Recent Happenings...

Each Friday at Pangani we have our Worship/Prayer night…I guess you could call it our community church service. Each week people take the responsibility of cooking the meal, watching/teaching the kids, or planning the night for the adults. Sometimes we have guests joining us (people from our local community or those we are involved with in ministry) or it’s just us. It does take some work to pull it off each week and we are usually very tired by Friday, but it’s always worth it. A couple of weeks ago I was in charge of planning the night. We had been focusing a lot on justice in the last weeks so I decided to focus on human trafficking. We watched the Not for Sale documentary, prayed, made orange wristbands to wear all week to remember to pray, and checked out the website Trade As One (which sells products made by former slaves). It was a great night (as good as focusing on something like that can be) and people were glad to be made more fully aware of this issue plaguing our world.

We also attended a conference recently put on by the Institute for Urban Ministries. The focus was on bringing HOPE back to the cities. We heard stories of people from all over Africa and a couple from the US who are working to bring hope into their cities. I was surprised at how international the conference was: people from Burundi, Kenya, the DRC, Mozambique, Holland, the US, Canada, Germany, and all over the South Africa. It was great! It really encouraged and inspired me to hear the stories of hope and that there are people all over the world fighting the same fight.

Good news…I did end up meeting with another lady who works against human trafficking here!! She is actually a sister (Sister Melanie) who used to work here for 23 years teaching in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province. (She is originally from Ireland). She is amazing! She has been working to fight trafficking for the past 6 months and is doing a great job so far! I am mainly helping her with office work that she is behind on and might help her with some speaking engagements in the near future! Her main goal is prevention versus finding a cure…though that is an important and needed thing here as well. The fight against human trafficking itself has a ways to go in SA, but I am glad to see people fighting. The other cool part is that I have been able to get Sister Melanie and Wilna (the first lady I met with) together for a meeting…which will likely take place August 5^th. I am excited that I was able to play the role of getting them together and that God would use me in that way. Also, on August 8^th there is a Women’s Day walk/march downtown to stand up for women’s rights and to stand against human trafficking and legalizing prostitution. Sister Melanie will be giving a speech at the end of the march, which will be really great! I am looking forward to being in my first march and standing up for what I am working for!

The next couple of weeks will be a bit crazy here. We have a group of 8 visitors here on a Road Trip, which is a 2 week journey people take to get to know NieuCommunities and to see if doing the 10 month apprenticeship is for them. They are mostly from the United States but we do have one girl who lives in Pretoria (though she is originally from Zimbabwe) joining us. We have been working hard to get things ready and we are excited to have the road trippers with us. At the end of the 2 weeks I will be volunteering at the Passion conference. I am excited about this because I have volunteered at the last two 4-day events they had (2006 in Nashville and 2007 in Atlanta) and have had great experiences. In 2008 Louie Giglio (the founder of Passion, an organization aimed at igniting the college generation for Christ) decided to take Passion international! When I originally heard that I thought it would be great to be able to volunteer at one but thought it very unlikely. So, I was excited to see that one would be taking place in Johannesburg when I was going to be here! On August 9^th, 3 other friends and I will be headed to Jo’burg to experience Passion International!

Finally, last week during our weekly check-in time, our group participated in a lectio divina. This is something we do quite frequently but it always brings up something new each time. The idea behind a lectio is to read a passage of scripture slowly and meditatively in order to really think on it. Someone reads it through about 3 times and you focus on a word or phrase that sticks out to you. It’s a great way of reading scripture, both individually and corporately. It’s nice to “take it slow” and just take in the words being spoken. Last week I had a cool experience with it. God rarely, if ever, speaks to me with images and this time He did! As our friend here was reading the last 2 verses of Psalm 139 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting, the following came into my mind. (“in the way everlasting” stuck out the most.) I got an image of two paths. One was dark and windy and had trees with thorns all over it stretching out across the path. Whichever way you tried to walk you would be stabbed with a thorn. There was no way to escape it. Although it looked horrible, it was still in someway tempting, as the dark path can be sometimes. The other path was sunny and had green pastures on either side stretching for miles. However, there were hills and valleys throughout that would be tough to get through. The road was good, but difficult, and yet there was still that temptation to go the other route. As I took in the image I felt myself standing at the crossroads between those two paths…always having to make the decision of which one to take. The image reminded me that although the road with God can be tough at times, it’s still the better path. The path of darkness may at times seem good and be what you think you want…but it’s not everlasting. There will always be things “getting in the way” to your happiness. There will never be true fulfillment. The way everlasting is God’s way. He will always be the only one who can bring you that true fulfillment you are looking for.I continue to learn that lesson over and over through many failures but it’s a great one to keep learning. “Show me your ways, O LORD, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” (Psalm 25:4-5)

I hope you are all well! I continue to think and pray for you all. I have come to truly love having a support team back home. (financially, prayerfully, and emotionally). It gives me such peace to know that I have people praying for me and caring about me and my whereabouts. It’s an amazing gift from God and I wouldn’t want to be doing this on my own. So, thank you again for being my support!

Much Love,

manda