Hello from Johannesburg, South Africa! Our teams have been here for about a month and I am absolutely loving it. We are working with an organization called Impact Africa and throughout this last month we have joined their evangelism teams in the squatter camps that surround Johannesburg! The squatter camps are communities around the city that are basically small sized shacks packed in together in a large space. An immense amount of people live in these “informal” neighborhoods and a high percentage of them have immigrated from the impoverished countries that surround South Africa in the hopes of finding work. A typical week consists of our teams walking around from 9:30 am until noon, then we have lunch and head back out from 1 to 3:30. It’s hot- really hot- and the little shacks are even hotter. We help people with laundry, dishes, cleaning, or cooking, anything that will give us the chance to spark conversation about the gospel. A lot of people know exactly why we are there from past experience with Impact Africa and we often see people pop up out of their shacks and yell “You, come teach me about Jesus!”. The people in these squatter camps are generally friendly and extremely willing to build friendships with us and hear about Jesus, which is so encouraging. They truly just want a savior, someone to set them free, something to hope for and hold on to. Our first working in the communities we saw 35 salvations and 9 physical healings! Everyday we have more crazy stories of what God accomplished. There are a lot of people who say they “know Jesus” but they still worship their ancestors and false Gods. Redirecting what they believe can be difficult, thank God for the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit we have been able to share truth with people about how God is the only true power and many of them have laid down their practices of ancestral worship. Over the last month I have been able to shift my perspective in so many ways while being in the squatter camps. I’ve learned that you have to be open to whatever God has for you; sometimes that may look like doing laundry for hours, trying strange foods, sweating into dehydration, but it is all worth it! We just want people to feel Jesus’ love, whatever that takes! God is presently working in the hearts and minds of people from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Malawi, and many other places through this ministry and I feel incredibly lucky to be apart of it. I would ask that throughout this next week whenever my team or I crosses your mind, say a prayer for the new ministries that we are about to partake in this next month. This week we begin working with the baby rescue programs and teaching in public schools. I can’t wait to see how God moves in these ministries because he has been so incredibly faithful up to this point. So please join me in prayer and expectation, there are “even greater things than these” to come.
