Outreach Baby!!

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Good day to you woodland folk and to the army of the traveling gypsies. So word on the street is that I am back in the land of the shield, spear and William Webb Ellis trophy-hooray, yippie, goodie, (another happy excited word goes here)!! So the word is indeed true, but I don’t know what it is doing in the street. I am home and happy to see the family and the few friends that are still actually residing within the borders of our beautiful country. I will be here for another 6 days before I jet off again to Australia for three weeks for a family holiday, my life really isn’t fair at the moment, for others that is. No it should be a really sweet time with the family and I am so unbelievably blessed to be this lucky, God really has blessed me in my life.

I know that it has been a while since last I sent out one of these exciting blogs to let you know what has been cutting in my life, I am really sorry, it is just that I have been in the deepest of jungles for the last few months and the internet doesn’t work so good out there, in fact infrastructure of any kind, wooden or sand, is hard to come by let alone something as advanced as a telephone cable! I think it is about time I stop babbling and get down to the nitty gritty of what the heck I have been doing with the last three months. Basically I ditched everyone, pretended I was in the jungle, and spent the last 3 months eating Burger King and chillin out……NOT!!! Pretty much the complete opposite. So as you know lecture phase of DTS completely blew my face off, I saw God and experienced God in the most intense and intimate way. So whilst I was still crawling around on my knees looking for my face(which was actually rather silly I should have let my face look for my body), my leaders through me and the rest of our team into a plane and off we went for outreach. So its going to be completely impossible for me to tell you all that happened and all that God did with us in the last 3-4months, so I will give you all a brief overview and one or two tasty tales, to keep you glued, and if you want to know more detail please feel free to invite me over for dinner once I get back from Australia!! As Sean’s stomach (I have taken control of his brain for this sentence…yes I can do that), I strongly suggest that you invite him over for dinner (after this sentence he is going to say something like, “it would be a cool opportunity for me to share more intimately what God has done in my life and give me a chance to answer any questions you may have.”). It would be a cool opportunity for me to share more intimately what God has done in my life and give me a chance to answer any questions you may have. Stomach again, told you so. Anyway let me get to it…..

My outreach team consisted of us 8 students, 2 girls and 6 boys, as well as a male and female leader. We left the Maui base at like 3:00am on the something of something 2007 (it was about four months ago now) for Bangkok, Thailand. Oh my goodness gracious me what a big city. Something like 20 million people live in the city. We stayed at the YWAM base there for about two weeks. The base there is amazingly well run with stacks of its own ministries running within and around the city and into the country, on top of running a DTS programme. Thailand is a very Buddhist country and one can feel the spiritual oppression of the place. It was a strange time for us there, as we still had 5 days of lectures there, and where kind of doing outreach stuff at the same time. I personally battled to figure out exactly what I was supposed to be doing, was I a student or was I telling people about Jesus, ultimately it was both but it was just an odd time. It was also a very hard time for most of the team as most of them hadn’t been out of the US before, so they had to deal with culture shock of being outside the States, of being in Asia and then of seeing some pretty crazy poverty during our slum ministry. I was okay with this as I live in Africa and have seen some pretty insane poverty and also done some traveling before to India and Singapore so I adjusted pretty much immediately. One day that was particularly hard for the girls was when they did ministry for a day to the red light district. The sex trade there is ridiculous, with girls as young as 12 and 13 living as prostitutes. So it really wrecked our girls. The boys spent that day ministering in a popular tourist street, which was pretty cool, but just sad to see so many people really lost coming to Thailand to try and find spiritual enlightenment and all they get is rituals. Other than that it was a pretty neat time, God did some rad things and we were able to be tourists for two days. However this didn’t last for long as we were whisked off to the island of Borneo where the bulk of our outreach was to be done.

Borneo is an island off the coast of Asia just below Malaysia, in fact the top half of the island is actually part of Malaysia, the other half is part of Indonesia, and then a tiny little piece inside the Malaysia portion is Brunei. So we landed in Kutching(Malaysia) on the something of something 2007 (this date is note the same as above, rather it reflects another unknown date approximately 2 weeks from the other unknown date). We met up with our contact there and stayed in a missionary’s house that was currently empty. We were only there for a 2 days before we were to catch a bus into Indonesia. Malaysia is actually rather a rad country, it has just become first world so everything works but is not as overbearingly perfect like the States. However I first meal there we ate in a food court of foreign matter, where one of the guys ordered soup and got chicken feet in what looked like dirty water. I can’t exactly remember what I had, actually I can’t remember eating at all, I may have suddenly started fasting 😊 We didn’t do any ministry really other than clear out the garden and clean the house. From Kutching we took a sixteen hour bus ride south into Indonesia (dramatic loud music goes here.) And so the “real” stuff begins.

It was absolutely crazy, as we drove over the border form first world Malaysia into third world Indonesia, you instantly saw the difference. The road went from a well kept highway to a pot-holed, one lane road. The houses went from well built concrete homes and offices to shanty looking wooden huts surrounded by thick jungle. We arrived in Pontianik, a big “city” on the coast and equator of Indonesia, sometime after dark we were met by our Indonesian contacts from the YWAM base there. We jumped into a tiny mini bus; bags on the roof and off we went to the base. The base there was seriously sweet and we really enjoyed our time there. We spent a few days there, practicing drama’s, getting to know the Indonesian team that would be going into the jungle with us (3 cooks, 3 translators, and 2 male leaders all of them full time missionaries), and then speaking at a few church services and meetings. This is where I had my first opportunity to give a sermon. Man was it sweet. I had to speak at this meeting for all the pastors and church leaders in the city that was held once a week. It was kind of intimidating but I was pretty excited. God gave me such an awesome message to share with them which was really cool. They were impressed that such a young man was so on fire for God and able to speak in front of them, I give all the glory to God for that as He totally told me what to say and gave me the confidence to speak up there.

After spending about 5 days in Pontianik, we were setting off for the jungle. We took the mini bus to the harbor, jumped on a small, wooden, engine propelled boat, and headed off down a river into the jungles. From now on I am not going to tell you stage by stage what happened but rather just tell you briefly what we did there in overview, as we were in Indo for 8 weeks and there is just too much to tell. Basically all we took with us was one hiking back pack containing, four T-shirts, two-three pairs of baggies/board shorts, shoes/crocs, 1 pair of ministry pants, 2 ministry shirts, toiletries, sun block, mosquito repellent, a flash light, a journal, camera, sleeping mat, sarong and a Bible. That was it for 8 weeks. What we would do would be travel from village to village, literally in the jungle, on foot or via boat or possibly very scary truck-bus things and share the gospel. Our Indonesian leader guy organized all the villages we would go to before we had even arrived in the country. We would get to a village, meet up with the pastor of the very small church, and then kind of do what he wanted us to do and what our contact told him to do. During the day we would go on house visits. These involved going to people’s houses with the pastor, his wife or another church member, sitting on the floor, drinking tea made with 6 teaspoons of sugar, eating, at times weevil infested, biscuits and sharing with people about Jesus. We would ask them questions about themselves and then start talking to them about what they believed, some people were Christians, some people said they were Christians but still worshipped idols, some people were not Christians at all and were completely animistic or nothing. So we would share the gospel with them and try to help them with any problems they had with life, their faith, their family or whatever. House visits were most of my favorite times on outreach. You really got to see people for who they were, and really see what they were dealing with. It was also an insane time to see god move through us and give us bible verses and prophetic words for people, and just give them solid godly advice. There were so many good things and times on house visits I am not even going to begin to explain, but many times people were so touched by God as we spoke and prayed with them that they were in tears. It was really beautiful to see. We spent pretty much all day doing house visits. If we didn’t however have house visits we would do sports or kids ministry. Sport ministry involved playing soccer (every village has a soccer field), with anyone who wanted to play. Often we would just show up with a ball and the village would just show up because white people were there and we would play with them and then invite them to evening ministry that night. It was also just good to build relationships with individuals and the village as a whole. Kid’s ministry usually involved singing songs with the kids, telling and acting out bible stories, and then just playing games.

Evening ministry was either at the local church or in someone’s house. If it was at a church it would involve a drama, a testimony and a message, if it was at a house it would involve a song, a testimony and a message. Often however we would do a song along with everything else when it was at a church. We had several dramas to choose from, and we would rotate who did it every time. Testimonies were just anything God had done in your life. The song was usually done by Matt or Isaac (leader), both of who are incredible musicians with amazing voices. Matt will be a rock star for God one day. He wrote 14 or so songs on outreach, all brilliant and touching!!! And boy can that kid sing!! The message was pretty much a sermon and the bulk of the ministry, every one had a turn to preach, actually everyone had a turn to do everything, some did more things than others, but that is only natural. I loved preaching. It was so rad taking a few hours to sit down with God and ask Him what He wants to say tonight to these people, then waiting on Him, hearing what He wants you to say, preparing it, and then stepping out in faith and delivering it to the people. And then best of all to see God move as you speak and people coming up afterwards for prayer and asking to accept Jesus as their Lord and savior, it was just too amazing. Wow it was incredible! I really enjoy teaching and preaching. We would spend anything from 2 days to 5 days in one village. The one village we based ourselves at for 3 weeks and would go out into smaller villages for a few days at a time from there. And that is kind of what it looked like from day to day. I have so much to say and so many stories to tell but I can’t tell all of them, but I what I will do is tell you two….

So our team splits up into three or so teams one day to go on house visits (a common occurrence). Anyway I have the most insane house visits of outreach, every woman we prayed for cried, I got to explain the trinity using naartjies, God really moved through us and really got to share with people on a deep intimate level. Anyway so we get back to the house we are staying at and two of the guys and one of the girls (crying) are really upset. So we go see what’s up. They went to a house where the wife and child were being beaten by the father who was having an affair. They were obviously really upset and were telling the wife to leave him as one would expect. However she didn’t want to leave him for various reasons that I am not getting into but which didn’t make sense to us. So they kept telling her to leave but she wouldn’t listen, even though she wanted to. I am leaving out a lot of the detail, but anyway, the guys were really angry with the husband (he wasn’t there at the time), and the girls were really torn up for the wife (as were the guys but you know how it is). Anyway, we took a day or two to cool off and allowed one of our Indonesian girls and one of our girls to spend time with the lady. They eventually met the husband, and then one day brought him to meet the rest of the team. We decided just to show him the love of Christ first and allow Holy Spirit to work in His time. So we shook his hand and treated him with dignity. Anyway to cut a long story short, through the efforts of a few of our team and the power of God the man confessed all he had done, asked for forgiveness, accepted Christ and was willfully coming to counseling with our Indonesian contact. He even drove a 12 hour scooter ride to come and visit us for some more counseling and prayer. It was awesome to see how a man and a marriage were completely changed in a few weeks (they lived in the village we based ourselves at for a few weeks).

Okay we are in some village doing house visits in separate groups again. The other group visits this one house where this 67 year old man lives. He has been sick for 16 years; he is literally literally skin and bone, can’t use his legs, can’t really see and cannot hear. Our translator was right next to his ear screaming and he couldn’t hear anything! So they start praying, then they decide to find the rest of us to come and pray too. We sit there for like an hour praying for this guy, matt gets his guitar and starts playing worship, man it was intense. We eventually stop as he was getting tired and hot. So he moves himself with his arms to the doorway. One of the guys asks the translator to ask him a question from across the room, so she does. They are about 5 or so meters apart, she speaks loudly but doesn’t shout and he responds. HE HEARD WHAT SHE WAS SAYING AND ANSWERS THE QUESTION and the next two she asks him too!! Are you kidding me, how cool is God. This was a man who couldn’t hear a thing an hour ago and was now answering questions from across the room-AMAZING!!

So yeah I have many more stories to tell of how God worked through us, and so much to tell of how God changed me personally and what he birthed in me in terms of vision for my life for Him, but will allow you to invite me over for dinner or afternoon/morning tea to discuss further.

Some fun stuff though is telling you how we lived. We would stay with the people either in the church or in a “house” big enough to house us. We would sleep on an inflatable sleeping mat on the floor, underneath a mosquito net (two per net), with only a sarong to cover us as the heat from the SUN on the equator keeps things warm till when it comes up again. We would have to bath either in a river, or with a bucket of water, or in a room with a bucket of water. The ablutions were something special, long drops of course-they smelt a lot like pooh mostly. Our diet was also a dietician’s nightmare (well probably anybody-else’s nightmare, who didn’t live in Indonesia), everyday for every meal we would have rice, 2 out of 3 meals we would have 2 minute noodles as well, some sort of boiled or fried vegetable/plant/leaf. Meat would include chicken, deer, pig, spam, frog and wait for it…..dog!!! Yes I ate fluffy! Dog we probably ate twice a week in the villages, and if we didn’t finish it at that meal we would eat it at the next meal until it was all gone, and we had to eat everything they served us so that we wouldn’t offend them. Hmm no SPCA out there, I wish there had been though!!! Dog really was not a pleasant experience, it tasted a lot like the smell of wet dog. All the meat we ate was fresh; from the chickens to the dog we saw everything, the whole process. The frog however we were lucky enough not to see as they keep it in a jar for 3 months to ferment with garlic and onions-goodie!

Then we went back to Malaysia and spent a week there doing ministry in schools and mostly to cell groups and sharing with people my age. From there we took a 22 hour bus trip to Brunei. So we get there, everyone gets through customs except me, yup I got bounced. “For what?” you may ask, for being South African, or more correctly African, the border guy said that here was no chance we were getting an African over the border, it is an extremely closed country. Anyway, so the leaders decided that the male leader, Isaac, and myself would stay back in Malaysia and the rest would go into Brunei for the next 8 days. It sucked leaving the team but I knew God had a plan and He did. Isaac and I stayed in the city right on the border called Miri. Our contact in Kutching gave us three numbers, two pastors and a place to stay. We had ministry every day starting that night. It was awesome. We shared with a lot of ballies and really were able to encourage them and disciple them, crazy these two 20 somethings helping out 40 and 50 year olds, it was amazing. Then from there we went back to Kutching for like two days and then jumped on a plane back to Maui for a week of debrief. Being back was very strange! I cannot really explain it is just weird. Even being back home in South Africa is very weird; so much has changed in me, and not much has changed here but a lot has changed here too. It is very strange, but I am slowly adjusting, very slowly.

Well that is enough from me for now. I would like to thank all of you for reading all my blogs, and for all your support over the last 6 months. It was always encouraging hearing from you and knowing that I was in your prayers. Again feel free to invite me over for food and I will tell you all your heart wishes to know! (I will bring my own food if you want, well actually I won’t but it was a fun thought for a moment 😊

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