Jeffrey's Bay: Part 3

During this third week of outreach in Jeffrey's Bay, we spent time doing church services and youth groups in the community, cleaning up the CEC (Christian Education Center), and doing more general outreach opportunities. It was a bit odd coming off of our week of Beat the Drum, but an experience nonetheless.

Hiene- One of the little boys who came on the base.

SoYoung and a caped child.

Sami and two beautiful girls from the community.

Ernest found a chameleon and it became our house pet. Well, it was our pet until he left it on the tree one day, came back a few hours later, but had left our humble abode.We had a major storm off the coast of South Africa that caused some pretty bad flooding in Jeffrey's Bay on Monday. Our day of ministry was cancelled, so we had a day with God, just focusing on our relationship with Him until we waited out the storm. It caused severe damage within the township and many families had flooding, loss of furniture, and damage to their homes. The pastor that we worked with this week worked closely with the people in the community and spent the day helping those people. The following few days were spent doing door to door ministry. Sami and I went with a guy from the community, Gavin, and spoke with people for three days. We invited them to a church service in the evening and spent much time praying and talking with them. On the first day of our door to door ministry, Wednesday, we went to the home of a woman named Maria. She asked if we could pray with her. We of course told her yes! She said that she had pain in her right ear and was deaf in the left one. We laid hands on her ears and prayed for healing. She came to the service that evening and where she once was deaf, she now could hear!!! To the glory of God! He saw her faithfulness and our willingness to pray and amazing things happened. Her ears were completely unblocked and it's such an amazing testimony to the community as well of the greatness of God!

Jeffrey's Bay: Part 2

During our second week with YWAM J-Bay, we worked with a project called Beat the Drum, which was all about HIV/AIDS awareness. We worked with people from all kinds of organizations around Jeffrey's Bay to bring awareness to the entire community, children, youth, and adults. Our team worked with youth track by showing the film, Beat the Drum, by Bruce Wilkinson, at Pellsrus Hall to grades 6-8 from Pellsrus Primary, Makycani Primary, and Jeffrey's Bay Primary.
We then went into the schools for the next four days to talk about the film and use it as a starting point to talk about HIV/AIDS. I worked with a team from many different organizations including YWAM, AIM (Adventures in Missions), VMC (Victory Master's Commission), and UCSA.

It was an amazing time of teaching and trying to connect with the kids on a deeper level. Awesome time teaching with two guys, one from South Africa and the other from Sri Lanka. Needless to say, I did most of the teaching in the 6th grade class. We broke up into small groups for days two and three. I had a group of 10 girls, who were all Afrikaans speaking first and English speaking second. We were able to address some difficult issues regarding relationships and sex, but I would have loved to have spent more time with them, relating and investing in their lives. I just felt so burdened by a need to tell them more and get much more involved, but that was pretty impossible considering that I was only to be in J-Bay for two more weeks.

I learned during this week of ministry that although going in for a short time is a great overview of different organizations and getting my feet wet, that's not what I'm made for, nor what stirs my heart. My desire is to walk alongside the students, children, or people for the long haul. I want to invest in their lives and when things come up, be able to mentor them and be supportive. Although outreach was a great time to see the small bits, I wanted so much more out of this week. My desire was to work with the people daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and get to create real relationship with them. This was a great week to show me where my heart is and what I long for in ministry.