13 February 2021
Our Africa anniversary!
We landed in South Africa on February 6th, 2006 and we joined an amazing team of veteran missionary families with an organization called One Challenge. They did a wonderful job of introducing us to life and ministry in Africa. It took us about two months to find a house to rent and each family on the team graciously hosted us for a week or two in their guest rooms. When we did find a home, we were robbed the first week and they helped us with filing police reports and two families each brought a dog over. One dog ran around the outside of the house and patrolled the yard, the other slept outside our bedroom door (and passed gas all night!) for a few days till we felt more settled again. There were many challenges that first year, but more than anything else I remember we were loved well.
We took Zulu language lessons and each month we had an adventure where we travelled to Swaziland, or Zimbabwe, Mozambique, or different provinces in South Africa. We visited churches where we couldn’t understand the language, and we began to make connections and develop friendships while shadowing the OC families. We found a church to attend for a season in Soweto and Dan and I and our dear friends the Witherows were the only ones with white skin in a sea of beautiful brown. Their acapella worship songs were wonderful (one Sunday I counted 7 different languages that they sang in) and we were thankful that the preaching was in English. They taught us so much. All night prayer vigils were as normal as breathing, a decent worship set ends after 2+ hours, praying for the sick is a crucial part of every service, fasting is normal and essential (21 day or month long fasts happened several times a year), and Easter is celebrated by a weekend campout where hundreds or sometimes thousands of people gathered together.
I also met a lovely lady named Buhle who would become one of my closest friends in this season. I began shadowing her, her husband Pastor Themba, and her mother Gogo Thelma as they pastored a church in Soweto. I became a faithful attender of their care group during the week on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for people who were “living positively” while HIV+ and was writing Bible studies for the group and had them translated into Zulu by Buhle’s beautiful daughter Lunga who was 15 years old. We threw Christmas parties for HIV/AIDS groups, and signed up for any trip so that we could explore more of this beautiful area.
We took Zulu language lessons and each month we had an adventure where we travelled to Swaziland, or Zimbabwe, Mozambique, or different provinces in South Africa. We visited churches where we couldn’t understand the language, and we began to make connections and develop friendships while shadowing the OC families. We found a church to attend for a season in Soweto and Dan and I and our dear friends the Witherows were the only ones with white skin in a sea of beautiful brown. Their acapella worship songs were wonderful (one Sunday I counted 7 different languages that they sang in) and we were thankful that the preaching was in English. They taught us so much. All night prayer vigils were as normal as breathing, a decent worship set ends after 2+ hours, praying for the sick is a crucial part of every service, fasting is normal and essential (21 day or month long fasts happened several times a year), and Easter is celebrated by a weekend campout where hundreds or sometimes thousands of people gathered together.
I also met a lovely lady named Buhle who would become one of my closest friends in this season. I began shadowing her, her husband Pastor Themba, and her mother Gogo Thelma as they pastored a church in Soweto. I became a faithful attender of their care group during the week on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for people who were “living positively” while HIV+ and was writing Bible studies for the group and had them translated into Zulu by Buhle’s beautiful daughter Lunga who was 15 years old. We threw Christmas parties for HIV/AIDS groups, and signed up for any trip so that we could explore more of this beautiful area.
Dan’s brother Jon and his lovely finance Elena trusted us to do their wedding planning and had a gorgeous destination wedding in Johannesburg in February of 2007. It was a brilliant plan to get Dan’s family to visit and we had a wonderful time celebrating with them and then traveling together for the next several weeks in Southern Africa.
Shortly after, my two youngest sisters phoned to tell me they were expecting and I realized I had many of the same symptoms. Turns out, all three of us had our first-born children within 11 weeks of each other later that year. While I was in my first trimester, we led a short term team of 13 people for 5 weeks and did service projects and ministry together around Johannesburg and in Swaziland. I remember doing a Vacation Bible School for an impoverished area with Buhle and it SNOWED one day! Understandably, none of the kids showed up that day, so we did house to house visitations. Everyone was so cold and a few of the people who had never seen snow before asked if it would hurt them.
During that time we also discovered Breakthru Life Church and began attending there. This church has been a tremendous blessing to us ever since. They began planning a baby shower for me after we had attended two weeks, I joined a fantastic mom’s group after Miesha was born and I am still friends with most of those gals today. When we joined Breakthru the church had around 60 attending. Now (pre-covid) in our Sunday School ministry we have around 100 children, so the church has grown tremendously.
Once Miesha arrived, we got her paperwork and passport and then flew to the states for a quick four week visit to introduce her to everyone.
We still maintained an intense ministry schedule after Miesha was born and she was a happy little traveler. We were told over and over how much they appreciated that we weren’t scared to bring our child into the bush or to take her on trips. It endeared us to those we were visiting and ministering with and opened many more doors for us. Changing diapers while we are driving, entertaining a 9 month old with a balloon for a 20 hour drive, her learning how to crawl in Zambia, having a malaria scare or two…all part of the year! We continued to partner with Buhle’s AIDS ministry, to help with mentoring the teen gals in her area, and to serve as leaders and worship team members at church, and as the short term team coordinators for OC.
In August, we took Miesha on the 30 hour road trip up to a conference we were invited to teach at in Lusaka, Zambia. The giant pothole caused the axle on our trailer to break and we were stranded on the side of the road in Botswana. We unhooked the trailer and I went 2km further to a campground to rent a chalet before going back for Dan. He had unpacked many of the books from the broken trailer so that he could jump in and close the lid as he heard lions roaring nearby! As we were driving the final 3 minutes to the chalet we saw there were elephant footprints covering the tire tracks I had made 10 minutes earlier! What an adventure!! Our friends offered to fix our trailer at their shop in Livingstone and that was our first introduction to Overland Missions. Dan also went on several trips with the OC guys up to Zimbabwe during this season.
My parents also visited us for a month and we had a fabulous time playing tour guide, celebrating my Dad’s 70th birthday and introducing them to friends and places we love in South Africa and Swaziland.
We also spent some quality time in the hospital that year – Dan with multiple kidney stones, and I needed my appendix removed.
Shortly after Miesha’s first birthday, we discovered we were pregnant again. We coordinated our furlough so that Titus could be born in the states and it was wonderful to have family surrounding us and celebrating with us!
Dan continued to teach at conferences, high schools, churches, and in the bush. Like always, our family invested a lot into our local church as we led a life group, served on worship team and Dan helped with sound. We travelled a bit, and we prayed a lot about whether or not to make a big transition in ministry. After a year of seeking council and advice, we decided to transition our life up to Zambia. We had been with OCI for 3 years pre-field and 5.5 years in South Africa, but we felt like we wanted to be more hands on ministry and Overland Missions had an open position in their Missions Training course which seemed like an great fit for us.
We packed a container again and moved our life up to a bush mission compound in July of 2011. Miesha was 3 years old and Titus turned 2 years old a month later. Honestly, it felt like a bigger culture shock to transition from the huge African city of Johannesburg to living in a safari tent in the bush in Zambia than it did when we transitioned from USA to Africa. You had to build a fire under the water tank to get hot water for your shower, there were bigger spiders and scorpions, cooking for anywhere between 30-120 people for meals in the cafeteria, hotter temperatures (it got up to 131F/51C that year October!) and the rainy season was epic with 4×4 driving in the mud. We also saw God do amazing things as we partnered with Him. We showed the Jesus Film in the local languages and had many people receive salvation, we prayed for the sick and many were healed, we loved others and made deep friendships with Zambians. We made it through the training and then went back to the states to rest a bit and raise money to build a house in the bush.
The next two years of building our home in the bush and co-leading the 6 months of intensive training each year for future missionaries was the best of times and the hardest of times. We loved the students and the teaching/training/ministry trips to the bush and being a part of what God was doing. Building the house with limited resources was challenging, living in such close quarters with such young children was hard (our cabin was 9ft wide and 12 ft long), living/eating every meal with/working/playing/ministry/church together/homeschooling with the same group of people had its challenging moments too. To be honest, in this season we were burning out. We had too much on our plates, a lot of stress, interpersonal conflict with other missionaries on the base, and tension with the leadership. Choices were made that we deeply regret and in October of 2013 – Dan confessed to the leadership on the base and from that day on everything shifted for us. Darkness was brought into the light and the sin he was wrestling with was finally in the open so we could get help and healing.
Two weeks later, we were back in the USA. Dan met with the men’s group leader at one of our supporting churches, and began attending the Conquer Series. Following, we both joined Pure Desire support groups, and started the painful season of communicating with our supporting churches what had happened and why we were back in the states on a sabbatical for support and counseling. A few months later, Dan returned to the base in Zambia to pack up our belongings from our little house and to officially put our big house building project on hold since we didn’t know if or when we would return.
It was one of the lowest times in our lives, but as Dan was contemplating suicide, the Lord met him in the most beautiful, tangible, and personal way. He told him, “Since it looks like you are willing to throw it all away, why don’t you lay it at my feet instead.” Then He asked Dan, “Do you know who you are?” and Dan said that he gave good Bible college student answers to the Lord like “child of God” and the Lord said, “OK, good. But do you know WHOSE you are?” Then He asked Dan to pick up from the pile his family and calling to Africa. At that point we would’ve rather disappeared and healed in a place where no one knew us, but the Lord made it clear from moment that we were to return to Africa at some point.
A few days later Dan was talking around the braai (BBQ/grill) in South Africa with our pastor and two missionary friends and was processing and asking for their input and advice. Each one invited Dan to join their ministry when we returned to Africa, but eventually they all agreed that it would be ideal if Dan were to start his own ministry so that he could partner with all of them in some capacity. Our pastor told us, “Dan, take the time you need to heal and then come back. Africa needs the answers you are discovering on this journey.” Within a few months, more invitations were coming in to partner in multiple ministries in Zambia and South Africa, even one from Tanzania, but it was usually followed up with them saying “but you should start your own ministry and partner with us…”
The next year and a half was filled with healing for our minds, hearts, and marriage while it felt the whole world was watching. We did intense counseling and healing retreats, we created a board, did all the paperwork to start a non-profit, did support raising from scratch and continued to share our story of hurt, healing, and future hope with everyone who would listen. During this season, we experienced intense judgement and condemnation and also the most amazing grace and support we have ever felt…sometimes at the same time from various groups!
Exactly two years to the day later, we landed back on South African soil under our own non-profit called Magezi Ministries. We knew the Lord wanted to use our story of healing and the answers Dan had found to finally overcome his pornography addiction. We had some good resources and ideas to help. Dan still tells his story of healing with anyone who will listen (one time he chatted for 45 minutes with the police officer who stopped him for speeding – grin!) and the Lord has opened up opportunities to share the Conquer Series in most of the South African provinces, he has talked about a lifestyle of purity in multiple nations, in youth groups, at men’s camps, at high schools, in churches, to online groups, to in person groups, to missionaries, missions interns, and more.
As the ministry was growing, we realized that there was a huge need for hurting wives to receive ministry and I developed a course called Moving Forward that was shared in several places. I’ve also taught a course for ladies on healing from sexual hurt – it was a 20 week course with absolutely brilliant breakthroughs! We also started meeting with couples together and over the past 5 years we have journeyed with around 60 couples…some only want to meet a few times, some we’ve walked with for several years now. We both have done a variety of counseling courses and conferences to acquire more skills to help. Dan is now certified as a pastoral counselor which has made lockdown ministry easier this past year as he is an “essential services provider”.
We plan to continue to teach online courses this year and hope to also hold some “in person” classes as well…covid-permitting. We realized that as of last week, we have now listened, counseled, or prayed with people in North America, Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and a few have transitioned to New Zealand and Australia after meeting with us. WOW! One of the blessings from lockdown is becoming more skilled in connecting online to help others.
On our big ministry anniversary, I started writing a quick note to update you all, but it took me a few extra days and has turned into a longer summary of the past 15 years. Each picture represents precious friends and highlight moments in ministry. For me, it has been a beautiful reminder of God’s kindness to us. He took a young couple with passion and willingness to serve and ordered our steps, healed us, and placed us where our story of hope has had ripple effects to places we could’ve never dreamed of. He is so good and deserves all the glory in our story.
Thank you to all of you who read this long letter! Thank you to so many of you who have faithfully prayed for us for years. Thank you for not giving up on us. Thank you to those who have given your finances to give us the opportunity for us to live and minister here in Africa. Thank you for your friendship and care over the years.
We’ve loved being a part of what God is doing here for the past 15 years and hope to continue to be here for many more.
With joy and gratitude,
Dan and Janell Hartley
Thanks for supporting us!
