A Forgiveness Filled Month...
Here in the Southern Hemisphere we are steadily moving towards autumn and from day to day the weather can’t make up its mind as to whether we will have extended summer days with shorts and flip flops or whether it is a wool sweater and hot chocolate sort of day. What we can count on are the beautiful pink and white cosmos daisies which are filling up all the empty spaces in the fields near us. They are SO beautiful!
Life has been full recently and we are so blessed to have so many unique ministry opportunities.
Dan’s Align Ministry group had some tremendous breakthroughs in the area of forgiveness a couple weeks ago and asked if Dan would teach the material again so they could invite friends and family to also attend. We ended up team teaching that evening and the class size doubled! There were quite a few from church who came, a couple from another addiction support group, and several social workers. We had a brilliant evening together and quite a few have asked for coffee dates to follow up. I met with one of the social workers and she asked if her clients could join Align and if Dan could teach a couple of courses for them in the months to come. So exciting!
You may remember that as Dan was beginning his Align group he strategically met several times with the local AA group and although a merging of ministries was discussed, most of the group decided not to join. The few that did have experienced tremendous breakthroughs and kept in touch with friends from their previous group. This week Dan met with a man who asked if he and his 3 friends could join now. Align is growing!
After we taught the second forgiveness class for Align, we also taught on forgiveness at Caritas College the next day to the students (I promise that forgiveness was the prearranged topic for that week!) and then Dan taught on forgiveness that Friday to another youth group in town he was invited to share at.
Dan, Etienne (the youth pastor) and Shane (the worship pastor) took a group of high school students from Caritas College for an adventure camp weekend. Dan teaches them Life Orientation class and Etienne and Shane do weekly devotions with them. All three guys are outdoor adventurers of note, have wonderful faith in the Lord, and all have great rapport with youth, so it was an absolutely brilliant camp. The students learned some survival skills, but also had some intense discussions about faith, belief systems, how we see others and much more. The students absolutely loved it and kept asking if they could stay longer. Now the other students are asking for a camp for them as well!
Teaching about forgiveness at the Christian School.
This was his forgiveness talk as a guest speaker for another church’s youth ministry. Dan put about 10 bricks in this backpack to illustrate how heavy it is to carry around our sins and offenses.
We recently finished a 35 hour Love After Marriage course that was facilitated at our church. Dan and I led a table with two other couples and it was a great delight to see huge things shifting in the area of forgiveness for one couple and hundreds of tiny little healthy shifts in the other two marriages. It was quite the time commitment, but we love seeing the fruit in our own marriage and in others. After the class finished, around an awesome meal or our outdoor fire pit, we met with four other couples who have also had some massive revelations in forgiveness as well. (We definitely see a theme here!). LAM is different than other courses because it places such a high value on including Holy Spirit in your marriage and allowing Him to minister into deep places of wounding. It was our 3rd time attending a LAM course and we HIGHLY recommend it and continue to see the value of investing in our own marriage and others as well.
We also are blessed with connections at New Horizon College next door. Because our marriage course was taking up space at the church, the youth ministry needed a place to meet Friday evening. We asked NHC if we could borrow their hall and invited their high schoolers in the dormitory to join. A usual youth evening has around 40 youth and last Friday there were 140!! Thankfully, a YWAM ministry team joined to serve and we continue to hear reports of how wonderful it was, how much the students loved it, and how they would love to have a youth ministry for their students at NHC!! They are incredibly open to the Lord and have a deep hunger to learn more and for time in worship. We don’t have a firm plan yet, but we are praying about what to do and we are so thankful for what God did.
We are still meeting with several students each week from NHC for mentoring. It breaks my heart how severe the issues are that they are facing at such a young age. It has been incredible to see growth and healing in their lives too.
JunXion (Youth Group) at New Horizon College campus
We have had couples staying in our guest room 22 of the last 30 days and we have enjoyed speaking into their lives and marriages. One of the couples was facing some rather large challenges and I was a little nervous that it might be a little too much for us or “above our skill level” to help. When I mentioned that to a prayer partner, she said, “Well isn’t it great that the Holy Spirit is going to do all the hard work and you just get to partner with Him in this couple’s healing journey.” That mindset changed everything. It was such a joy to watch from a front row seat as Holy Spirit changed hearts and minds and did a significant healing work!!
We love utilising our big farmhouse for ministry and hospitality. Last month, we had the whole worship team over for an evening in His presence and it was beyond wonderful! We are really enjoying serving on the worship team and have been so so blessed to be a part of so many wonderful times with the Lord. Truly, all the marriages, students and healing ministries we are serving in has the same end goal – hearts that are more free to worship and run straight to our Father God’s heart.
The Carmichael family are still coming, but after receiving lots of council from a visa agent, they decided to come for three months on a tourist visa and hope to get an extension while here. They plan to arrive in early to mid-May which is right around the corner. We are looking forward to meeting them! Please join us in praying for their family to be blessed and encouraged by their time here even though it is so much shorter than the 2+ years they were hoping for. Visas are tricky!
Our visa process is still rather tricky also. We are now at step 2 of 15 and there are about 7 places in our journey where God could do a miracle and we could get permanent residency still or we could receive an extension on our current visa, or we could get another professional visa…. It has been difficult to live in the tension of the unknown in this process, but as you can see – the doors for ministry are WIDE open! The other day we were singing a new worship song called “Names” by Elevation Worship and Maverick City and one of the verses says “Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us, You’re here with me, Wonderful Counselor, the government is resting on your shoulders. You are the final word. You alone decide when every page will turn. So I will trust your timing, I will rest secure. Oh, this is a steady kind of love.” Singing this over and over has brought a shift in my thinking. Home Affairs is resting on His shoulders. God decides. God has the final word. I can trust in His timing because His love is steady.
I knew this. However, somewhere along the way it started feeling like some random agent looking at our application paperwork and appeal letters was making decisions about our family’s future and deciding on our behalf whether we stay in South Africa for a longer season or go back to the states in August. In the natural that is our reality, but the larger, bigger, eternal truth is that God is the one deciding and we can rest secure knowing that whatever the decision is, it is a loving Father God who is ultimately deciding for us.
Please continue to pray with us for favor in our visa process. We really would love to live here and continue to partner with the Holy Spirit to bring hope and change to Africans here in Bethlehem.
Thank you for your love and prayers and support for our ministry and family! We deeply appreciate all the donations to cover our extra visa expenses.
Janell, for all of us
Thanks for supporting us!
