MINISTRY AT ADVENTURE CAMP
We want to share a glimpse into our new ministry season with you. Of course, every week looks a little different, but we are starting to develop some healthy rhythms and are enjoying many wide open doors and invitations.
We had our first camp of the year recently! It was different than what we were planning for, but it turned out to still be pretty amazing. We were hoping for around 200 students to attend and we had 19 sign up, then the numbers kept dropping and dropping. Camp was held during the autumn school break, but we didn’t account for the fact that all the families felt free to go on vacation again since COVID restrictions are mostly lifted. In addition, most of the schools hosted mandatory rugby, cricket, and field hockey camps. These things pulled most of the students to other events.We decided to hold the camp anyway and it evolved more into a Family Camp. We ended up all sleeping in the farmhouse (which was great because it rained and rained!) and between rain bursts, we did hiking, caving, mud fights, volleyball, canoeing, and played lots and lots of games. It was amazing for the students to get off their tech for a couple days, enjoy nature, and reconnect with one another and the Lord. We had a couple of sessions where we discussed “what we are entertained by we are trained by” and it was amazing to have the students share with each other how they evaluate social media, songs, books, movies and information they are getting from school. We also ate lots of great food. One night on the braai (BBQ) there were 7 different kinds of meat. Eland sausage anyone?!?! Everyone gave the camp experience rave reviews!
Etienne, the youth pastor at our church, has been hosting weekly evening classes with the 8th graders in the boarding school dormitories at one of the public schools and going through the Alpha Course which covers basic Christianity foundations. He and his leaders were given permission to take all the students for an overnight to have some concentrated time together for worship and teaching. They were hoping for around 40 to come, but the school let the children out for holiday break early so most of the kids living in the dorms had to take the bus home the day before the event. Only 7 ended up attending, but ALL SEVEN GOT SAVED and asked to be discipled further. AMAZING!! Many more asked for the overnight to be rescheduled so they could still do it.
Dan and I often get a call to come to New Horizon (the school next door) to chat with a hurting student or teacher. I sat with 3 gals the week before camp. After we had processed through several challenges she was facing, I asked one of them, “Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?” and she replied, “Can we talk about Jesus? I just have so many questions!” We had a great conversation further about Jesus, the work of the cross, and her need to eventually decide what she wants to do with faith.
We see a theme of “going deeper with the few” emerging and are choosing to celebrate salvation and growth in the smaller groups.
There is still quite a lot happening with the various schools with helping hurting students and we are continuing to pray through more and more wide open doors to help and minister.
We were offered free accommodation at our friend’s beach home, so last week our family took a vacation to recharge and do a bit of exploring in a new area. Mossel Bay apparently has the best weather in the world after Hawaii. We were able to rest, relax, recharge, explore, and have some adventures as a family.
On our drive there, we were in the middle of the Karoo (it is a dry section of the country with lots of sheep and ostrich farms) and we saw a weird dark cloud on the horizon. It turned out to be about a billion flying locust and they were circling and letting the wind carry them. We stopped the car to get out and check it out up close – it was amazing how many there were. Cassie, our dog, thought chasing them was the best part of the drive. I posted a video on Facebook of driving through them. A friend said it was like “locust paintball”.
We are thankful for all the open doors in this season and look forward to sharing more stories in the letters to come.
Thank you for your love, support, and prayers for our family. You are all such a blessing.
With joy,
Janell, Dan, and the kidsRather than give you a list of all the things we are doing now, let me just say we have been blessed with incredible favor – it truly is the Lord! Many people have been praying for breakthroughs for years into these various areas of the community and we have been uniquely positioned by the Lord to connect to certain people which has resulted in invitations to minister at several of the local schools, at church, helping with a variety of things at the local orphanage, with building projects, speaking at conferences, networking with local pastors, and more. These are all at the very beginning stages but we are filled with joy and expectancy for what is to come. It is going to be a great year and we are so thankful for this new location and season.
Many of our current opportunities are to minister or help develop things for the youth.
We are renting a home on the New Horizon College campus (grades 1-12) and our landlady and her parents have been so helpful in getting us connected to campus life next door and have given us a wide open invitation to minister to the 800+ students. We met the leadership and the teachers there and already Dan has shared a devotional in assembly to the high schoolers and counseled four people. We hope to begin a ministry to the kids living in the dormitories in the weeks to come. Miesha and I were invited to a dance on campus and dressed up with shweshwe headdresses and had a blast dancing with 150 other ladies for the evening. It was a bit out of our comfort zone, but we definitely enjoyed it.
Dan was invited to speak for 7 hours at a YWAM class recently on how to minister in the area of addictions – what an amazing connection! Also this past Thursday, he drove a couple hours to the town of Welcom and will spoke to 120 students on addictions.
We also have some invitations to minister at Caritas College which is the school that was founded by our church. We also met their leadership and know several people on staff from church connections. I teach a weekly devotional to the grade 5 learners and Dan shared in their chapel recently.
We are helping a bit with planning for the next youth camp and again, because of our landlady and her parents, there is now an option for utilizing their beautiful farm for the outdoor adventure parts of camp. We had a lot of fun scouting that out!
We are hoping for approximately 200 youth to come this time, which is a big jump from the 40 students who came to the last 3 camps! The cost is $70 per student for 4 nights of camp and we have been so blessed by many of you who gave scholarships in the past. Many students have been saved and encouraged to reach their friends for the Lord through these camps and we are hoping for a big crowd to minister to this time.
We would love to be able to offer scholarships again to some of the students whose families are struggling financially. This time the students are also “working” for part of the scholarship by helping with some landscaping projects around the church grounds. We love the idea of them serving and “earning” their way to camp. If you would like to sponsor some youth to go to camp, it would be a massive blessing. Please donate through the link below and put “camp scholarship” on the memo line. Any amount is welcome.
Dan and I feel that we have fallen into this beautiful pocket of grace and we are so thankful to be in this community for such a time as this. Thank you for your prayers for us and for your support of our ministry and the extra gifts to help students go to camp.
Titus is doing awesome and Miesha is slowly getting acclimated. Friendships are slightly harder for middle school girls, but she is connecting with some of the girls in youth group and is going horse riding with a couple gals this afternoon. Please keep praying for her in this transition.
With joy,
Dan and Janell
Thanks for supporting us!
