Preping for Outreach to Western Kenya...

Hamjambo watu wangu (Greetings my people)...

Esh, it feels good to get back to speaking the East African language of Kiswahili (a trade language that formed from the Arabs mixing with the local Bantu dialects). Though Thandi and I didn't really see it coming, we are seeing God challenging us to take a team to a nation that has become apart of me in many ways.

Thandi and I are growing increasingly excited/expectant about leading one of the four 10-week outreaches our school will be taking. The locations we settled upon after much group prayer and then prayer together as leaders are Thailand, India, Kenya and South Africa/Swaziland. We will be leading the Kenya team after feeling a call to that country because of increased contacts with some brothers in the refugee camps near the Somali border. However, we have since found out that that region is still very insecure at this time, especially for a team of foreigners to go in, largely because the Somali jihadist group known as al-Shabbab (‘the youth’ in Arabic) have been known to cross the border to recruit and have also kidnapped/killed Westerners. I have long known the danger for Westerners in and around southern Somalia, but still believe there will be a time God calls us to go there and pray over the land and people.

For outreach, we are planning to target Kakamega first (just north of Kisimu), and then up past Lodwar and maybe to Loki:


Our team makeup is one American (me), one German, one Swede, one Kenyan and three South Africans, thus 7 in total. While there is still some time before we head off (around Christmastime), we shall have many times to intentionally meet and wait on God to see that His heart purpose is accomplished for us as a team. We are particularly praying into the possibility of travelling up the western edge of Kenya and up to the border of Sudan, maybe even working in another major refugee camp called Kakuma, where many of the Sudanese Lost Boys found refuge in before being placed in the USA and other countries. We will keep you posted on what God speaks to us as a team about this, and the reality is likely that we will have to gauge where we are at in the battle once in Kenya.

This past week has been some amazing teaching on God’s grace that is so much bigger than any effort man can make on his own strength to live a righteous life. What really stuck out for me was the costliness of sin and that sin is the most powerful force in this world either than the incarnate Christ. The reality is the believer is declared righteous (Romans 4:24) upon placing their faith in Christ, and this will always be the case. We will be overwhelmed by sin (destructive habits) unless we place our trust in the Lord who created us for life in Him, for there is no other.
This coming week everyone is excited to be travelling to another YWAM campus in the Eastern Cape province, about an 8-hour drive east along the coast in a small surfing town called Jeffrey’s Bay. The reason for going is to join with several other DTSs and missionaries to celebrate God’s heart for the nations in an annual event called Nations 2 Nations (n2n.org), which seeks to celebrate nations and how God redeems elements of every tribe and people group to worship Him in our diversity. Thandi has been to one of these events before, but I am not sure what to fully expect. I do know we are sleeping in tents, and will have plenty of time for fellowship around volleyball, food and cultural expressions.

September Muizenberg DTS Well Under Way...

A rough glance at the students and classroom:


We are now on our 3rd week of the Discipleship Training School (DTS) here at our home base in South Africa, discussing all about relationships. This is a topic that digs up a lot of things in people's past and makes students aware of areas that still need healing before they can move on in their journey with Christ Jesus. We are 28 students and 3 full-time staff from 11 different nations.

Two of our students, Jo from Switzerland and Mashadi from South Africa, were baptized in the 2nd week of school in the nearby Atlantic Ocean:


Meditated on John 6 this morning, after assigning the students their first memory verse, but God led me in worship to meditate specifically on Hebrews 9:14; this was after a theme of unworthiness was coming through in the class… “how much more will the blood of Christ…purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God”… It is when I am seeking to live rightly on my own strength and I fail that I believe in the lie that I am unworthy to be called God’s child (John 1:12). What makes me worthy is that faith in Christ, who alone holds the authority to make His followers worthy of God’s grace and favor. We are free from dead works therefore…
If we do not believe God has made us new, how can we have any authority or persevering passion to make His character and redemptive work known to others?

Thandi and I have been privileged to lead one of the small groups with two other newly-married couples, and it has been completely new for me. Just speaking for myself as a new husband, this group has aided me in changing my way of thinking about life together with my wife, altering my mindset to look to the interests of my wife before my own. It is no longer just me following hard after Christ’s heart for the tribes, but God, in His overriding wisdom, has seen fit to unite me wholeheartedly to another human being whom He has designed to fulfill me and His calling on my life. And the same, I know, goes for Thandeka. I know that our union will at least double my effectiveness in long-term missions building and discipling believers in South Sudan and beyond.

In other news, we found out that our DRC (Congolese) neighbor we had just met a few days prior (when he came by to check on our place after I had severely burned some popcorn--I used the wrong oil) had his wife in the hospital after a C-section was performed on her to deliver the baby girl. While the baby was healthy, the wife got a bad infection and had been in the hospital for nearly two weeks.
We have since visited them and helped out with supper to see the mother and baby back home and healthy. What an answer to prayer! I hope to get a photo of this family soon enough. They are quite literally the only other tenants in our building we have met that are under 50 years old.

Praying for the Roots of Africa's Conflicts

Victims of the LRA attacks have said that they will often attack on Sunday mornings, as the villagers are gathering to churches like the Roman Catholic one below (I took the photo in South Sudan while staffing there; it was during this time that the LRA had crossed into Sudan for the first time then)


In an article entitled "Fear level rises as LRA rebels return", the public once again becomes aware of one of the longest and most gruesome ongoing conflicts in the world. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8259039.stm]

It is so sad to receive news (which is very often quite late in this part of the world) once again of the notoriously scattered and decentralized Lord's Resistance Army now regathering its forces in the Central African Republic, terrorizing rural villages all the way from its original headquarters in north Uganda.

Let us keep in prayer to halt this spiritual carnage of the enemy that has manifested itself in the physical for many generations now. I believe a major part in getting to the roots of Africa's conflicts has to do with addressing the false worldview and culture of fear/submission the majority of peoples grow up in. It is well known that Joseph Kony and his field commanders in the LRA and other 'rebels without a cause' receive power to allude national armies and continue in their destructive agenda from demons and forces of darkness. There is a covenant they knowingly make with the demonic world which enables the devil to use them to "steal, kill and destroy" in exchange for access to supernatural powers. People, including Christians, still live in fear of these demonic powers to this day, despite being preached to about Jesus overcoming the power of the evil one. These terrible conflicts continue to rage on in large part because Christians in rural Africa largely are not aware of their authority in Christ Jesus. How else can you explain church services being repeatedly broken up and many believers being killed without knowing why? As believers, all over the world, we must know we are daily in an intense spiritual battle, and yet the Spirit is always waiting, willing to show His power as the Lord of Hosts leading on His angelic infantry...
Let us intercede on behalf of these defenseless ones who have only received a partial Gospel, boldly approaching the throne of grace, uniting our prayers with the Great Intercessor, Jesus Himself. For there is no power greater on the face of this earth than the living out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (1 John 4:4). Let us pray for light of this Truth to be shed in the darkness of these regions, for wherever true light shines, the darkness must flee...Let us pray for the Lord's warriors to rise up in their authority in Christ Jesus, the Victorious One, to cut at the root the schemes of the evil one.

More reflections on this later...

Praying for Possible Outreach to Penetrate the Unreached in the Horn of Africa...

Two days ago I came across this online article that gives a great history of the ongoing civil conflict in what the outside world knows as Somalia since its disintegration in 1991. It is entitled "Somalia: Who is Fighting Whom"
http://allafrica.com/stories/200909020835.html
As you can see from the basic map above, in recent years Somalia, though just as ethnically united as ever, has split up along ideological lines into three fairly distinct regions. Without a doubt, the remaining Somalia of the south is still the most chaotic and violent, with a continued outflow of refugees over the border into neighboring Kenya. It is in this region of NE Kenya that the UNHCR has seen it necessary to set up a network of camps to meet the basic needs of the increasing refugees. It is also this region that Thandeka and I are praying about taking a portion of the next DTS to in December of this year. While 90% of the refugees are Somali nationals, there are also a number of Ethiopians and Sudanese mixed in who I know meet together for fellowship and Bible study on a regular basis.

This is an exciting possibility for us as a new couple, especially since it is on the doorstep of our long-term vision of discipling southern Sudanese to reach the unreached specifically in the Horn of Africa region. We are expecting 30 students, including 2 married couples and a Kenyan brother, which will be one of the largest YWAM Muizenberg has had in many years! We are full of expectation for what God has in store for us as a Body and through individual revelation of WHo He is.

It is such a blessing to have family where you are at...

As many have been asking, the next DTS at our base (we run four a year back-to-back) that Thandi and I will be staffing commences on 27th September, and will follow the theme of Identity and Freedom in CHrist alone based off of Galatians 5. We have really enjoyed the time away from base to get settled in, but will now start full-time with staff training next Monday.

THe photos above are of Merlyn and Mario Milhomem, a Brazilian couple who were the first ones we officially hosted in our new flat! The four of us sitting down on the sofa is in our nice and spacious living room. [We even had all the September schools staff over for a dinner because we seem to have the most space, which Thandi loves.] They are also newlyweds and co-lead a base in Goiania, central Brazil. [You can see their own blog at http://merlynandmariomilhomem.blogspot.com/ with many more pictures of Africa than ours, even though they have just been here a month:] I knew Mario from when I first came to Muizenberg in 2006, whereby we both were the first students in the newly-pioneered School of Cross-Cultural Strategic Missions (SCCSM). While I am not still directly involved in that school, it will be running again at the same time as the Discipleship School Thandi and I will be staffing, and I am very grateful for the foundational principles and training I received to be better equipped to pioneer ministries in a frontiers context, reaching out to undiscipled and even unengaged people groups. But now I am getting off the point of this specific blog. Forgive me.

As the title hints at, we were so blessed by our local YWAM family and local friends this past Saturday night when one of them organized a Housewarming Party for Thandi and I. We were thrilled to have so many come that it was literally a challenge to move from one person to the next, fellowshipping together. We were blessed not only with their presence and prayers, but many also came with desserts and house items we were still very much in need of. We thank the Lord for HIs faithfulness in our lives through those He has placed around us, both near and far off.



The Zimbabwean brother touching the custom-fit coffee table/dresser he fashioned to give our new apartment some homemade African style. He sells his items at the local Sunday flea market alongside many other Africans. The majority of shopkeepers here, however, are Cape Coloureds with a Muslim background which we are seeking to reach through building relationships, doing face painting, etc. Every Sunday a group of us go from the base for the whole day. Amazingly, almost every Sunday is indeed sunny here![You can see our car, Esmeralda, in the background, which, at that time, was suffering with a complete pancha (flat tire) from something I drove over.]

The month of Ramadan is upon us--Praying for Muslims

Let's be in prayer for our Muslim brothers and sisters to KNOW the Author of man's salvation in this month:

Dates for Ramadan 2009 (or 1430) are 22 August - 20 September.
The first evening of Ramadan
In many places around the world Muslims will be looking to the heavens this evening. They will be interested in knowing if they will be able to see the crescent moon. If it is visible this will be the signal for the beginning of the month of Ramadan. (In most countries religious authorities will make a proclamation concerning the beginning of Ramadan). No fasting will take place till tomorrow morning. Muslims will rise early to eat their breakfast before the day begins. Afterwards they will not have anything else to eat or drink till nightfall. This will be their daily experience during the next 30 days.

Fasting - Ramazan
Fasting is one of the Five Pillars of the religion of Islam and one of the highest forms of Islamic worship. Abstinence from earthly pleasures and curbing evil intentions and desires is regarded as an act of obedience and submission to God as well as an atonement for sins, errors, and mistakes. Called Ramadan (or Ramazan), Muslims fast during this holy month from the moment when it first starts to get light until sunset. Muslims fast as an act of faith and worship towards Allah, seeking to suppress their desires and increase their spiritual piety. Fasting together as a worldwide community - Ummah - affirms the brotherhood and equality of man before Allah.


The Meaning of Ramadan [pretty interesting origins to pray into]
The name Ramadan is derived from the Arabic word ramida or ar-ramad, denoting intense scorching heat and dryness, especially the ground. From the same word there is ramdaa, meaning ’sunbaked sand’ and the famous proverb Kal Mustajeer minar ramadaa binnar – ‘to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.’ Some say it is so called because Ramadan scorches out the sins with good deeds, as the sun burns the ground.

Getting Settled in.....

Well, due to popular demand, here are a few photos from the big day in Johannesburg. I will also get some of our amazing honeymoon in Mauritius, though neither of us are feeling well right now and so the last thing we want to do is get on the computer.

Although this past month was very stressful and tense at times, the Lord enabled Thandi and I to keep perspective up to the wedding day and as we now begin our new life together. The wedding day was indeed beautiful, noticeably warmer than the previous winter days. We both want to thank our churches, mine back home in Bellingham, WA and hers in Lenasia (with her pastor masterfully orchestrating the ceremony), for their ongoing prayers through this union of two very different families and cultures. It was a privilege to host my family (parents+sister+niece) as well as my best man, who all were very flexible throughout. It was great to have them first in Cape Town to see where we have been working out of and enjoy some of the natural beauty.