pom-BEE-lee – say that ten times fast) is the name of the ministry – a Zulu phrase that means “achieving forward in life.” It’s the name the students themselves chose to call the ministry. They want to be a generation of students that succeed in life and achieve their dreams.

This year began in a great fashion, as three additional leaders joined Cherie and our friend Winnie to guide the ministry and build into the students. Thato, Barb and Everest (l-r in the picture, with Winnie and Cherie) have been great additions to the ministry and team, and are each an answer to prayer. It has been especially great having two guy leaders this year!

The ministry season kicked off at the end of February and had an initial focus on teaching the students about worship, prayer and Bible study.

Each year, Cherie and the ministry leaders solicit input from the students as they select themes and subjects for the year. The students have an active voice in determining what issues should be incorporated into the program. At the beginning of this year, the issue that students felt most important to discuss was addressed from April through June – love, sex and dating. It took several weeks to creatively cover those topics in depth, looking at God’s word and what the Bible has to say about relationships. Leaders used a video series and facilitated a lot of interaction, and the series concluded with students taking vows to remain abstinent until marriage.

From July through September the focus was on career coaching, learning computer skills and rehearsing for the annual Family Day concert. Every year, along with the children from the after-school ministry, the high school students conduct a concert for their parents and siblings. The high school students have such talent and potential! This year they performed a hip-hop dance and a drama sketch on David and Goliath, a couple of students sang solos, and one student recited a poem she wrote about the high school youth – a highlight of the program. Her poem was inspirational and communicated hope and promise, as she described herself and the students that are growing up in their informal settlement (squatter community) of Zandspruit:

The Youth of Impumelelo Phambili (written by Matshidiso, 8th Grade)

On these dusty roads of Zandspruit
Stars will rise
In the darkness of the night
We will shine so bright

We will stand strong
When all else falls apart
We will not hesitate
Because we have what it takes

We have huge ambitions
That hide in our imagination
We are our own special creation

We are filled with positivity
We are alive with possibilities
We believe in ourselves and
We believe in our dreams

We have butterflies in our hands
We don’t close them up and let them die
We set them free and let them fly

For as long as we live
We will succeed
We are Impumelelo Phambili

We wish you could have been there for Matshidiso’s reading!

In October and November, the year-end focus is on “Who I am in Christ,” especially highlighted during the annual weekend camp that is taking place this weekend. Other activities to close out the year include a visit to serve in an orphan home, tutoring the students as they get ready to write their final exams, and a year-end dance. While there are still several weeks of activity before summer break begins in early December, there is already much to celebrate from this ministry year. It’s been a full year, one of seeing hope in the eyes of the next generation – a generation that wants to achieve forward in life, impumelelo phambili.

At the same time this ministry season also saw a particularly poignant moment of heartache. A few weeks ago, 16-year-old ‘P’ shared with Winnie that she is pregnant. This was difficult news to hear after spending three months talking about love, sex and dating. ‘P’ shared that she wanted to remain abstinent until marriage. She now faces a future of dashed hopes and dreams. Please pray for the ministry leaders as they walk this journey with ‘P’ and discern how to support her. And of course, please remember ‘P’ in prayer – pray for her health and that of the baby growing inside her, for her relationship with her family, that she would beat the odds and complete her high school education, and for her emotional health.

Praise Items:

We are officially South African residents! After 18 months of our permanent residency application process, part of a three-year, two-step process, we have been granted permanent resident status by the South African government. Our passports are in the hands of our process consultants, with precious stickers in them, due to be returned to us this week. Celebrate this good news with us and thank God for His provision!
Thank God for Nomande, a patient at the St. Francis Care Center, who last week invited Jesus into her heart at the monthly memorial service that Cherie officiates.
Thank God for the recent pastoring of pastors presentation that David made to ~120 pastoral leaders with the Assemblies of God Fellowship (AGF). Along with 2-3 other denominations, David and a ministry colleague are working with senior church leaders to help them develop plans for their churches’ pastors, plans to help those leaders receive care and move towards emotional and relational health. Please pray for next steps in the process with the AGF denomination.
Cherie recently conducted the final installment of the Channels of Hope workshop with campus pastors from our church. These leaders are excited about implementing initiatives on university campuses to address HIV and AIDS, and they have invited Cherie to be part of their strategic planning meetings to help in this area.

Prayer Requests:

The annual high school weekend camp is happening this weekend, 23-25 October. The theme for the camp is entitled, “Rise Above.” Please pray that the speaker and the small group leaders come rested and ready to pour into the lives of the students. Pray for the hearts and minds of the students, that they would hear truth and be challenged and encouraged to “rise above” their circumstances, and trust Christ with their lives and in everything.
Please pray for David as he and a colleague conduct a two-day pastoring-of-pastors training event in Mozambique 13-14 November. Please pray for effective communication – teaching that will be through translation and will be communicating important concepts to ‘simple’ pastoral leaders (simple not being used in a pejorative sense, but more to describe men and women of limited language skills and developmental levels).
Please pray for us both as we are in a season of planning for 2010 and beyond – planning with our new ministry team and with various leaders and teams that we serve with in the region.

Language Lessons

A proverb from Liberia: There is no wealth where there are not children.

Your labor is not in vain...

2009-09-20T22:34:00.006+02:00

To borrow a phrase made famous by the late radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, we want to share an encouraging piece of “the rest of the story.”

Occasionally, but not always, one gets a small glimpse into the result of some effort they’ve made to make a difference in another’s life. Most of the time the reverse is true – we don’t really know what fruit has been borne of our labors, or if we do, we don’t know how significant the impact has been.

Jesus had an experience somewhat connected to this reality, as recorded in Luke chapter 17. In this familiar passage, we find the story of ten leprous men that approached Jesus, asking Him for help. Jesus sent them on their way, and as they were going, they were cleansed of their leprosy. Of the ten, only one came back to thank Jesus – the verse says that the man “turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him” (v. 15-16). In this instance Jesus only received feedback from 10% of those that He had helped.

We’re not drawing comparisons between ourselves and Jesus, but in this aspect we’re comforted to know that He had an experience with which we can identify. As we minister here in Southern Africa, we don’t always know the fruit of our labor. We don’t depend on knowing the outcomes of our ministry, and we don’t need to know outcomes either. We are happy to be, to the best of our ability, faithful and obedient, and to leave the ‘results’ to God. Everything we are and do is His anyway.

But we can’t ignore the fact that we’re human – and like anyone, we like to receive the occasional word that helps us know our labors are not in vain. With that in mind, we want to share part of an email that David recently received from a pastoral colleague, Pastor Gift, in Zambia. David and two colleagues conducted a two-day ‘pastoring of pastors’ workshop in his church last October, ending it with a planning session so that leaders could take next steps to gain health in their lives. This year, David has attempted to follow up with Pastor Gift to learn what has been happening, and to understand how David could help further. After a lot of silence from Pastor Gift, leading David to believe that nothing positive really happened from that training event, David received the following note out of the blue, sharing ‘the rest of the story’ (edited for clarity and length):

I hope you are fine and [that] the Lord is doing great things [in South Africa]. Sorry for replying late to your email…[I’m] glad to let you know that after your last visit to Samfya, many relationships amongst pastors and their spouses have improved fairly. Pastors and their wives have been able to communicate their long-standing marriage problems with their fellow pastors.

I can cite one incident where a Pastor's wife (confidentially) almost took her own life due to her husband’s marital unfaithfulness. The husband called [me] one late evening to go and help out cause his wife had already taken some dangerous drugs to help terminate her life, and leave her less-than-a-year-old baby…A certain Pastor friend who has been very close to me and my wife, as a result of the POPnet program, [and I] took some time to help this couple and amazingly the wife was touched by God after prayer and much interaction with them that night. Relationships for sure have improved amongst Pastors and their wives in Samfya.

Of course challenges have been there in learning to open up to other couples but the Lord has been gracious. The POPnet program has brought a lot of healing to my marriage as well. It’s so amazing to see the Lord working out solutions to most of our marital challenges through our fellow Pastors and their wives. We never thought [this] could be of great help to our marriage life…my wife receives 2 hugs per day as a dose prescribed by me the husband and an “I LOVE YOU” every single day from my lips. I almost quit [the] ministry due to the same problems…thank God [for the] POPnet program.

God bless you David. Please be encouraged my brother, that your labour has not been in vain. I know how discouraging it is when you put in so much and then you don’t receive any single feedback. Silence at times does not send good messages but [be] assured that you have been doing the right thing. May the good Lord bless you as you continue to labour for Him. Blessings to you and the Love of the Lord be with you always.

Gift

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor 15:58, NIV).

Praise Items:

Thank God for our first weeks of integration with our new ministry team in Johannesburg. We are grateful for the way the team is reaching out to us and enfolding us into the family. Please continue to pray for the relationships we are building, and also for a mountain of logistical items we are sorting through as a part of joining the team.
Praise God for the commitments being made to provide funding for Cherie’s youth camp in late October. Thank Him for the provision that is appearing on the horizon to make this weekend camp a reality for students and leaders.
Thank God for two-day pastoring of pastors training events that David and a colleague conducted in Swaziland and in Port Shepstone, South Africa. The Swaziland event had a few challenges due to scheduling and some translation issues, but in the end it was well received. The Port Shepstone event was an excellent training session. David will now be in a follow-up stage to assess the post-training steps being taken in each place; the hope is that POP groups will begin with pastoral leaders and their spouses. Please pray for the efforts of those leaders to move forward with what they have experienced and learned.

Prayer Items:

Please pray for Cherie as she and a colleague conduct a one-day HIV and AIDS training workshop for pastors in our church, on September 30. A different colleague that was scheduled to co-teach with Cherie has had to withdraw due to an impending surgery, so Cherie has an extra load to prepare and deliver…please pray for her efforts for that day.
Please continue to pray for Cherie and her team as they make plans for the October children’s/youth camp. The team is a little behind with planning efforts. Pray for efficiency, unity and joy as they pull together this project.
Please pray for one of the female high school students in Cherie’s ministry, ‘P’. Rumors are flying in the squatter camp that P is pregnant, and Cherie is meeting with her and tenderly trying to understand her real situation. Please pray for grace, wisdom and transparency in this process.
Please pray for David as he delivers two pastoring of pastors sessions to 200 pastors at the national conference of the Assemblies of God Fellowship on the afternoon of 7 October. This is the next step in a process that began in May to work with this denomination and its efforts to provide pastoral care for its pastors. Please pray for favor, clarity, planning and the ability to appropriately communicate a lot within a short time period.

Language Lessons

A proverb from the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania: A man’s deeds are of greater importance than the facts of his birth.

Positioning for our future

2009-08-30T21:33:00.006+02:00

Before sharing some big and exciting news with you, allow us to present an opportunity to you. The weekend of 23-25 October, Cherie and her teammates will be conducting the annual camp for after-school ministry seventh-graders and students from the high school ministry. This camp, conducted annually since 2005, will be an opportunity for students to get away for a normal camp experience – fun, food, activities, small group discussion, Bible teaching and more. This year ~70 students and 10 leaders are expected to participate, and as in previous years, our goal is to provide this camp experience at no cost to the participants. Over the years supporters have generously allowed us to make that happen; if you are interested in helping to underwrite the cost of this year’s camp, please be in touch with us. (The camp cost per participant is approximately $53.)

And now onto something about which we’re very excited to share with you…

For about one year, we have been wrestling with some significant issues in Johannesburg. Central to these issues has been our ministry reality for almost six of our seven years here. When we relocated to Johannesburg in 2002, we joined another American family to be teammates in our ministry here. Unfortunately, and for very good and understandable reasons, that family relocated back to the US sixteen months after our arrival here. Since that time, we have been without formal teammates in our respective ministries. While we each partner together with other leaders in the leadership and execution of our ministries, we do not have any other people in South Africa that we can truly call teammates.

After our original teammates moved away, we hoped, prayed and believed that others – whether Americans, Africans or otherwise, would join us. We looked forward to again being in the type of ministry situation that we believe in and where we thrive…with teammates where we can provide mutual encouragement, sharpening, support and accountability. Unfortunately, six+ years later, we don’t have those types of teammates.

Last year, this reality pushed us into a process to evaluate our situation and to ask God to help us address this critical issue. Without sharing all the mechanics of that process, after a patient, thorough and God-centered process, we are very excited to share with you that we are joining OC International, an interdenominational missionary-sending agency based in Colorado Springs, CO. We have completed an application process with OCI, and after two-way interviews have been invited to join that mission…we have joyfully accepted that invitation and are joining OC’s Southern Africa Regional Team, based in Johannesburg, effective immediately.

We have felt God’s guidance and confirmation through this recent journey that has led us to OC. We could not be more grateful for the discussions we’ve had, guidance we’ve received and prayers that have covered us as we have sought God’s direction for our next chapter of ministry in Southern Africa. And we cannot imagine being more excited than we are about joining OC (www.onechallenge.org).

OC was established in 1951, originally as Overseas Crusades. It has undergone a couple of name changes since then (OC currently stands for One Challenge – that of reaching the world together), but its focus has remained the same – mobilizing godly and effective church leaders to reach the nations. OC’s strategy is to build into national church leaders so that they can reach their nations, and beyond. OC does this through research, and motivating and training church leaders.

With this priority of equipping national church leaders, there are many ‘connections’ between OC and TOPIC, the ministry we’ve been a part of for almost eight years. TOPIC’s Founding Director is a former long-time OC missionary in South America. In Southern Africa, the OC team leader in Johannesburg is a member of the Board of Directors of TOPIC Southern Africa, the ministry David leads. And OC and TOPIC have partnered on a number of projects in Southern Africa over the years. The two organizations share a number of values, strategies and priorities.

We will be joining a team based in Johannesburg, a team of five families where we’ve had strong connections and relationships for several years. We look forward to being a part of that team! We’ll share more with you about that team in the future.

Along the way, we have had very healthy dialog with TOPIC leadership about our wrestling, our process, and eventually about our discussions with and application to OCI. We have been very appreciative of TOPIC through this recent journey…we have been blessed by TOPIC friends and colleagues that have walked this journey with us in a very helpful, Christ-like fashion. At this point we have communicated to TOPIC that we are resigning from TOPIC as missionaries under its umbrella, though we’ll remain vitally connected, as is outlined below. Allow us to briefly answer a couple of questions that may be on your mind.

What does this mean in terms of our work/ministry? Essentially, not much – our ministry will continue pretty much as it’s been over the years. Our work is not changing as much as our organizational affiliation. David’s focus on training pastors and Cherie’s involvement in youth and HIV + AIDS ministry will continue. We will now simply be in a better support and care structure through teammates and with OC.

What does this mean in terms of TOPIC? We are parting ways with TOPIC as its missionaries in South Africa, but David will continue to do TOPIC work. With the agreement of TOPIC International, and the Board of Directors of TOPIC Southern Africa, he will continue to serve as the TOPIC SA Executive Director. David will continue pursuing the same TOPIC mission and vision (that of seeing every church with equipped and maturing pastoral leadership); he will continue with the same projects and priorities. He will simply do so as a missionary under a different agency structure.

What does this mean for those that provide us with the financial support we need to live and minister? We hope and pray that you will continue to pray for and provide your invaluable support to us, now through OC. We are still working out the specifics of a transition plan between TOPIC and OC, and once that plan is complete, we’ll be in touch to share more details. For now (in September at least), please continue directing your financial support to TOPIC, until you hear otherwise from us.

We want to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for our missionary affiliation with TOPIC since 2001. We have been blessed in our relationship with TOPIC, and thank God for our connection with TOPIC over the years. We have had a wonderful relationship with TOPIC, and as mentioned above, with David continuing to represent TOPIC in the Southern Africa region, our relationship will continue – we’re excited about and grateful for that fact.

We anticipate sharing more about this transition over the next few months. We look forward to you knowing more about our new ministry ‘home,’ and we believe you will be equally excited about this next chapter with us! If you have questions, please be in touch with us. We welcome any feedback you may have.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight (Prov 3:5-6, NIV).

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps (Prov 16:9, NIV).

Praise Items:

Thank you for your prayers for David’s important Pastoring of Pastors workshop with leadership of the Free Methodist Church, and his POP meeting with leaders of the Port Shepstone (South Africa) pastors’ fraternal in July. Despite David getting very ill on this short trip, both events went very well, and have set the table for future ministry engagement with that denomination and in that part of the country. Please pray for a two-day follow-up training event scheduled for 17-18 September.
Praise God for Winnie’s health, which has been good since beginning her anti-retroviral treatment in June. After some initial side effects, the drugs are providing her with stronger health, a stronger appetite and better resistance to some of our normal winter cold and flu bugs. Please continue to pray for her health and strength.
Thank God that, this week, we received word that our application for permanent residency has been verbally approved. We are not yet celebrating…we’re told that it will be another month before we have our papers in hand and the process is complete – and if we’ve learned anything through this taxing journey, it’s that we shouldn’t celebrate too quickly until we receive solid confirmations of progress in our process. But there appears to be hope on the horizon – praise God!

Prayer Items:

Please pray for Cherie and her team as they make plans for the October camp. The team is currently planning the theme, with details to be developed later.
Please pray for our integration into the OC team here in Johannesburg. Please pray for deepening relationships, trust to be built, cultural and procedure assimilation, and for a seamless move from being ministry partners to ministry teammates.
Please pray for Cherie’s HIV and AIDS efforts with our home church. Recent developmental efforts with church leaders have had their up’s and down’s, and Cherie’s receiving mixed signals from the level of interest and seriousness expressed by various church leaders. Please pray for good communication, setting of expectations and coordination.
Please pray for David’s POP training event in Swaziland, taking place 8-10 September. He and his colleague are teaching new material for the first time, and there is much yet to be assimilated and prepared for this event. Please also pray for effective coordination with their partner colleagues in Swaziland.

Language Lessons

A proverb from the Zulu of South Africa: The sun never sets without fresh news.

One exhausting week

2009-06-24T22:50:00.006+02:00

The week of 7 June was one exhausting week.

That week was one of David’s normal road-trip weeks, traveling to conduct five identical one-day workshops in Manica Province, Mozambique. It was a physically tiring week, mainly due to the ministry workshops and meetings being surrounded by a lot of time on the road. Johannesburg to/from the city of Chimoio (sheh-MOY-oh) is roughly a 15-hour drive, including two border crossings (traveling from SA through Zimbabwe to Manica Province). David and his teammate stayed in the Chimoio apartment of a ministry colleague, but each day drove to a different small community to conduct a workshop…driving anywhere from 25 to 180 roundtrip miles each day. By the time he got home, he was very ready to not drive anywhere!

While David was in Mozambique, Cherie was in Johannesburg…but while she didn’t log the same number of miles in a car, she had an absolutely exhausting week in many ways. That same week, she attended a seven-day intensive training course entitled Channels of Hope. Channels of Hope is sponsored by an organization called Christian AIDS Bureau for Southern Africa (CABSA). CABSA works to sensitize churches, communities and individuals to the AIDS pandemic, and mobilizes them to become involved and make a positive difference.

Unfortunately, in Africa and elsewhere, the AIDS pandemic is characterized by stigma, lack of knowledge and indifference. CABSA facilitates courses and other programs to explore and develop Biblical and Christian responses to these issues. CABSA helps churches to be part of the solution to the AIDS pandemic. The Channels of Hope course helps to unlock this potential. Together with her teammate Esther, Cherie attended the course to be better equipped to lead the growing HIV and AIDS initiatives within our local church.

Channels of Hope was physically exhausting. The workshop took place in a retreat center here in town, and was limited to 24 participants, most of whom came from far away – from other South African provinces, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The week of the course winter hit Johannesburg with a vengeance…while David enjoyed relatively warm temperatures in Mozambique, Cherie and her classmates shivered in the classroom, wearing their coats and wrapped in blankets they had taken off their beds.

Beyond the frigid temperatures, Channels of Hope was very intensive, with homework assignments that lasted well into the night. During the week participants gave three presentations (graded on each one), and completed three exams as well. At the end of the week, they were notified whether or not they had passed the course…those that passed were officially certified as Channels of Hope facilitators. After five 16-hour days, Cherie is happy to report that she passed the course and is excited for the doors of opportunity that will open up as a result.

Channels of Hope was also emotionally exhausting. As facilitators systematically helped participants look at attitudes, thought patterns and more, the class went through an emotional experience together. Even after several years of experience, Cherie felt convicted over things she has said or done when ministering to the HIV+ ladies at St. Francis and in her friendship with Winnie. The course really helped to open Cherie’s eyes to terminology, words and phrases she has used that can communicate stigma or judgment. Cherie realizes that while she hasn’t intended to discriminate, she’s been communicating in ways that recipients might misunderstand and misinterpret.

One of Cherie’s classmates was a man from Zimbabwe who works in a school for the blind. One morning he wanted to help the class understand how blind people are marginalized. Every morning, a volunteer from the class would be asked to light a candle that burned all day in the classroom – a candle to remind classmates that they are to be the light of the world (Matt 5:14). The Zimbabwean pretended to be blind and went forward to light the candle with his eyes closed – to demonstrate the simple challenges a blind person faces. After struggling to light the candle, he went on to share the many ways that the blind are taken advantage of…family members using them as street beggars to get money; using them sexually because the blind can’t see their offenders; and more. Many blind people are infected with HIV.

One activity vividly demonstrated the reality that many people are marginalized in our societies. The activity provided a visual representation of the marginalization that exists in societies – by the end of the exercise it was easy to see how certain ‘types’ of people were literally and figuratively several steps ahead of others. It was sobering to see how some people had progressed so far ahead of others – and that the ones that had progressed were usually the ones who were in the most influential positions to bring about change to those in need…but those same people that had easily moved ahead in life did not ever look back to see those who they were leaving behind.

Channels of Hope was spiritually exhausting. Every day class participants worked together in groups, groups that changed day to day. They wrestled with very tough questions from a biblical standpoint. The purpose of the questions was to challenge participants to really listen to each other and to try to understand why they believe what they believe. Are beliefs based on culture, worldview or the Bible? The intention wasn’t to win arguments, but to consider very difficult issues and to understand why we believe what we believe as Christians.

Overall, Channels of Hope was a phenomenal course. Cherie came home equipped, challenged, encouraged, motivated and exhausted. She and her teammate Esther have already been working with 18 ‘campus pastors’ from our church that minister to university students, leading efforts to more effectively serve students who might be infected or affected by HIV and AIDS. Cherie plans to use some of the activities and content from the course with those campus pastors and with her high school ministry, and she anticipates opportunities to train pastors on the issue of HIV and AIDS as well. She is grateful for her week of physical, emotional and spiritual exhaustion.

Praise Items:

Thank you for your prayers for David’s late-May ministry trip to Zimbabwe. His one-day pastoring-of-pastors workshop was very well received; another meeting that was a follow-up to a September ’08 workshop was a very helpful session in establishing further pastoring-of-pastors efforts as well (in the community of Norton). Please pray for pastoral leaders in Norton and in Chitungwiza (chih-tung-WEE-zah), for their efforts to build relationships with each other and begin providing mutual care to one another.
Thank God also for David’s mid-June workshop trip to Mozambique. Workshops were conducted with ~130 pastoral leaders, and the response in several of the communities far exceeded expectations. Pray for local leaders and their follow-up efforts to act on the planned outcomes from the sessions.
Please continue to pray for our friend Winnie. Thank God that she has been able to receive medical care and attention as her health has not been ideal. The condition of her HIV status has worsened; she is in the process of beginning anti-retroviral treatments (ART’s) to stabilize and improve her health. Thank God for her being able to access these critical drugs for free. Pray that her body would receive these drugs with a minimum of side-effects.
Thank you for your prayers for friends and colleagues in the nation of Zimbabwe. In his June trip David saw definite signs of stability and increased access to money and food. Pray for the coalition government headed by Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, that leaders would work together to continue stabilizing the nation. Pray that effective relationships can be established with other nations, paving the way for increased relief aid to Zimbabwe.

Prayer Items:

Please pray for Cherie’s efforts to research AIDS support groups. She and her team want to begin a support group in our church for those infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. She is attempting to find other support groups to learn from their experiences as her team is making plans for our church.
Please pray for David’s 9 July meeting with the Bishop and superintendents of the Free Methodist Church of Southern Africa. David and a teammate will conduct a one-day pastoring-of-pastors vision workshop with this group, as a first step in exploring how that church can begin developing plans for its pastors to receive pastoral care. Please also pray for a meeting with leaders from the pastors’ fraternal of Port Shepstone, South Africa, on the following day (10 July), on the same subject. For both meetings, pray for wisdom, good communication and that positive momentum would be established towards future steps.
Please pray for Cherie and her team as they have a period of evaluation and planning for the high school ministry. The ministry is on a break while students are on winter recess, and the leadership team is planning the priorities of the ministry during the next school term. Pray for creative thinking and unity among leadership team members.

Language Lessons
A proverb from Guinea: Knowledge is like a garden: if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.

Ahhh, building relationships...

2009-05-18T20:47:00.009+02:00

Recently David was in a conversation that was reflective of one of the understandable minefields of ministering in Africa.

The setting: David and a colleague were meeting with the General Secretary of a denomination in South Africa, along with another denominational leader, Pastor da Silva. Pastor da Silva, originally from Brazil and now the senior pastor of a church near Pretoria, had arranged the meeting. He had previously been involved in a ‘pastoring of pastors’ (POP) group where, together with his wife, he had been blessed by building relationships with other pastoral leaders. That group was a place where the participants were giving and receiving mutual pastoral care, a blessing for the pastors as they’d found a place where they could build real relationships and receive help.

Pastor da Silva recognized that the pastors in his denomination would be blessed if they could experience the same thing. The denomination has developed various efforts to equip its pastors, including the establishment of a mentoring program within its structure. But the denomination hasn’t paid any particular attention to the care of its pastoral leaders – to help them to be supported, prayed for, cared for, held accountable and developed in their lives and character. Pastor da Silva saw an opportunity for his denomination’s pastoral colleagues to benefit in the same way that he had in previous years – so he took action.

Pastor da Silva did the normal networking thing, arranging a small meeting to discuss the ‘pastoring of pastors’ issue. It was meant to be a simple, straightforward first-time meeting for mutual inquiry and sharing. David’s pre-meeting understanding was that Pastor da Silva had shared a little about ‘pastoring of pastors’ with the General Secretary, and that they both had interest in talking about how this concept could be applicable in their denomination. With his colleague Müller, David was excited for the opportunity to learn more about the denomination and its support of its pastors, and to share about the POP concept. Perhaps there would be a way to assist this congregation.

The meeting began in a somewhat unusual fashion. Pastor da Silva prayed to open the meeting, and upon the conclusion of his prayer, simply looked at David and Müller so that they could begin talking. He didn’t make any introductory comments, such as why he had called the meeting, what he was thinking as we gathered, or any background or insights about the respective meeting participants – things that would have been helpful given that Pastor da Silva not only called the meeting, but was also the only person present that knew all the people present. David had thought that Pastor da Silva would take these steps, rather than simply to dump the meeting into the laps of he and Müller.

But even with that somewhat unusual start, the conversation that immediately followed flavored the remainder of the meeting – and hinted about the potential tone of any future collaborative ministry efforts with this denomination.

As David and Müller were introducing themselves and the ministries they represented, the General Secretary zeroed in on them and immediately began asking very pointed, almost accusatory questions. What church are you a part of here in South Africa? What is your position/role with that church? From what church do you come in your respective home countries? What are your credentials? These questions, directed at both David and Müller, were sharp, direct and felt very negative in tone. David and Müller scrambled to establish their credibility, providing answers and referencing mutual ministry colleagues that would vouch for them and their work. The whole time, the General Secretary was writing down their answers, almost as if they were completing an oral exam. After a few minutes of this interchange, the General Secretary was sufficiently satisfied to move into the meeting’s agenda.

The ‘credibility’ conversation certainly caught David off guard. It wasn’t the content of the conversation, as there’s always a need in a first-time meeting to establish oneself, and David has had these types of conversations for years across Southern Africa (as has Cherie). What was surprising was the tone of the conversation – a tone that felt more like accusation than relationship-building. From that beginning the meeting gradually warmed up, although it was never absent of the feeling that David and Müller were speaking from a defensive position, their credibility always at stake in everything they said.

As the meeting progressed, David and Müller found the General Secretary to be very warm and personable, which might have caused them considerable confusion given the meeting’s start. But in addition to discovering the Secretary’s heart, they also learned some things that might have motivated his questions and tone.

As they discussed the denomination, its pastors and previous working relationships with other ministries, it became quite clear that the General Secretary, and his denomination, had been burned in the past. Several incidents were indirectly referenced where the denomination had been let down by ministries…ministries that charged very high prices for materials and conferences that, according to the General Secretary, delivered very little; ministries that promised things and failed to fulfill those promises; ministries that attempted to control people and situations in inappropriate ways. (In a non-malicious way, the General Secretary even specifically alluded to problems working with US-based ministries, memories of which were no doubt triggered by David’s good old Midwestern accent.) In short, by the end of the meeting, it was much easier for David to understand why the ‘credibility grilling’ took place.

How unfortunate that the General Secretary now seems so cautious, if not wary, about connecting with other ministries. As much as David was displeased by the meeting’s initial conversation, he found himself thinking that he would probably have posed the same questions, probably with the same tone, were he in the shoes of the General Secretary. David is now dealing with the repercussions of poor efforts and relationships in the past, while simultaneously sowing the seeds for others that will follow behind him in attempting to build collaborative efforts in the future – and he’ll probably cause his own set of problems that will make things challenging for another later on…

In spite of the bumpy start to the meeting, it ended in a good fashion, where David and Müller were invited to make a presentation at a meeting of 100 of the denomination’s pastors on 23 May (please pray for that meeting). They are excited for this ministry opportunity – but more so, they are excited for the opportunity to continue building a relationship with the General Secretary and his denomination. Prayerfully, along the way, they can be used to see his tone changed to a more encouraging and trusting one – one from which real ministry can flow.

Don't jump to conclusions – there may be a perfectly good explanation for what you just saw. Proverb 25:8 (The Message)

Praise Items:

Thank you for praying for Winnie’s family. Recently her mother accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior! Winnie has commented how her mom’s demeanor and behavior has wonderfully changed. Please continue to pray for her mom, Elizabeth.

Cherie and her leadership team were able to conduct a two-week course in our church on the Christian response to HIV and AIDS (within the adult Sunday school framework). It was very well received, and now follow-up opportunities are being pursued. Please pray for efforts being planned and developed on local university campuses through our church’s campus ministry. Please also pray for Cherie as she attends a one-week course (the week of June 8) to become certified to teach the course curriculum.

Prayer Items:

Please pray for David and his brief upcoming ministry trip to Zimbabwe, teaching pastoral care workshops in Bulawayo and Chitungwiza (trip dates May 26-31). Please pray also for planning and coaching meetings with leaders in Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Our permanent residency application process has continued to drag along…the government decision committee looked at our application package while we were in the US at Christmas, but somehow overlooked a document within our application. That committee will now look at our application again in (we believe) the first week of June…please pray.

Please continue to pray for Winnie’s health – her doctor has asked that she have her blood count numbers checked to assess her HIV status in these days.

Please pray for our financial support team, as some members have understandably had to reduce their support of our work due to various issues, including effects from the financial crunch. Pray that our team members are protected and provided for in these challenging economic times, and that in turn our support would not drop any further.

Language Lessons:
A proverb from Ethiopia: Even if you know many things, do not argue with the judge.

An update on Winnie

2009-03-19T19:39:00.017+02:00

During our recent home visit, many friends inquired how our friend Winnie is doing. For those who don’t know who Winnie is, or who need a re-introduction to her, Winnie is the 26-year-old friend Cherie met six years ago at the HIV/AIDS hospice care center where Cherie serves twice per week. Winnie was a patient at the center, and two months after they met, Winnie was on death’s doorstep - but by God’s grace, she regained her health, was released from the care center and has since seized life by the throat!

So much has happened to our dear friend over these past several months that we decided to focus this update entirely on Winnie, sharing all the latest and greatest things going on in her life.

Winnie continues to live positively despite the HIV virus still living in her body. As of this date, Winnie still has never gone on the government-sponsored anti-retroviral treatment program. When HIV+ people are ‘sick enough’ they qualify for free medication, but at this point Winnie remains healthy enough that she doesn’t qualify for this program.

As we’ve previously shared, Winnie delivered a healthy and HIV-negative baby girl in September 2007 – her negative status was a huge answer to prayer. Her little girl, Ntsiki (nnn-TSEE-kee), is now 18 months old and is being raised primarily by Winnie’s mother, Elizabeth (or Gogo – Grandma – in Zulu). Since the birth of Ntsiki, Winnie’s health has deteriorated. This was a concern during her pregnancy, and often happens with HIV-positive women when they give birth. The stress of child birth on the body breaks down the immune system even further. In Winnie’s case, this has resulted in weight loss (she can’t seem to put on weight no matter what), constant colds and flu bugs she can’t shake, and the weakening of her leg muscles. You might remember the miraculous story of healing when Winnie was able to walk after spending time in a wheelchair. Unfortunately, last November Winnie took a fall and found herself back in a wheelchair. When we returned to SA from our home visit in mid-January, Winnie, with her faith and determination, was back to walking with the assistance of a walker. Today she is still using the walker because of the weakness in her leg muscles.

This setback has not dampened Winnie’s spirit. She continues to remain active and engaged in the world. Winnie has a full-time job! She attended and completed a government-funded learnership program in 2007-08 for people living with disabilities. Because of her inability to walk without assistance, she qualified for the program. She learned computer skills, administrative and reception work, event planning and organization and general office work. Part of the learnership included an internship doing actual work in an office setting. At the end of the program Winnie’s employer was so satisfied with her work that she was offered a permanent job. She is employed with a courier delivery service as an office receptionist. The company was so impressed with her telephone skills and how she handled customers and vendors, that it offered her full-time work. Winnie has been working with the company since last September, and just shared with Cherie that she has earned a raise six months earlier than usual because of the quality of her work.

With Winnie now working Monday-Friday, she is no longer able to serve with Cherie and the AIDS hospice care center. However, her commitment to serving God has not changed…now, rather than serving at the hospice home, she joins Cherie every Saturday morning to serve in the high school youth ministry program.

Winnie recently started volunteering on Wednesday evenings at a local radio station in her community. She met the owner of the radio station and is currently being mentored on how to operate the sound board and screen callers for a weekly talk show. The talk show is focused on interviewing people who are disabled, and those who work with the disabled. The radio station owner is actually blind himself. He has a heart for those who are disabled and desires for Winnie to get trained and do well; as she develops he hopes to offer her a part-time job at the radio station. Winnie is very excited about this opportunity. She herself has already been interviewed live on the program. She talked about being HIV-positive, about not being able to walk without assistance and about the challenges she faces. Winnie has also had the opportunity to interview some of the guests on the show, and to interact with the callers that phone in with questions. She loves this new challenge and also hopes it will eventually lead to other things for her.

But perhaps the most exciting thing to share about Winnie is her participation late last year in a pageant called Miss Confidence South Africa. Winnie joined about 75 other young South African women with disabilities, attending a weekend audition last August. After interviews with the 75 women, 12 were selected to take part in the pageant, held in mid-November. This annual pageant was founded ten years ago by a woman who is deaf, who wanted to give other disabled women the opportunity to prove to the world that people with disabilities are no different than anyone else.

On that mid-November night, we got dressed up and attended the pageant in support of Winnie – it was a glamorous and glitzy event that was televised by a local South African TV station. The pageant had all the feel of a Miss America contest (not that we’ve ever attended that pageant in person!), except this one featured women that are remarkable in many ways, including the fact that each one has a physical disability…perhaps missing a limb or speaking with a speech impediment, unable to walk or living with Cerebral Palsy. The pageant included a dinner with live entertainment and the 12 contestants doing what pageant contestants do: changing their outfits from casual to evening wear, being interviewed and answering mostly typical pageant questions like, “If you would wish one thing for the world what would it be?”. (Altogether now: world peace!)

After taking a fall the week before the pageant, Winnie was confined to a wheelchair – but every time she wheeled herself down the Miss Confidence runway – looking absolutely glamorous – we cheered like crazy. The pageant pulled out all the stops to help her and the other contestants look beautiful, completing makeovers for each one. As she participated in the pageant, Winnie beamed with beauty, not only on the outside, but also from deep within. (She looked absolutely stunning. If/when some pageant contract payment issues get settled, we hope to get a copy of a professional photographer’s portrait of Winnie, which we’ll share with you as well.)

We were so proud of Winnie. As the drama unfolded through the evening, the top six finalists were called, and a young woman was eventually crowned Miss Confidence South Africa. Winnie did not win, or even land in the six finalists, but we were nevertheless abundantly proud of her. Winnie was not at all disappointed that she didn’t win. She was simply grateful for this wonderful opportunity in her life. We were so proud of her, and honored to call her our friend. Now, several months later, Winnie has shared that she and several of the contestants are talking about writing and publishing a book together. Amazing.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Phil 4:13-14

We asked Winnie for any prayer requests she might have. She shared both prayer requests and praise items:

Praise Items:

She continues to thank God for her strong faith and trust in Him.
After waiting patiently for over three years, her neighborhood and home is connected and only (hopefully!) a few weeks away from getting electricity.

Prayer Items:

Please pray for Winnie’s health – specifically that she will be able to increase her appetite and start gaining weight. Please also pray that her legs will get strong enough that she doesn’t have to use a walker or any other walking assistance.
Please pray for Winnie’s family. Family members are undergoing a lot of stress, especially her mother Elizabeth and sister Busisiwe (boo-see-SEE-way), who was recently hospitalized for depression.
Please pray that Winnie will get hired at the radio station and that it can be a full-time job for her someday. (She would love to host her own talk show someday – look out Oprah!

Lastly, in our last update we asked for prayers for Cherie as she’s been involved in discussions about the idea of merging her high school ministry with another one. Thank you for your prayers…after much thought, discussion and prayer, Cherie and her leadership team decided not to merge with the other ministry. They continue to discuss other possibilities of helping each other, however; please pray for God’s guidance going into the future. Also, thank God for the leadership team that has formed to lead the high school ministry this year

Language Lessons

A proverb from the Swahili of East Africa: Standing is still going.

Looking into 2009

2009-02-11T19:56:00.008+02:00

Compliments of the season! Even though we’re already six weeks into 2009, we extend to you new year’s greetings using the phrase that is most common here in Southern Africa. Since this phrase only rolls around once per year, it still takes us some effort to remember to use this one, rather than a simple Happy New Year.

We arrived back in Johannesburg in mid-January after a wonderful US home visit. Our visit was a huge blessing for us, providing us the opportunity to celebrate Christmas with our families for the first time in five years, and Thanksgiving for the first time in seven. Because it was the holiday season we were not able to connect with as many people as we would during a typical visit…to those of you that we missed during our time in the country, we extend our regrets and look forward to another opportunity in the future.

As this is our first update of the year, we want to share, in typical fashion, some over-arching prayer items for 2009. First, an update on the prayer requests we communicated in October, the last time we sent a ‘normal’ update, along with a couple of other praise items:

The weekend of 1 November Cherie helped to lead the annual weekend camp for the after-school and high school ministries – it went extremely well, with over 60 students participating. The camp theme was Daniel: Dare to be Different, from the book of Daniel. Last year’s camp took place at a new camp facility for the after-school ministry (to accommodate an increased number of students and leaders) and the site provided a great venue for the time together. Several male leaders were recruited to lead the boys at the camp, and they did a great job. Some of the guy leaders are even investigating ongoing involvement in the children’s/youth ministries! In short, God answered many prayers in creating a significant, memory-making weekend.
Prayers had been asked for Lerato, one of Cherie’s teammates in our church’s HIV/AIDS ministry. Lerato had shared with Cherie that she was battling suicidal thoughts. Upon our return to SA we were happy to find Lerato doing very well. She was able to attend a church camp during the Christmas break, and to see a counselor. The result of these activities is that she is doing well, in a good place. Lerato is continuing full steam ahead as she prepares to graduate from medical school in May. We praise God for His goodness in Lerato’s life.
Also upon our return to Johannesburg, we learned that the young woman that Cherie wrote about in our year-end newsletter, Phumla, passed away in early December. As her health slid while staying at the AIDS hospice care center where Cherie serves, Phumla was admitted to a hospital where she lost her life. Phumla had previously shared of her faith in Christ with Cherie, so we are trusting that we will see her again in heaven, where she has already been restored.
We are also very grateful for our US home visit. Join us in thanking God for our time with family, including two celebrations (David’s brother’s engagement and Cherie’s niece’s baptism), and for time with friends and supporters. We enjoyed the snow too!
And we’re grateful for this week, as we’re celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary. 20 years! We rejoice in the gift that God has provided to us through our marriage. Thank Him for His goodness in our lives.

Prayer Points
Some broad prayer points for 2009 include prayer for:

Cherie’s high school ministry. After launching almost one year ago, a core of students has been established and momentum is moving in a good direction as we enter the new year. Additionally, there is the opportunity for a good number of the after-school ministry ’08 ‘graduates’ to enter the high school ministry – which could effectively double the number of kids in the program. Early indications this year are that a handful of leaders (including guys) will step into ministry leadership; pray that they will fulfill their commitments. Also pray for important discussions that have emerged early this year – in ’08 Cherie learned that another youth ministry began operating in the same community, also on Saturday mornings. She has pursued meetings with the other ministry to explore ways to work together and achieve synergy. Please pray for God’s direction to be revealed through those meetings.
David’s POPnet ministry initiative. Also having launched in 2008, the ‘pastoring of pastors’ initiative is also pointed in a positive direction as we enter 2009. After checking in with key leaders since our return, it’s clear that many leaders have made pastoring of pastors a priority in their lives as we begin the new year. Much of the August – November 2008 activity pointed to the hope that leaders would begin groups and relationships early in 2009, and David’s contacts are sharing that these steps are happening. Groups have begun in Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Follow-up events are being planned in Swaziland as well. Please pray for continued positive direction; for additional leaders to join a regional steering committee; for our planning for priorities in 2009, and for additional trainers to help facilitate the growth of this effort.
Our dear friend Winnie. Her health has regressed in the last 6-9 months, and she is needing to rebound and be vital and strong given her responsibilities as a mother and an employee. Pray that God will grant her energy; that she will be disciplined in her diet (eating more healthy foods and less unhealthy ones); that her white blood count will go up and that she will be able to fight off nagging illnesses more effectively, and that she will become physically strong. Our next update will focus on Winnie and the recent developments in her life.
Cherie’s ongoing development of an HIV/AIDS ministry in our local church. 2009 will see a resumption of the activities that have characterized the beginning of this ministry – educational offerings for church leadership and mobilization of volunteers to serve at a local AIDS hospice care center. Early planning meetings have identified a number of potential next steps to be explored, including additional exposure/education for church leaders; involvement in ministry on local university campuses (raising awareness, education, HIV status-testing, etc.); establishing support groups for those affected by and infected with HIV; and more. Please pray for wisdom, favor, increasing involvement by others within the church, and more.
David’s planning for longer-term ministry engagement. In the first half of 2009 David will be intentionally seeking God’s direction regarding some broader and longer-term ministry direction issues. Please pray for that process, for discernment, wisdom, good input from others, and for God’s guidance and clear direction.
On a broader scale than us or our ministries, please pray for South Africa as we head towards national elections in late April. There is a lot of transition, or potential transition, in the air…there seems to be more happening on the political front than has been the case in national elections in the last 15 years. Pray for a peaceful process, for good, healthy campaigning, and for wisdom for our leaders and our electorate as they make decisions and go to the polls.
Lastly, on a broader scale, please remain in prayer for the people of beleaguered Zimbabwe. The economy has completely broken down; large numbers of people are suffering from hunger; the outbreak of cholera has claimed 3000 known victims; and a “unity” power-sharing government is being installed this week, one about which most people seem to be, at best, cautiously hopeful. In sort of a last-minute fashion, with a ministry colleague David traveled to Zimbabwe last week to deliver much-needed relief food, supplies and water purification powder (to reduce chances of cholera) to pastors and leaders that we work with there. David’s traveling partner, John, wrote a story about the experience that is posted below. It’s very likely that, together with some of our colleagues, we’ll continue to mobilize relief supplies into Zimbabwe periodically in 2009. If you are interested in being involved with that effort, please contact us. Regardless, please continue to pray for Zimbabwe…specific pastors/trainers (and their families, churches and communities) for whom you can pray include Kurai, Nedson, Felix, P.F., Emmanuel, Abton, Roy, John, Jeffrey, Patrick, Joseph and Pastor Taruwona.

Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live. (1 Thes 5:16-18, The Message)

God’s abundant grace, peace and favor to you in 2009!

The Rules Have Changed….

2009-02-11T16:38:00.005+02:00

The following story was written by and is posted with the permission of one of David's ministry colleagues, John, about a ministry trip the two of them took to Zimbabwe in February. Because of the political situation in that country, names have been shortened or left out to protect identities.

Just when I thought the Beitbridge border post could not get anymore frustrating or confusing, it did. I thought the worst was over when after standing in one queue for over two hours (with only about 10 people in front of us) we finally got processed. Apparently, the custom officials on the Zim side have initiated a “go slow” policy to put pressure on the government to raise their pay. (I had always thought they were on a perpetual “go slow” on the border, but today’s experience showed me I had seen nothing yet.” My traveling partner, David Bulger from TOPIC Southern Africa, and I needed every minute of daylight left to us for travel if we wanted to make Harare before it got dark. (Always a very good thing to do when traveling in Zim.)

As we pulled into the final checkpoint on the Zim side before heading out on the open road, the people asked to see our declaration papers and to open the trailer, a pretty normal request at this stage of processing. Usually, they just open the trailer, ask where we are going and wave us on our way.

Not today!

“Your forms show you did not you pay duty on these things! How many sacks of miele meal do you have? Who are the tyres (tires) for? Do you have receipts and proof for all of this?”demanded the border official.

Dumfounded, David and I explained we were, like always, under the minimum required to declare duty (you are allowed $300.00 US per person of goods brought into the country duty free and staple food was never considered to be part of the equation). They opened the back of the Land Rover and looked at our water purification supplies and demanded information on it, to whom it was going to and to show the now “appropriate” paperwork. My heart sank at the thought of those precious supplies not getting through to the north of Zimbabwe that needed it desperately. We had enough supply to purify almost a quarter of a million liters of water. It had to get through.

David and I explained to the border officials that we had been coming to Zimbabwe for years and had never had to do this kind of declaration in the past.

“We have new rules now,” we were told, which we viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. In other words, “we need a bribe” was how historically we translated that request.

“Go back and start over,” they ordered. My heart sank at thought of braving the customs queues again and the go slow workers who took 15 minutes to process one person and then would lose interest and wander into the back for another 10-15 minutes before reappearing again, only to take their seat and decide to count their money and reconcile it before processing another customer. We could not go back and hope to get to Harare safely. And not knowing what the actual duty rate was, we would be subjected to all sorts of manipulation as they could tell us any rate they wanted and we would have to pay it as we didn’t know the “new policy.”

So David and I argued, pleaded, cajoled, prayed and hoped for a break. The two officials (to be honest we could not even be sure they were official border employees) vacillated between leniency and taking the hard line. First they would say, give us something and you can go and the next minute they would be telling us to leave the tyres (tires) behind and they would hold them for us until we returned with a receipt (right!). It was very apparent they were playing a version of good cop/bad cop with us as one took the hard line, the other appeared more merciful to us.

At the point where I had almost lost hope, the good “cop” finally was appeased by a “gift” of some cold drinks and food from our personal supply and we were waved through. David and I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we drove north. Little did we know that our Zim friends had desperately tried to contact us earlier in the day and warn us of the new regulations. One pastor had been in South Africa just a couple of days earlier and bought food for his family and was forced to pay a huge amount of duty on food that he had never had to in the past. The new rules were just that, new rules and we were caught cold by the implementation. Such is rhythm of life of Zim. The rules rarely make sense and once you think you understand how they work, they change.

We had dodged a big bullet and David and I know it was due to prayers of all that were following this trip! Thank You. However, I wonder if there will ever be a day that I approach Beitbridge without having a large knot in my stomach as I begin the process of getting through the border. To me it is the most physical/tangible example of spiritual warfare that takes place on each and every trip into Zimbabwe.

Once in country, David and I noticed how green and luscious the countryside looked. Even the area around Beitbridge, normally barren and devoid of vegetation, was green and grassy. As we drove north, people had big buckets of mopane worms for sale on the side of the road for a snack, if you like that local delicacy!

Rain: The Good and Bad News

That’s the good news, lots of rain means fields are green and those that had seed and fertilizer could count on their mealies (corn/maize) doing well. And while there were many fields with the maize looking good, there were just as many with stunted or immature crops in them too. Harvest is only about two months off and for many Zimbabweans they have not had the opportunity to capitalize on the abundant rains. Hunger stalks the land and people.

The bad news is that all the rain means the major north/south highway is becoming more and more of a hazard to drive. Poor maintenance and lack of resources means the roads are not cared for and large potholes have appeared all over the road. I noticed that the road had deteriorated strikingly since I was in Zim just before Christmas. Large potholes mean slow going and the risk of accident increases. One leader on this trip told me of his pastor friend who was driving on the same road as us a couple of weeks ago and hit a pothole and rolled his vehicle. The hospital he and those traveling with him initially were taken to (in a private car) could only offer them water to cleanse their wounds. By the grace of God, the next hospital did have some blood supply to save the pastor before he bled to death. Was the blood safe? You don’t even ask a question like that in Zim. It was life or death and the blood was there. You take your chances!

The other part of the bad news is that with all the rains, the cholera is spreading rapidly into the country, “the rural areas”. Time and time and again we heard how the cholera has now invaded the countryside with devastating affect. In a Bindura township, we saw tangible evidence of this in a semi-urban/rural setting. A broken municipal sewer pipe periodically spews/oozes raw sewage into in a friend’s yard and out into the nearby road and neighborhood. The municipality said they had no money or supplies to fix the pipe. If the man got the money and supplies, the city would supply the workers to fix the pipe. And this man lives in a shack in the township! Meanwhile, raw sewage runs out into the streets and is spread by the abundant rainfall as there are no drains of any kind. Children were playing only a couple of meters away from the sewage as we drove by.
The trip, like the last one, was a very quick one as my partner David had to be back in Jo’burg by Friday afternoon. I appreciated so much his willingness to supply his vehicle, trailer, and time on such short notice and it was a very fatiguing trip as we covered a lot of kilometers in a short period of time. While our opportunities to visit were short we made the most of them.

Choosing the Path of Humility

For one pastor, besides providing food for him and tires for his ambulance,--he has used his personal vehicle with bare tyres to ferry cholera stricken people to the hospital, and even his “spare” tyre has the sidewall blown out of it!--we just sat and listened to him talk for an hour and a half as he shared with us all that he was dealing with. Just knowing someone cares and can listen is worth much to these leaders. Everyone comes to them for answers and help, but no one ever asks them what they need.

It was apparent to David and I that our pastor friend just needed to process with some peers. We said very little and asked only a couple of questions. Twice this pillar of a man (who was also much thinner than we have seen him in the past) was moved to the verge of tears as he talked not of his struggles, but as he received tangible gifts from us. Even in the midst of crisis, his gratefulness spilled over. This man rarely asks for help for himself, but it was a sms from him the week before that sparked this trip. People occasionally ask me why Zimbabwe has such a special hold on me and my response is that I get to work with some incredible, sacrificial servants of Jesus Christ.

We met with different leaders on this trip and a common topic that came out of our conversations was humility. Humility, you might ask, why that? Even in the midst of all the horrible things going on, these pastors are looking for the hand of the Lord. They believe that Zim is undergoing this trial by fire because the Lord is reducing them to one standard or platform. The crucible they are undergoing, they believe, is removing arrogance and racial antagonisms from the population. Zimbabweans were very proud of their country, even when it was Rhodesia and under white rule. The level of prosperity and education for all was superior to the surrounding countries and it showed. Zimbabweans, at times, have looked down on their neighbors as these countries went through difficult times believing that could never happen to them, but now these pastors and others realize “we have become them.” A prosperous white farmer is now reduced to the same level as the Zimbabwean farm invader who maybe took his neighbor’s land. Hunger and the desire to stay alive, these leaders think, will bring people to their knees and force them to work together. It is that belief which moves them to hope that the “new” unity government “reformed” will start to work together and put political differences aside…I pray that they are correct as they know their country and people better than me.

Amos

I also had the opportunity to briefly visit with my good friend Amos on this trip. Many of you who receive this update helped to transform his life this year by helping to get him to the Mercy Ship in Liberia for two surgeries to remove and repair the damage done by a life threatening tumor. As David and I arrived at Amos’ two room shack (less than two blocks away from where the broken sewer pipe is spewing waste into the township), he gripped me in a big bear hug. I could have stayed all day and visited with him, but the reality of our travel situation meant we had thirty minutes to catch up.
John with Amos

Amos and family are surviving; I think that is the only way to put it. Heather and I were able, because of this trip, to get food and some money to him. His need for both was evidenced by the huge smile and even more gripping hug I got from him as we gave him the gifts. Amos has lost or left his job. They still have a job for him but nothing for him to do as they have no supplies at his employer. He was working an entire month for the equivalent of one US dollar. Instead, he decided to take a leave from his job and work as a day trader. He was traveling back and forth to Mozambique and buying supplies and then reselling them in Zim. Apparently, he was doing well at this, when he and three of his fellow traders were robbed at knife and gunpoint on a return trip with supplies from Mozambique. Every possession they had, including precious travel documents ( a lifeline in Zim right now) were taken from them. As a final act of humiliation, the crooks even took their clothes and left them naked by the roadside.

I am amazed at my resilient friend. As I asked him how he was doing processing the robbery and loss, he just shrugged his shoulders and said “It’s over, you have to move forward.” Yet he is facing the loss of his only source of income as he cannot get a new passport as the Zimbabwean government is making it harder for citizens to leave the country. A new passport for Amos will now cost $600.00 US, an amount that puts this document out of the reach of most Zimbaweans (and yes they are charging for a Zimbabwean passport in US dollars).

Amos is also dealing with residual pain from his surgery (he never told me this, his pastor did) and is having trouble eating as he needs to get false teeth to replace all the teeth he lost in the lower right jaw due to the tumor pushing them out. Yet he did not complain about all of this one bit, but instead expressed joy at my presence and the small gifts we were able to take up to him. I also had the opportunity to meet his mother, who lives next door to him. What can I say, but Amos is a very special person to me.

Lord, I Don’t Know…
How does one make sense of all this and the over whelming need? I wish I had the “answer.” I don’t, but I do take comfort in the lyrics from a song “ Lord, I Don’t Know,” from the popular Christian contemporary group the Newsboys. The lyrics go
“Lord I don’t know where all this is going or how it all works out,
Lead me to peace beyond understanding, a peace beyond all doubt.”
I choose, like all those leaders in Zimbabwe, to trust, not understanding the why or when, but knowing that the Lord has placed us with wonderful ministry partners like you to do what we can in this time. We will continue to do that, thanks to your prayers and support.

Blessings and thanks,
John

Our home visit cell phone

2008-11-24T03:26:00.000+02:00

number is (224) 678-6925!

Politics in South Africa

2008-10-07T17:26:00.005+02:00

Ah, yes…we’re in that heightened season of mudslinging, backbiting, character assassination, trumped-up charges and the testing of people’s patience and long-suffering – we must be in an election season! But before you quickly conclude that we’re writing about the impending US federal election, be still good reader: we’re actually writing of some of the most bizarre political activity either of us has ever witnessed, right here in the Republic of South Africa.

The last time we were in the US, in the late winter of 2007, we were amazed at how frequently the US presidential campaign was on the nightly news and in the newspaper. It seemed to us that the presidential campaign was virtually in full swing – an incredible 11 months before the first primary! Certainly there are things that we miss about living in the US – but seeing that presidential campaigns have become a two-year process is definitely not one of them. We believe this has been the most fascinating US presidential race in our adult lives – but not so fascinating that it’s been worth a two-year span of attention. Won’t it be good to get past 4 November and focus on something else for a while??

But lest you think that, living so many miles away from the nearest US border, we are immune to dumbfounding political processes, think again. We’ve got it in spades here in South Africa as well.

The last time we wrote anything about South African politics was in July 2005 (see the blog entry from that month), after President Thabo Mbeki fired his Deputy [Vice] President, Jacob Zuma, because of allegations that Zuma was corrupt. Many heralded Mbeki’s decision as a courageous step to stop high-level corruption in its tracks, before it could gain a foothold at the highest levels of power in South African government. Little did we know that the firing began a process that has made us long for only having to suffer through a two-year presidential campaign. Instead, we’ve been in a 3.5-year agonizing march through contentious politicking, lawsuits, court decisions and shenanigans that have worn us and much of this country out – and we’re not finished with this yet. Some amazing lowlights from the bloody journey we’ve marched in recent years:

2006 sees former Deputy President Zuma charged with rape. In light of the allegations about his corruption, many believe he is undoubtedly guilty of the rape charge. A sensational trial grips the nation, but in a surprising conclusion, Zuma is (surprisingly and rightfully) acquitted of the rape charge. The trial sees Zuma, the husband of three or four wives and the former chair of the national government’s moral regeneration campaign, admitting that he slept with his accuser, a woman half his age. More shocking, however, is the revelation that in spite of his accuser being known as a high-profile HIV/AIDS activist and being known as HIV-positive herself, that Zuma used no protection with her – and that he took a shower after their encounter in order to reduce the chance that he would become infected himself!

2007 sees the second long year of haggling in court to determine if the federal prosecuting authority will formerly charge Zuma with corruption. Zuma and his supporters believe that he is not guilty, and that his firing and the corruption allegations are nothing more than a conspiracy to keep him from being elected president when Mbeki completes his second (and final) term in April 2009. There is abundant debate over whether Zuma’s firing and the corruption allegations are nothing more than tribal infighting within the African National Congress (ANC), the party overwhelmingly in power.

The year is dominated by campaigning within the ANC in anticipation of the party’s December congress, where it will elect its new party president (sort of a primary process). Zuma and Mbeki, and their supporters, wage a massive campaign in anticipation of the congress, complete with all the worst politicking one can imagine – between members within the same party! Zuma eventually wins the party’s presidency, with the resultant writing on the wall – there’s going to be major housecleaning to move Mbeki’s loyalists out of the way, with Zuma preparing for his inevitable election as the country’s president in April 2009. Three weeks after Zuma is elected party president, virtually on New Year’s Eve, the national prosecuting body formally lays corruption charges against Zuma.

2008 sees Zuma angling to have his corruption charges dismissed before they come to court. His attorneys file court papers to cancel/divert his trial. The ANC, and the country, become increasingly divided on the issue of Zuma’s presumed innocence or guilt. One prominent ANC leader pronounces that if Zuma is brought to trial, he will organize followers that will “kill” in defense of Zuma. Meanwhile, the housecleaning process begins, with premiers (equivalent to US state governors), mayors, cabinet members and others being fired or sidelined. Mbeki, in spite of being state president, increasingly becomes a puppet president as he isn’t the president of his party. His leadership erodes at an increasing rate through the year, not helping in any significant way as the country wades through an electricity crisis, xenophobic violence and the normal out-of-control crime and HIV crises.

The momentous political event of the year happens in September, when a judge issues a verdict that the prosecuting authority did not follow all the proper technical procedures in deciding to charge Zuma. The judge implies that President Mbeki is involved in a conspiracy to have Zuma charged with corruption in order to eliminate Zuma, politically speaking.

This is all the ammunition that Zuma and his supporters need. Using South Africa’s parliamentary system, Zuma’s supporters use proper constitutional means to “recall” Mbeki – effectively firing him, and replacing him with Kgalema Motlanthe, a relatively unknown ANC leader (at least unknown to the general public). The cabinet is completely reshuffled and the infighting within the ANC heads towards epic proportions (and a potential party split, with massive repercussions since the ANC got 74% of the vote in the last election).

And the country has a new president, at least until the next election in April. Not many people know anything about Kgalema Motlanthe (kah-LAY-mah mote-LAHN-tay), so we’re two weeks into a season of learning who this person his – how to pronounce his name, his thinking on policies and direction, and more.

At another point we’ll have to learn more about (and dare try to explain?) our parliamentary system here, where the party in power can shuffle out the state president without involvement or consultation from the public. In the US, the equivalent to the current South African situation would be if the Republican National Committee decided to remove President Bush from office, and install a party leader that had only been installed (not voted) into Congress in the last few months. No one has voted for this person for any office, much less for president of the country. In the US, questions get raised about the Electoral College and the fact that US voters don’t technically elect the president. Think what you may about that process – but recognize it could be a lot different, where it’s actually a political party that decides which people serve as mayors, governors and even the president. Fascinating.

It’s easy to wonder and complain about our politicians and the political process – there’s plenty of negative stuff out there. Take heart – not all of governance is as bad as its reputation – but for the part that is bad, we can’t really be surprised. The people of Israel once had a better system, where God himself provided governance to the people. But the people were not satisfied with that system, and asked God to appoint them a king. God warned them that a king would provide them with a lot that they were not looking for – military conscription, forced labor, confiscation and redistribution of land, taxation and more (1 Samuel 8:4-22). God specifically predicted, Then you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves… (v 18a).

This season, in the US, South Africa and elsewhere, gives us plenty of reason to cry out. But rather than crying out (or at least in addition to doing so), let’s do our part to support the men and women in governmental leadership. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone - for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 1 Tim 2:1-2

Praise Items

Thank you for your prayers for David’s ministry trip to Zimbabwe and Malawi in September – it was a very fruitful trip of meetings and workshops focused on the pastoring-of-pastors initiative. David and his teammate suffered two flat tires and one that was knifed (can you say, time to buy new tires?!), but otherwise travel went without incident. Please pray for his next trip, his longest annual trip, to northern Zambia, 9-22 October. The bulk of this trip will again be pastoral training workshops on pastoring-of-pastors.
This week our dear friend Winnie celebrates her 26th birthday – praise God for her. It’s amazing to see her life today after being on death’s doorstep in 2003, at the lowest point of her battle with HIV. Her daughter, Ntsiki, recently celebrated her first birthday, and there’s more to share about Winnie, which we’ll do soon. For now, please pray for her health as she’s been having difficulty with her balance and walking, and with physical symptoms of stress – she needs to avoid this as it’s not good for her health given her HIV-positive status.

Prayer Points

Please pray for Cherie’s high school and after-school ministry camp, 31 October – 2 November. Pray for these last weeks of camp planning, and pray during that weekend for a special experience for the students – joy, relationships, special touches by God, breakthrough and more. Pray for efforts to recruit more men to be leaders at this camp.
Please pray for Lerato (different than the Lerato referenced in our last update), a young woman who volunteers with Cherie in our church’s AIDS ministry. Lerato called Cherie last week expressing thoughts of suicide, and she believes she is under attack from Satan. Please pray for God’s intervention and protection in Lerato’s life, and for Cherie and our church as they walk with Lerato during this season.

Language Lessons
A proverb from the Tswana of Botswana and South Africa: A chief is a chief by virtue of his people.

Celebration and Sadness

2008-09-10T14:27:00.045+02:00

This update will be a little on the long side, as we’re going to squeeze two very different ‘subjects’ into this piece. We’d intended this update to solely provide some feedback on the conference David hosted last month, and that summary follows…but based on events from the last few days in Cherie’s after-school ministry, we’ll share a second story as well.

Thank you, and thank you again, for your prayers for the POPnet Clinic + Consultation held in mid-August in Pretoria. As had been shared in previous updates (October ‘07 and April ’08), the POPnet Clinic was sort of a kickoff event to launch a new project initiative, the Pastoring of Pastors Network. We’ve been praying and planning about an effort to bring relational health into the lives of pastors in our context, and the POPnet Clinic got us started with a bang! In summary, we are deeply grateful for a phenomenal, blessed week of ministry at the Clinic.

The practical items: we were 115 at the event, representing nine countries…local church pastors, and denominational, network, para-church ministry and seminary leaders. We were together for a three-day training ‘clinic’ and pre- and post-Clinic meetings and consultations. Our main speaker was from Brazil, and we were led in worship by two different young adult worship teams – one from a local (predominantly white) suburban church and the other from a local (predominantly black African) township church…wonderful variety in style and language, but all focused on praising God! But more than the practical items…

God answered prayers during the week in unmistakable ways. Our primary prayer wasn’t that we’d host another knowledge and skills-transfer conference, although training was provided in practical mentoring methods. Our principle prayer was that we would have a week together where God would speak to us, and that we would hear from Him. More than anything, we wanted leaders to hear from God regarding their need to be shepherded and cared for…that God would touch each of our lives. And God answered those prayers for so many

Most leaders spoke of being deeply touched. Many spoke of the week as being a ‘turning point’ in their lives and ministries. We all committed to going home and intentionally bringing balance into our lives – to going home and re-investing in our marriages and children, to going home and re-thinking how we relate to our ministry teams, and more. One Zambian pastor sent us an email after returning home, sharing some of his reflections: “…it’s with great joy and excitement that I write to respond quickly but briefly to the value and treasure of what came out of that meeting. That meeting could not have come at a [better] time in my life than now. It was a great blessing. Indeed, NEVER ALONE, ALONE NEVER [a chant that developed during our week together]. During those few days I looked at ministry and relationships with new spectacles…I have a window to listen again to what God…wants me to hear and do.” We’ve received similar feedback from a number of leaders since the Clinic.

The broad result from the Clinic week was a core of pastoral leaders that have returned home with a fresh sense of God’s presence in their lives, and a deep hunger to continue with steps to build relationships and health in their lives, families and churches. We believe we’ve struck a very deep chord with this initiative, and are very excited to see where God will take all of this. We’re already running with post-conference follow-up activity - meetings, consultations and workshops scheduled in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Swaziland and three provinces within South Africa – all by mid-November!

We two were exhausted by the end of the conference and post-conference meetings – as were other key members of the planning team that pulled off the event. Thankfully, we two had a little time off a week ago to attempt to recover, and are now running again to finish the year well. We want to thank so many of you that prayed for this effort. Several people gave special financial gifts to make the event more affordable for pastors to attend. And others served in practical ways. To every one of you, we extend a huge thank-you! Your investment is already paying big dividends in the lives of so many here. Thank you so much for blessing us and for blessing the many leaders that were with us at the POPnet Clinic + Consultation.

And now, with an abrupt change of direction, let us share our heavy hearts based on events from the last few days in Cherie’s after-school ministry. On Sunday evening (the 9th), as we were driving home from our small group meeting, we received word that one of Cherie’s key after-school ministry leaders, a woman named Lerato, had passed away.

In Cherie’s years with the after-school ministry, she has primarily focused on two things: building a structure and foundation for the ministry, and developing leaders from within the community that would own the ministry and effectively work Cherie out of a job. Of the leadership team that has developed over time, two particular women have risen to become the ‘leaders of the leaders’ – Simphiwe (sem-PEE-way) and Lerato (leh-RAH-toe). They had become sort of the Batman and Robin of the ministry leadership team.

Simphiwe is the official team leader. She has a heart of gold and loves leading the ministry and loving the children in it. She has turned down opportunities to move and to take employment, just so she could remain with the ministry. In the last three years, Lerato became one of the ministry leaders as well. On the outside, Lerato appeared to be tough as nails – with the children she could have a no-nonsense appearance. She certainly commanded respect. But on the inside it was clear that she loved the kids and loved ministering to them.

After a ministry break during the July winter school break, Cherie noticed that Lerato had been absent a bit from the ministry and inquired about her. It was said that she was sick and that she’d be back when she was feeling better. That ‘feeling better’ stage seemed to be slow in coming, so on one Tuesday, when Lerato was again absent, Simphiwe and Cherie decided to visit her at home. They wound up taking her to the hospital for treatment…she was released as an outpatient and went back home to continue recovering.

Sadly, her full recovery never came to pass…she kept feeling worse, to the point where two weeks ago she traveled to stay with her mother in a small city two hours outside Johannesburg. Almost immediately upon arriving there, she began sending word expressing her desire to have Simphiwe come and visit her. It took a couple of weeks before Simphiwe could break away and make a weekend trip to visit Lerato. Simphiwe and another leader from the ministry, Mapule (mah-POO-lay), took a minibus taxi to Kroonstad and spent the weekend there with Lerato and her mother. Upon their arrival, it was clear that Lerato seemed to be slipping away.

Lerato was barely able to speak, only whispering her heart’s longings into Simphiwe’s ear. They shared a special friendship weekend together that concluded with Lerato giving Simphiwe a kiss – a kiss that Simphiwe believed was Lerato’s way of expressing her gratitude for Simphiwe’s friendship, in a way that her barely-audible voice could not. On Sunday night, as Simphiwe (on the right in the photo, with Lerato) was making her way home in the minibus taxi, she received a message that Lerato had passed away in the two hours since Simphiwe’s departure. Simphiwe believes that Lerato had simply been hanging onto life until Simphiwe’s visit, and that once Simphiwe had departed, Lerato felt the freedom to die.

On Monday, Lerato’s death was announced at the after-school ministry. On Tuesday, as Cherie prepared to lead her normal ministry activities, she felt prompted to change course - to provide an opportunity for the children and other leaders to have a memorial service for Lerato. Cherie provided the opportunity for children and adults to share memories of Lerato and honor her passing. What Cherie thought would be a brief 15-minute time of sharing turned into a 45-minute ‘service’, with stories, singing, testimonies and tears. It was clear that this time was needed by many in the ministry. While several of the leaders are making plans to attend Lerato’s funeral on Saturday, the children will not be able to attend (as the service will be in the city two hours from Johannesburg). But on Tuesday, at the after-school ministry that would normally have been a movie day on that particular day, something else needed to take place – a memorial service for a beloved friend and leader.

Cherie already misses Lerato. Simphiwe is grieving the loss of a very close friend. And the after-school ministry is already feeling the absence of a trusted guide. As many, in the coming weeks, will be grieving the loss of Lerato, your prayers of comfort and peace would be most appreciated.

Praise Items

Please join us in our repeated prayers of thanksgiving for the events and activity surrounding the POPnet Clinic week. We continue to rejoice in God’s goodness and movement in our midst…

Prayer Points

Please pray for a POPnet follow-up trip that David is making to Zimbabwe and Malawi, 17-25 September. This will be David’s first trip into Zimbabwe this year, after cancellations of two previous trips due to the ongoing (election-related) turmoil in that country. Please pray for safety and for two-day workshops to take place in each country.
At the end of October, Cherie will be conducting her annual weekend camp for kids from the after-school ministry. This year, additionally, kids from the high school ministry will participate – an overall total of 94 students and leaders. Please pray for the ministry team’s preparations – currently working on the theme, teaching, activities, etc. We believe we have funding to cover the actual camp cost for all involved, but also want to provide Bibles and t-shirts to the campers. If you would be interested in contributing towards provision of these items, let us know.

Language Lessons
A proverb from Nigeria: Hold a true friend with both your hands.

A quick update...

2008-08-05T21:17:00.005+02:00

Our update this month is a brief one as we are extremely busy in preparation for hosting a ministry conference beginning 12 August. Following are some short updates and prayer-oriented items…

We were encouraged and challenged by those that provided feedback after our recent ‘poorest of the poor’ update. We received feedback that challenged our thinking, and that affirmed some of the thoughts we expressed as well. If we did nothing more than provoke some thinking – both amongst the readers and between the two of us – then hopefully our ‘soapbox’ was worth the time and effort to write and read. David recently connected with someone that shared that she has a response to that update sitting in her ‘draft’ box – letters to the editor are still welcome as you have the opportunity.

With other pressing issues that have arisen in South Africa in recent weeks (the Zimbabwe crisis, ~30% increase in electric tariffs, etc.) the xenophobia violence story has inevitably slipped into the background of the news. While the violence ended in late June, the unresolved issue of the xenophobia story is the 10,000’s of foreigners living in temporary refugee shelters in the country. The government originally established a 31 July deadline for the refugees to move back into their communities, or move out of the country, so this aspect of the story is still significant. Please pray for families that are still attempting to sort out their lives in the wake of the violence, and for our government and country as we attempt to theoretically bring this issue to closure.

Thank you for your prayers for Cherie’s recent meeting with our church’s staff leadership, to take the next step in raising awareness about the AIDS issue in our church and community. This second meeting went extremely well, and Cherie and her teammates continue to earn credibility, interest and motivation. We continue to pray for our church’s growing positive momentum in addressing the AIDS crisis in our context.

One or two men have been identified as potential leaders with Cherie in her high school ministry. There have been very positive developments in the past 2-3 weeks. Please pray that these developments continue. One of the men is in the process of moving (his residence); pray that this circumstance would not be a hindrance in his continuing to get involved in the high school ministry.

Lastly, please pray for the conference we are hosting next week, the POPnet Clinic + Consultation. Your prayers for this initiative would be most appreciated.

Some rantin' and ravin'

2008-06-24T12:00:00.009+02:00

Please allow us to climb onto a soapbox for a few moments.

The Bible has a lot to say about people that are (economically) poor. Interestingly, in these times of being politically correct and careful about our use of terms, the Bible widely uses a simple, perhaps non-politically correct term for ‘people that are poor’ – simply, the poor. Over and over throughout scripture, we find references to the poor. We can find some of the basic biblical themes regarding the poor in the following brief list of verses (all from the NIV translation):

The poor you will always have with you… Matt 26:11a
Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all. Prov 22:2
Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. Ps 82:3-4
If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. Lev 25:35
He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done. Prov 19:17
He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. Prov 14:31
Like wild donkeys in the desert, the poor go about their labor of foraging food; the wasteland provides food for their children. Job 24:5
Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. Prov 10:4
A man's riches may ransom his life, but a poor man hears no threat. Prov 13:8
The poor are shunned even by their neighbors, but the rich have many friends. Prov 14:20

It’s interesting to note that the Bible also contains a handful of verses that contain the phrase “poor and needy,” but these verses are outnumbered about ten to one by those that make reference only to “the poor.” Without having studied this closely, it would seem that, biblically, there is a distinct difference between being poor and being poor and needy.

The themes outlined in the verses above are straightforward. There will always be people that are economically poor – yet they have been created by God, as have been wealthy people. Poor people face unique challenges, including rejection from others. Special attention must be given to watching out for, and defending, the poor. Those who assist the poor do well and will be rewarded. Poor people are not solely victims of their circumstances…they have a hand in determining their own lot as well.

Many are appropriately motivated by the verses above (and by other sources) to assist the poor. In recent days there seemingly is a growing interest in addressing the issue of poverty and in helping the poor. Praise God for that!

But while we may be in a season of seeing growing concern for poverty and the poor (and should celebrate that), can we take a moment to consider some of the resultant language being used? (Here’s where the soapbox is being pulled out of the closet and we’re starting to climb on top…)

Without wanting to sound like we’re attempting politically correctness, it’s time we had a go at a phrase that’s gaining uncomfortable currency in recent days – “the poorest of the poor.” Many readers will know this phrase. It seems that a growing number of people and organizations are helping, or trying to help, “the poorest of the poor.” Their desire to help is great. But the phrase isn’t.

At best, “the poorest of the poor” is a phrase that is confusing – it reveals a limited understanding of the definition of poverty. Americans (like the two of us) and others suffer from brainwashing - we’ve been programmed to look at all things, and people, through economic lenses. When we think of the poor, we instinctively think of people with a lack of money…but poverty is about so much more than the lack of money. Careful examination will reveal that people can be poor in health, relationships, opportunities, their spirit and much, much more. An effort to more widely redefine poverty is sorely needed, and phrases like “the poorest of the poor” don’t help. These phrases don’t promote needed redefinition, they reinforce the existing ones.

If we talk of the need for redefinition, a question could be asked of those that use the phrase, to help in the definitional process. How do they quantify “the poorest of the poor?” How are they measuring poverty? If they solely define poverty in economic terms (and even if they define poverty in a more wholistic way), how do they measure “the poorest?” On the face of it, the phrase is a bit absurd.

At worst, using language like “the poorest of the poor” is a type of marketing hype that has no place being used. Whether by intention or not, using language like this borders on deception and exploitation. Since it’s virtually impossible to define who “the poorest of the poor” are, it feels like those using the phrase are doing so as much for their own benefit as they are for the poor – and in so doing they place themselves in a precarious place, as God warns us in scripture: Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court, for the LORD will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them (Prov 22:22-23). Calling someone “the poorest of the poor,” in the absence of a crisp definition or measurable criteria upon which to base such a claim, can create the perception that the phrase is being used in an exploitative fashion. Those that seek to exploit should be ashamed – and those that use this phrase from a place of altruism should be aware that they leave themselves open to misinterpretation.

Let us be fair by making a couple of additional comments. First, in the Bible we do find (in the NIV translation) the phrase “the poorest of the poor” one time (Isa 14:30). The context is one very unlike the major themes of the poor referenced above, and the phrase certainly isn’t used in the context of one stating they’re helping “the poorest of the poor.” So the phrase has biblical precedence, but not in the way we typically read/hear it in recent days.

Second, while we (David and Cherie) attempt to be careful in how we engage and describe people, undoubtedly we’ve thought of or used a flippant phrase or comment that was equally (if not more) harmful to or about someone. We appreciate your patience in absorbing our soapbox comments…and we invite you to jump on your soapbox where you find us in need of reproof as well. We invite you to hold us accountable, not so we can pass the political correctness test, but so that we can increasingly see people with God’s eyes, without labels, hype or misguidance. We want to see every person we engage not through the lenses that label people, but with eyes that see each and every one made in the image of God (Gen 1:26). We freely admit we don’t always get it right, so as we climb off our soapbox please receive, as a parting gift, a heavy dose of humility from us – our gift to you for enduring an exercise that may have been more for our ‘benefit’ than yours. (And now we put our box back in the closet…)

We’ve stated above that verses on the subject of poverty are found throughout the Bible. So, too, are themes of riches as well. For one, check out Psalm 103:1-5. Every one of us, no matter our bank account balance, is rich! Praise God for that…

Prayer Update

Thank you for your prayers regarding the xenophobic violence described in our last update. We have been safe and the violence has ended in the country for now. For more on this, see the two June updates below, placed on this site after we sent our May update.
Thank God for the positive meeting Cherie had with the staff leadership of our church, where she presented the AIDS ministry that she and three others have developed in the church. It was a very fruitful and encouraging discussion, and ideas are now being explored to see how this ministry can grow and develop. Please pray for a follow-up meeting on 29 July.
Please pray for wisdom for David, as he is weighing a couple of upcoming ministry travel opportunities for which he is giving careful consideration.
Please continue to pray for our small group. We are moving along well as we’re in our third month of being together. Please continue to pray for the two group members (names intentionally withheld) that are experiencing conflict that a couple of us are trying to mediate.
Please thank God for funds that have been donated, allowing us to underwrite the ‘pastoring of pastors’ clinic + consultation in August. Donations have made it possible for us to make the price of the event affordable, and we’ll be able to provide scholarship assistance to those that need a little extra financial help to attend. Please continue to pray for our preparations as we’re now in crunch time. Our next update will provide specific prayer requests for the event itself, in mid-August.
Cherie’s high school ministry is now on winter school break; please continue to pray for male leaders for the ministry.

SA's xenophobia crisis: the next phase

2008-06-10T15:14:00.007+02:00

As it happens with every crisis or disaster, the xenophobia violence situation in South Africa has entered the next phase, which presents its own set of challenges.

After the initial two-week spate of violence, tensions have settled in these last two weeks. There have been no reports of additional ethnic violence. Army troops were mobilized into the communities experiencing violence, to accompany increased police presence and activity. As best as we can tell, this wave of violence seems to have ended, but in these types of situations, it would seem that one is never far from a spark that could re-ignite the whole situation.

So in these last couple of weeks attention has turned to the very real problem of the people that have been displaced by community violence. The violence resulted in 60+ deaths and hundreds injured. It's estimated that 20,000 - 40,000 foreigners have left SA in the last four weeks, returning (primarily) to Mozambique and Zimbabwe. But even with those departures, SA is left with a very real refugee problem.

Tens of thousands of foreigners are now in their fifth week of living in makeshift refugee settlements - churches, the yards of police stations, community halls, etc. They're living in temporary conditions, sleeping in tents under donated blankets, eating food that has been donated and prepared, and wondering when they will be able to return to some semblance of a 'normal' life. Virtually all of them have had all of their possessions stolen, including vital papers like passports, visa, etc., which make it impossible to return to their countries (and very difficult to deal with issues here in SA).

Last week, with a visiting friend, we twice visited a police station in Joburg's inner city to assist in serving dinner to the displaced people living there. You can imagine it was a chaotic scene, attempting to feed an estimated 1200 - 1400 men, women and children in an efficient, orderly fashion. We were only able to focus on the mechanics of distributing food in order to have that many people fed in a relatively short period of time. But as we were afforded small opportunities to interact, we could see emotions on the faces of people that you can imagine and understand: weariness, frustration, confusion, anger and desperation - and yes, even an occasional glimpse of joy.

Winter has fully arrived in South Africa, and there couldn't be a worse time to be living in a tent city. Most evenings in the last week have seen temperatures dip into the mid-30's. And we've experienced the unusual weather patterns that seem to be in effect across the globe...this is supposed to be our dry season, with no traces of rain from late April through September. But we've still had rain into early June, making the cold nights (and cool days) even more bitter. Donated clothing and blankets have gone a long way in addressing these conditions for the refugees.

Our church has really stepped up to the plate in serving and addressing the needs of the refugees. There has been practical service: donation of clothing, blankets, food, diapers, etc.; serving meals; counseling and prayer; and more. We've worked with local government in strategy development (fighting against the government's initial attempts to split families when it came time to move the refugees from one police station to a better temporary housing situation), and are now placing refugees with church families. The church is also developing efforts to teach practical work skills to displaced people and to help place them in new jobs (since most have lost the jobs they had as they're now geographically too far to reach them). Our church even conducted its first church service in one of the refugee settlements this past Sunday; more are expected in the future. One of the most moving times we have had in Africa was in the service on the first Sunday after the violence erupted, where all congregants born outside SA were asked to stand and receive a special welcome from the church body. We still cry when we reflect on that moment, and we have been filled with joy and appropriate pride in our church's overall efforts.

As you are led, please continue to pray, especially that recent relief energy and response will translate into longer, continued efforts to minister to our displaced people. The government wants to see these temporary living settlements in place only through the end of July. Even if that happens, it will take extraordinary commitment to be engaged that long, long after the immediate wave, impact and emotions of this whole situation have subsided.

Xenophobic violence in SA - the two-week mark

2008-05-26T14:30:00.005+02:00

On Sunday (25 May, known as Africa Day) South Africa reached the two-week mark since the outbreak of this wave of xenophobic violence within its borders. Following is an update on a few items and issues, while leaving it to the media to provide more details on this story.

One part of the good news is that the level of violence has stopped increasing in the last couple of days. When we wrote our 20 May update, only Gauteng Province (Johannesburg and Pretoria) had experienced xenophobic violence...since that time the violence has spread to a total of seven of the nine provinces in SA. We can continue to pray for a continued reduction in attacks, and ultimately for peace.

To provide some sense of scale, within this country of 45-50 million people, it's estimated that ~50 people have been killed in the violence, hundreds more have been injured, and that anywhere from 30,000 - 50,000 have been displaced from their homes. Somewhere between 10,000 - 20,000 refugees have fled back into their countries (primarily Mozambique and Zimbabwe). It might be helpful to understand that this situation is affecting less than 1% of the population - but just because these are small numbers doesn't make this unimportant...perhaps an understanding of percentages will help the reader grasp the scale of this issue.

Thank you to many that have written and called to ask about us and our security. We are fine and have not felt any immediate sense of threat. One 'squatter camp' community affected by the violence is about ten minutes by car from our home, but we haven't encountered any issues from that community. On Saturday morning, Cherie was conducting her high school ministry in the informal settlement where she's been for five years. As the program was coming to its end there was brewing turmoil in the community...fields on fire outside the community, police cars screaming into the community, and a police helicopter flying overhead. Cherie did not see any particular violent activity, and nothing has been broadcast in the media, so we trust that nothing developed from those ominous signs. Our apologies for not specifically stating that we've been safe in our 20 May update...the absence of an immediate threat to us led us to not even mention that we appear to be safe and secure in the midst of everything.

We have been able to purchase and donate groceries to our church, for distribution to refugees from the violence. Our church is focusing on the refugee population living in tents in the yard of a police station in Johannesburg - these particular people have fled from the community where the xenophobic violence first broke out on Mother's Day. We (Cherie & David) anticipate going to that police yard to minister directly to the people there in these next two weeks (at least), through encouragement, prayer, counseling and practical service.

One other piece of good news: churches in the country have been rallying around this situation. A number of churches are serving as temporary shelters to refugees from the violence. Relief supplies have been gathered (clothing, food, blankets, baby food & diapers, etc.) - to the point that one official has stated that more has been collected than has been needed. Church members have been visiting and ministering to refugees as well. Government agencies are working with/through churches to serve the needs of the victims. God is at work in ways that only He can in this situation.

Prayer points: for victims (recovery from injury; comfort for those that have lost loved ones; direction and wisdom regarding next steps; expediency in dealing with stolen paperwork - ID's & passports; for those returning to their countries); for communities (calming of tensions; children going back to school [one school visiting by our church members only had 20 students show up out of 1500 enrolled]); for the government (effective leadership and involvement; for stressed police officers; for integration between police and military units that have been mobilized; for justice); for perpetrators (conviction of their consciences; for an end to their ways; for realization of the spiritual dimension of their minds, hearts and actions); and for Zandspruit, the particular community where Cherie does her after-school and high school ministries.

2008-05-23T10:30:00.003+02:00

Two days after posting the 20 May update regarding xenophobic violence in South Africa, I (David) came across a couple of passages that connect with different points within that update:

My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them. If they say, "Come along with us; let's lie in wait for someone's blood, let's waylay some harmless soul; let's swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit; we will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder; throw in your lot with us,and we will share a common purse"-- my son, do not go along with them,do not set foot on their paths; for their feet rush into sin, they are swift to shed blood. How useless to spread a net in full view of all the birds! These men lie in wait for their own blood; they waylay only themselves! Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the lives of those who get it. (Proverbs 1:10-19, NIV)

And,

"...is it possible to speak of evil without some kind of supernatural dimension, some sense of a profound violation of absolute or divine law? Surely, though, it is wildly improbable that modern [Northern Hemisphere] Christians - the mainline denominations, at least - might accept a belief in the demonic or in spiritual warfare, even as metaphors. Yet the further Christianity moves from ideas of evil, the less intelligible doctrines such as salvation and redemption become: salvation or redemption from what?" (Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity - Believing the Bible in the Global South)

Something to chew on...

A sad season in Johannesburg

2008-05-20T22:18:00.001+02:00

Well, this update is going to be one of the easiest, and one of the most difficult, ones for us to write. Where do we begin? The subject matter is a no-brainer, but there are so many different angles and aspects to consider, we don’t know where to begin (or how not to write an update that would be far too long to keep your attention). So we’ll begin with the following, and see where that takes us:

We woke up on Monday morning, and here’s what we found on the front page of the newspaper on our driveway: a headline that read “Flames of hate – Residents laugh as foreigner burns in his own blankets”. Beneath the headline was one of the saddest, most riveting photographs we’d ever seen, a picture of a man on his knees on the street, engulfed in flames. Alongside him were two policemen scrambling to assist him. (While not wanting to encourage interest in or fascination with the morbid, to see the image and others from the subject matter of this note, you can visit www.thetimes.co.za.) Apparently the man had been walking down the street, carrying his bedding, when he was assaulted and set alight. The accompanying article said, “The police stayed with him until the paramedics arrived, doing what they could. But residents gathered at the scene were laughing.” (italics added)

As we write, parts of greater Johannesburg are in a state of crisis that has developed in the last nine days. On Mother’s Day (Mother’s Day!), violence broke out in one of our townships, Alexandra, when some South African residents became agitated and began indiscriminately attacking foreigners living in that community. From that beginning, we’ve seen an escalation where xenophobic violence has spread to approximately eight townships and informal settlements in the metropolitan area.

In nine days, 22 people have been killed, homes and businesses have been burned and probably hundreds of families have been displaced and are currently camping in makeshift shelters in churches, community halls and in the yards of police stations. In a country with high levels of crime and violence, we have been experiencing an absolutely shocking wave of violence targeted against foreigners living in our townships.

The ‘reason’ for all this? A combination of factors, but the one most commonly expressed goes like this: some African residents in our townships and informal settlements say they are tired of foreigners (especially illegal immigrants) ‘taking our jobs’ and ‘committing crimes against us’. Goodness knows we have a lot of foreigners living in South Africa…some estimates say that 10% of our population is composed of illegal immigrants. In 2007 South Africa received more applications for asylum than any other country on earth (yes, even more than the US). If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve also seen that neighboring Zimbabwe is in the midst of a presidential election crisis (increasing levels of state-sponsored violence to intimidate voters before a run-off election) and an economic meltdown (160,000% inflation rate). These conditions lead to an estimated 6,000 Zimbabweans crossing the border into South Africa every day. So we do have foreign nationals in our midst, and some of them do have jobs that might otherwise go to South Africans (although mention could be made that many take jobs that South Africans will not take, and many employers prefer hiring foreigners because they can be paid less and, in the opinion of many, they work harder than South Africans). And undoubtedly some foreigners do commit crime. But when exactly did the answer to these challenges become systematic violence in our streets?

Aside from the xenophobia, it’s also clear that rank-and-file criminals are using this window of opportunity to ply their trade, stoking the emotions of people to create instability and to make their jobs easier. And it would seem that a fair amount of the frustration that’s led to violence stems from pent-up dissatisfaction with our government’s lack of “service delivery” – not enough provision of basic services (housing, plumbing, electricity, infrastructure, etc.) to the poor.

A couple of aspects of the absolute sadness of this whole situation: One, back in days of struggle against the apartheid system, many black South Africans fled into exile in neighboring countries and lived alongside citizens of those countries without ever facing this type of adversity. A very strong case could be made for the ‘hospitality’ of our neighboring countries when South Africa was undergoing its darkest days. Now, when the table is turned, recent days and events would indicate that this country doesn’t want to return that favor.

Second, South Africa is a multicultural, multiracial society. This isn’t a situation of a monolithic race or cultural group that feels threatened by the real or perceived invasion of another. South Africa’s nickname is “the Rainbow Nation,” and in this country we are black, white, colored, Indian and more; we have 11 official languages (and many other languages that aren’t listed as ‘official’ but are prevalent nevertheless); and in fact the original inhabitants of this land, the San Bushmen, have largely been displaced or killed off – so we all (black white, brown and otherwise) are all immigrants to this part of Africa!

Third, for now, is the sad, stark reminder that evil still exists in this world, and will until this world is no more. We humans are hopeful people, and we want to believe that evil, barbaric ideas and behavior can be reduced or eliminated over time, as we as the human race ‘develop.’ Some would argue that all it takes is more education, more development or more ‘getting along.’ Many people believe there is no God, perhaps in part because things happen like these recent events in Johannesburg. It’s exactly in times like this we find that belief at best confusing – if there is no God, then it must be equally difficult to believe there is a Satan. And if there is no Satan, then how do we explain people setting each other on fire and laughing about it?

Our choice is to believe that there is a God, and that He cares deeply about situations like this wave of xenophobia, because He cares about and loves every one of us – mistreated foreigners and, unbelievably, perpetrators of violence alike. And for those of us that follow Him, He calls us to pray and get practically involved in horrific situations like this one, to see people changed when they learn of His love for them – no matter what coat of arms is stamped on their passports.

We ask you to pray for the people of, and in, South Africa in these days. And please pray for the two of us as we seek to be involved in our church’s effort to respond to this sad, violent crisis.

When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. Lev 19:33-34

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Rom 5:7-8

Prayer Points

Please continue to pray for leaders (especially male leaders) for Cherie’s high school ministry
Please pray for the small group we’ve begun (referenced in our last update). We’ve learned that two of the men in the group had a falling out immediately before the group was formed, and each one joined the group not knowing the other was also joining…so we’re now attempting efforts to reconcile them and have them fully engaged in the group.
Please also continue to pray for the ‘pastoring of pastors’ initiative, and the clinic + consultation in August. We’re very busy with preparation for that right now.
Please pray for a meeting Cherie has on 3 June with the senior leaders of our church. She and the volunteer team that has developed an AIDS ministry within the church have a meeting with the church staff to share, encourage and challenge senior leaders to take AIDS ministry deeper into the church. Pray for effective communication and wisdom in discussions.

Language Lessons
A proverb from Nigeria: Evil knows where evil sleeps.

Doing life together

2008-04-17T18:38:00.010+02:00

In January, we shared some of our broader prayer requests for 2008, and with this note we want to update you on a couple of those prayer areas.

One request we made was related to a major project that David and TOPIC SA are launching this year, a ‘pastoring of pastors’ initiative. As we’ve previously shared (view our October ‘07 blog entry), pastors and senior ministry leaders typically stand alone in life and ministry, rarely having anyone with whom they can be real. They don’t typically have anyone that provides them with pastoral care, and as a result they suffer. And when a pastoral leader suffers, they don’t suffer alone – their spouse suffers, as do their children, their church and its leaders and the world. And of course God suffers, as no one suffers without God suffering too.

(One research we have come across revealed that, among other things, 90% of pastors admit they have not been trained appropriately for the ministry level that is demanded of them; 75% stated they’d had a significant stress-induced crisis every five years; and 70% stated they didn’t have anyone they considered a personal friend. Ugh.)

Thank you for your prayers as several of us have been meeting, praying and talking, trying to develop an effort that would address this challenging reality. We are making progress, while recognizing that we still have a long way to go.

Our first step has been to officially launch the Pastoring of Pastors Network (POPnet) – a network of pastors gathered in peer shepherding relationships to provide support to fellow pastoral leaders. As we have been sharing about POPnet with pastors, denominational leaders and pastoral training ministries, we have been overwhelmed at the positive reaction we’ve encountered. To a person, leaders are telling us that POPnet is going to scratch a huge itch in our context. We know that there is a big difference between reaction and response – that excited reactions don’t necessarily lead to leaders responding to this (or any other) opportunity – but we are increasingly believing that POPnet will be an important initiative into the future.

As a part of the POPnet launch, we are now in preparation for our kickoff event for POPnet: the POPnet Clinic and Consultation, 12-15 August in Pretoria. This is the event about which we’ve briefly written in the past, where we’ve invited a leader from Brazil to come facilitate a time of practical training and strategy development for our pastoring of pastors effort. The more planning we put in on this, the more excited we are about what this will offer to those that attend. Pastoral leaders are being encouraged/challenged to attend the Clinic + Consultation in pairs or threes – if at all possible we don’t want them to come alone and simply attend another conference. Rather, we are developing an experience where participants will have time with God and with each other, receiving practical coaching and establishing the beginning of peer support relationships. The Clinic + Consultation won’t be the ‘end-all and be-all’, but rather a launch pad from which the network can get its feet and slowly begin walking forward. We are prayerfully hoping to have 200 pastors and leaders, from across the region, with us for this initial POPnet event.

We covet your ongoing prayers for this whole effort. Please continue to pray for our developmental efforts – for our planning and coordination, including with our Brazilian colleague; for our communication with leaders about POPnet; that senior ministry leaders would be a part of the Clinic + Consultation and that positive reaction would translate into response.

And please prayerfully consider if you (or someone you know) can help underwrite the financial cost of this initial event. In order to not have funding be a roadblock for any leader to attend the Clinic, we’ve set a very low (fair) registration fee (~$60 per person, including room, board and conference materials). We are attempting to cover all other Clinic costs without passing them onto participants (communications, transportation issues, venue costs, audio-visual, etc.). In addition, David is attempting to bring his key regional leaders to South Africa for this event, assisting with their transportation costs. We can use your help! If you would like to know more about this opportunity, please let us know…we’d be happy to share more.

A second overarching prayer item for the year had to do with the two of us, personally. Coming into the year, we were recognizing the need to get back into a small group, a group where we could dig deeper into relationships for encouragement, support, accountability and more. We had anticipated looking for a group to join within our church, but as we have continued in this developmental process with the POPnet project, the light bulb went off in our heads – we should form a ‘pastoring of pastors’ small group!

We have initiated a small group comprised of senior ministry leaders and their spouses, in order to begin ‘practicing’ the very things that will be part and parcel of the POPnet initiative. Six couples have begun a process together, each one fitting within the profile of who POPnet is designed to serve. Aside from the two of us, our group is made up of two senior pastors and their spouses, and three senior leaders of ministries that serve the church, and their spouses. Our intention in coming together is to address the very thing that POPnet seeks to address – our need for peer relationships where we can know and be known, where we can encourage and support each other, where we can hold each other accountable, and where we can be strengthened in our lives, our marriages and our ministries. We two are very jazzed about this whole thing!

Thanks for your prayers for us and our effort to be a part of a group. Thank God for landing us in this new opportunity, and please pray that our group would move forward in consistency, deepening relationship and in increasing levels of transparency.

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Eccl 4:9-12

Praise Items

Thank you for your prayers for Fikili (feh KEY lay), one of the patients at St. Francis Care Center. We’d asked for prayer for this dear friend of Winnie and Cherie. We’re sad to report that she passed away, actually as we were sending our last update.

Prayer Points

Please continue to pray for Cherie’s high school ministry. She is still very much in need of additional leaders for the ministry. After beginning in late February, the ministry encountered challenges through March due to the lack of leaders. In April, the students are receiving unique computer training thanks to the short-term service of a computer trainer volunteer…but once the computer training ends, struggles will resume due to the leader shortage. Pray that God would raise up leaders – especially males. And please continue to pray for consistency and enthusiasm amongst those leaders that remain with the effort.

Language Lessons
A proverb from the Zulu of South Africa: A person is a person through other persons.

Please note: We have now (finally!) finished developing a site where you can view pictures from our context – take a look! The site address is www.picasaweb.google.com/davidgbulger. You’ll find folders with pictures of our ministries, people, wildlife, natural beauty and more. Enjoy!

In sickness and in health

2008-03-15T19:03:00.004+02:00

Just since Christmas, we have heard (read) many stories that all fall within a similar theme – so many that we have been moved to reflection.

We have experienced sadness, joy, prayer, reflection and so much more as we have learned about so many friends and colleagues that have faced recent health challenges. When we say health challenges, we’re talking about serious challenges, not simply garden-variety head colds, etc. Consider the following list, compiled from folks we personally know in the US and in Southern Africa, from just the last three months:

A friend that had an immediate emergency appendectomy
A relative that had cataracts removed from both eyes
A colleague that’s been through a triple-bypass operation
A colleague that’s had surgery to repair a vertebrae situation in his neck
A friend that has been through a very delicate surgery to attend to an aneurism on his aorta
A friend that has been diagnosed with a tumor on her heart
A relative that tripped, fell and fractured two vertebrae
A friend’s middle-school aged daughter that’s been diagnosed with leukemia
A relative hospitalized with pneumonia
A friend being tested for breast cancer
The daughter of a colleague that gave birth to a healthy child after a pregnancy heavily complicated by the mother’s diabetes – the birth was a miracle story all by itself

Again, these are just in the last few weeks, amongst people we know. And these cases don’t include anyone Cherie knows at St. Francis Care Center, where she ministers among people that are sick and in many cases heading towards impending death. (In January and February there were a combined 35 deaths at St. Francis. Among them was a man named Tertius, who succumbed to brain cancer after being a St. Francis resident for five years. We were among many who were very sorry to see him go, as was evidenced at his funeral service at the care center.)

As we have learned about the people and situations listed above, we have…

…reflected on the blessing it is when our bodies are healthy and functioning as they are designed to function. We are among countless numbers that are far too lax in thanking God for the precious gift of health. He designed our physical beings to be healthy ones, full of strength, energy and vitality. In those times when our bodies are functioning as they should, we don’t always rejoice in that blessing. We are slow to pause and thank God for giving us the health we enjoy. In these last months we’ve been reminded that we need to pause and thank the Lord for the blessings He gives us with our health. Our health is just one of so many blessings that He gives us every single day…do we recognize that fact and express our gratitude to Him for that? Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows (James 1:17).

…reflected on that which we all know and experience – that our bodies aren’t always healthy. For some of us, health is a rare and slippery part of our lives, where we experience daily struggles in the form of pain, malfunction and more. Even the healthiest among us know the times when a simple head cold or case of the flu can be seemingly debilitating in their own way. We all know that our bodies in this life are subject to illness, injury, disease and decay. That fact presents us with opportunities in this life – here and now (below) – but it also leaves us longing for something better, something healthier. And the good news is that there is something better, something healthier for those that are in Christ Jesus. These bodies that we occupy, bodies that aren’t always healthy, are just a precursor for bodies that won’t know sickness or disease. But there's far more to life for us. We're citizens of high heaven! We're waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthy bodies into glorious bodies like his own. He'll make us beautiful and whole with the same powerful skill by which he is putting everything as it should be, under and around him (Phil 3:20-21, The Message).

…reflected that illness presents us with opportunities that we aren’t expecting, that we wouldn’t ask for, that we aren’t prepared for and, with hindsight, we wouldn’t trade for anything. Time and again, as we’ve heard from some of the people mentioned above, we’ve learned about so much that God was (is) doing in their lives as they’ve gone through their health challenges. We’ve heard testimonies about the comfort and peace that God provides in times of uncertainty (Phil 4:7); about opportunities to be a comfort and encouragement to others (Rom 12:12-13); about the blessing of others loving, caring and serving in times of need (Phil 4:14); about God answering prayers big and small (Matt 18:19-20); and about perseverance and breakthrough when all seemed beyond hope (Phil 4:13). None of us wants to be sick or to face disease – but when inevitably we must, on one level or another, there is blessing along the way, many times blessing that we can’t experience except through illness.

…reflected on our mortality. The reality is that whether a life is one filled with sickness and disease, or one filled with health and vitality, that life will end in the same place…death. These physical bodies will eventually come to closure. And lest one think that death will be the final victor - the ultimate statement regarding the frailty of our physical beings - think again, because One has gone before us through the passage of physical death, only to emerge victorious over death through His resurrection: Jesus Christ. We’ll soon commemorate the event, 2000 years ago, when Jesus was crucified and proved to the world that He indeed was the Son of God, when he was raised from the dead on the third day. In so doing He took on all our sin, all our disobedience and all our frailty, and made a way for us to be rightly related to God the Father. And He paved the way for us to be healthy in every respect – emotionally, spiritually, relationally, physically etc. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases (Psa 103:3).

Our prayer is that, this Easter, no matter how healthy or sick you are, you’ll experience healing from Jesus as you remember and celebrate His death and resurrection.

Praise Items

Thank you for your prayers regarding our electricity situation. We’ve had a much more consistent supply of power in February and early March, although projections are that we are headed back towards outages in the 2nd half of the month. Plus, our winter is coming, our season of highest electric demand, so load shedding is inevitable. After much patient research, we are due to install an inverter in our home/office shortly. Our patience has paid off as we’ll pay less money for our solution. We found a less expensive option than originally planned, and the exchange rate has moved in our favor in the last six weeks.

Thanks also for your prayers regarding David’s February conference…it was an effective time of networking, planning and coordinating with leaders from across the Southern African region.

Prayer Points

Please pray for the high school ministry that Cherie has been developing. An original list of six ministry leaders has quickly dwindled down to three, only three weeks into the weekly gatherings with the students. (The disappearing leadership isn’t all due to bad reasons – one leader’s employer offered to pay for further studies for the leader, and classes directly compete with the ministry’s schedule.) Pray that God would raise up additional leaders to help the ministry go forward – especially male leaders. And pray for consistency and enthusiasm amongst those the leaders that remain with the effort.

Please pray for one of the patients at St. Francis, Fikili (feh KEY lay). She is emblematic of a trend that Cherie is starting to see, one where patients that had been discharged from St. Francis in the past are seeing their health rapidly deteriorate for one reason or another, and are being readmitted. Fikili was a St. Francis patient five years ago and is a dear friend of Winnie’s, and now she is back in hospice, hanging on to her life by a thread…please pray for healing in her body.