This past week we got to spend in Groblersdal with a pastor who just started a church there a few months ago.
It was an interesting week that I think our whole team needed. We rested a lot more than we are used to, we were served rather than serving, we were encouraged and filled up and everyone we meet welcomed us in like family. In that week we built relationships, we laughed together, we cried together, and we all found hope and God in each other.
Pastor Frederik and Leone gave up everything a few years ago to pursue the Lord’s calling on their lives, to love the unloved. They moved to Groblersdal and relied on the Lord to provide everything and he did. He provided a house, a car, he gave a church that was in shambles and he brought them a community that desperately needs the love of Jesus.
Groblersdal is a farming community and racism is still here, farmers and their families are being murdered for no reason, and there’s drugs and prostitution in the streets.
This pastor and his family want to show this town that their church is a safe place, a place you can go where you are accepted for who you are, a place where you are loved where you are at and a place where there is the presence of a Father in heaven that desperately wants to know and care for you.
We were reminded as a team that its okay to be tired, its okay to be worn out.
We were reminded to “serve the best YOU can, in your own skin, just as you are”
This week we got to experience a light in a dark place, a loving family that welcomed us as we were. This is a place where freedom is found and love is in abundance. People will be reached in this place. People will find hope and grace here. They will find a new beginning, a new light in their darkness.
Thank you to everyone we meet this past week, our gracious and goofy mom who housed us for the week and wanted us to stay up until 2am with her, everybody we meet at the braai’s and cookouts and last but not least our incredible hosts Frikky and Lee. This is a week I will never forget. Stay weird.
