South Africa: Hitting the Ground

Sent July 22, 2007

Dear Friends,

Greetings in Christ from Cape Town!

Unfortunately my time to write to you is brief, but I it's important that I share some of this past week with you. After arriving in Cape Town on Wednesday morning, I have spent each day fully immersed in in working for God's Kingdom with the Xhosa people in Khayelitsha with my friends from Stanford, and our team leader Simon Schmid from Germany. To make this message compact, I'll resort to writing in lists.

These are the things that we have done:

-Morning devotions: each morning we either head into African Theological College (ATC) or meet with all the residents of the mission house we currently live in, and one person will share their reflections on some passage of scripture.

-Various forms of physical labor: We worked to maintain church and preschool buildings in Khayelitsha. We reinforced a foundation and built a fence.

-Evangelism: Twice, we have divided into various groups, with other missionaries working with our team, to go into the areas around a church that a Korean missionary started in Khayelitsha. The people are very open to speaking with us, and we talk about who we are, why we are here, and often read from the Bible and pray for them.

-Going into numerous preschools: We spend time with kids, sing with them, and do crafts project that teach Bible stories.

-Worship time: we attended an inaugural youth worship yesterday, sang to the Lord with various people that came to a soup kitchen for a long time.

-Sharing our stories with a multi-racial Baptist church outside Cape Town that has connections to African Leadership.

-Other opportunities to share personal testimonies or scripture reflections.

-Sleep: After a long day of work, it is easy to fall asleep and wake up feeling tremendously privileged to be able to be alive for another day serving others.

Here are a few things I have learned:

-Saying that we are all one in Christ isn't just idle talk. "Evangelism" can be a scary word in America, but it is not scary when we remember that evangelism is good news, the gospel - in fact, "good news" is what the root word behind "evangelism" means. The main part of the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord, the part that we speak about and enact most as we share with people so far is that we are one in Christ. As Paul writes, "neither Jew, nor Greek," etc. One man that we visited was almost speechless with happiness when we sang to praise the Lord in his language when we visited his house. As he said, white people never even come near where he lives. I hope that I can open my heart to joy as much joy from the Lord when I hear the Xhosa people singing songs in my language that we brought from our Christian fellowship at Stanford - because as brothers and sisters in Christ, we stand equally in need of encouragement, equally able to give to each other. This is because we are all part of the one Kingdom.

-The Xhosa people who have become involved with African Leadership are the center of all the ministry here. Missionaries are like a spare tire: what those who lead the mission here desire is the serve the people here and equip them to serve the Lord - that they would become leaders. As short term missionaries, we mainly work as extra hands in the ministries that these leaders run.

-I am blessed by this time here. I have learned a great deal from the people that I meet in Khayelitsha: I can see the joy that they experience in prasing the Lord, and reaching and working with them has added new growth to my generally rather intellectual faith.

-As Paul says in Romans 5:20, where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. The widespread hopelessness in Khayelitsha comes from the weight of sin, but the new light of hope that I have seen from them is a great encouragement to me.

Next: Tomorrow we will travel to the rural Transkei area where the Xhosa people are originally from. We will be there for some time. I look forward to sharing with you about this soon.

Here are some things that you can pray for if you wish:

• What we do here is a very small thing, but let us all pray that it will be like a mustard seed (Matthew Ch 13), especially with the children in the preschools.
• Pray for the Xhosa people that work with us, like those who translate when we do evangelism or those who will accompany us to Transkei. I know, as I said above, that their role is very important, but I have not yet developed a sense of that pressures that accompany this importance.
• Pray for our team leaders Simon and David Scudder as we head into the Transkei area.
• Thank God for giving me the blessings of "full-time" work for one master - my prayers of the last letter that I would be able to serve one master have been answered.

Blessings,

Carl