So when we first moved into our flat, we could see so many things wrong with it, so many things that needed fixing, so many things that we thought.. mmm that is really not right, we shouldn’t live with it like that (eg, uncovered electrical sockets, broken light fixtures, bad painting etc… and of course we did fix some of it straight away…

BUT then life happened, and we kept saying, ahh we will get round to fixing that, but the truth is, those things stop bothering you as much. You realise, well if i put a lamp here, then i dont need to get the light fixture working, and i havent yet died using the uncovered plug socket… and so you start to live with second best, making do with your situation, over-looking the problems.

The same thing happens in our Christian walk. We can start off and we realise, man there is so many things in my life that need to be sort out. I really need to learn to live under the Spirit’s power, I really need to submit my life to Him, and live the full abundant life God has promised us… and of course, we sort a bit of that out..

BUT then life happens, we get busy, we are thinking, ‘ahh i will take time out with God to get more of His spirit another time;.. ‘ahh its really not so bad that i gossip or say ‘white’ lies here.’ ‘Well, i mean the life of power that the disciples lived was only for special people, i mean now days we are so busy’. And so we start to live with second best. We dont sort out the sin in our lives. We dont live the full abundant life to which Christ has called us!

In a sermon a while ago Steve said, ‘Its not that we are not satisfied as Christians, its that we are satisfied to easily.’ We so often settle, for less than God has install for us. We settle with sin, we settle with temporary highs, we settle for a lack of the Spirit’s power in our lives…

LETS DIG DEEPER!

So today C’s son arrived in Cape Town! YAY!

C is one of the ladies in the discipling house. When she arrived at the house, she hadnt know where her son was for at least 8 months (i speak under correction thou). He had been ‘abducted’ by the father who was a M. and didnt want their son raised in a Christian family. His father arranged a friend to pick him up and take him to live with a M. family in Uganda.

C. came into the house and decided to fully give her life back to God (she had coverted to I. when her husband had done so). Within a few week of her being in the house and us praying she found out where he was. A week later she spoke on the phone to him. A few weeks after that he ran away. It has now been about 3months that he has been heading towards South Africa (With a long stop in Tanzania). And he is finally in Cape Town. The last 6 weeks have been very emotional as there have been times when we didnt hear from him for weeks (he is 11). But we were able to pray! and God broke through

We have now been praying for this boy for 6 months now.. and today he arrived. He and i played lotto and pick up sticks! Its crazy how GOd is so amazingly faithful in answering prayers! thanks be to HIM! The minute i saw him i felt like i knew him, and he ran straight up to me and hugged me! It felt somehow that prayers bound us together!

So be faithful in your prayers! God hears them! And he answers them beautifully! GOD IS GOOD!!!! We love you Lord! Always remember what He has done for you!!

Now our prayers for his schooling and Most NB salvation continue and we know God will hear them!

It is well with my soul… Can you say that? In hard times, in happy times, when you are really tired, when you have lost everything, can you truly say “It is well with my soul”. When we know Jesus, he does something in our hearts and souls.

Job was a man who lost virtually everything in his life yet…,
20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, 21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. 22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.”

Man we are so quick to question God, and go into despair. Yes i think there is a time for mourning,  but truly at all times we need to keep our eyes on Jesus… and worship like Job, and remember that God is still Holy!! Watch this story of a ‘modern day’ Job…  this faith is huge.. God must have given him so much grace!

So seeing as though this post gets the most hits from google on a daily basis, I just wanted to state that we did not write this… Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Hartgrove did!

Also i want to invite you to look around the rest of our blog. We stopped blogging for a while, but we have started again! ps: we believe in giving to  your local church as well as those you are in relationship with..

1. Fast for the 2 billion people who live on less than a dollar a day.
2. Contact your local crisis pregnancy center and invite a pregnant woman to live with your family.
3. Ask your pastor if someone on your church’s sick list would like a visit.
4. Join an open AA meeting and befriend someone there.
5. Adopt a child.
6. Mow your neighbor’s grass.
7. Volunteer to tutor a kid at your local elementary school. (Try to get to know the kid’s family.)
8. Grow your own tomatoes–and share them.
9. Ask a small group in your community to meet regularly for intercessory prayer.
10. Build a wheel chair ramp for someone who is homebound.
11. Read the newspaper to someone at your local nursing home.
12. Plant a tree.
13. Look up the closest registered sex offender in your neighborhood and try to befriend him.
14. Throw a birthday party for a prostitute.
15. When you pay your water bill, pay your neighbor’s too (they’ll let you… really).
16. Invest money in a micro-lending bank.
17. Ask the next person who asks you to spare some change to join you for dinner.
18. Leave a random tip for someone who’s cleaning the streets or a public restroom.
19. Write one CEO a month this year. Affirm or critique the ethics of their company (you may need to do a little research first).
20. Start tithing (giving 10%) of all your income directly to the poor.
21. Connect with a group of migrant workers or farmers who grow your food and visit their farm. Maybe even pick some veggies with them. Ask what they get paid.
22. Give your winter coat away to someone who is colder than you and go to a thrift store to get a new one.
23. Write only paper letters (by hand) for a month. Try writing someone who needs encouragement or who you should say “I’m sorry” to.
24. Go TV free for a year. Or turn your TV into a pot where flowers grow.
25. Laugh at advertisements, especially ones that teach you that you can by happiness.
26. Organize a prayer vigil for peace outside a weapons manufacturer such as Lockheed Martin. Read the Sermon on the Mount out loud. For extra credit, do it every week for a year.
27. Go down a line of parked cars and pay for the meters that are expired. Leave a little note of niceness.
28. Write to one social justice organizer or leader each month just to encourage them.
29. Go through a local thrift store and drop $1 bills in random pockets of the clothing being sold.
30. Experiment with creation-care by going fuel free for a week–ride a bike, carpool, or walk.
31. Try only reading books written by females or people of color for a year.
32. Go to an elderly home and get a list of folks who don´t get any visitors. Visit them each week and tell stories, read the bible together, or play board games.
33. Track to its source one item of food you eat regularly. Then, each time you eat that food, pray for those folks who helped make it possible for you to eat it.
34. Create a Jubilee fund in your Church congregation, matching dollar for dollar every dollar you spend internally with a dollar externally. If you have a building fund, create a fund to match it to give away and by mosquito nets or dig wells for folks dying in poverty.
35. Become a pen-pal with someone in prison.
36. Give your car away to a stranger.
37. Convert your car to run off waste vegetable oil.
38. Try recycling your water from the washer or sink to flush your toilet. Remember the 1.2 billion folks who don´t have clean water.
39. Wash your clothes by hand, or dry them by hanging to remember those without electricity or running water. Remember the 1.6 billion people who do not have electricity.
40. Buy only used clothes for a year.
41. Cover up all brand names, or at least the ones that do not reflect the upside-down economics of God’s Kingdom. Commit to only being branded by the cross.
42. Learn to sew or start making your own clothes to remember the invisible faces behind what we wear. Take your kids to pick cotton so they can see what that is like (and then read James).
43. Eat only a bowl of rice a day for a week to remember those who do that for most of their life (take a multivitamin). Remember the 30,000 people who die each day of poverty and malnutrition.
44. Begin creating a scholarship fund so that for every one of your own children you send to college you can create a scholarship for an at-risk youth. Get to know their family and learn from each other.
45. Visit a worship service where you will be a minority. Invite someone to dinner at your house or have dinner with someone there if they invite you.
46. Help your church congregation create a Peacemaker Scholarship and give it away to a young person trying to avoid the economic draft, who would like to go to college but sees no other way than the military.
47. Eat with someone who does not look like you. Learn from them.
48. Confess something you have done wrong to someone and ask them to pray for you.
49. Serve in a homeless shelter. For extra credit, go back and eat or sleep in the shelter and allow yourself to be served.
50. Join a Yokefellows ministry at a prison close to you. Remember that Jesus said he would meet you there (Matt. 25).

Proverbs 14v12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

So last night i had a dream…( I dream alot, and its normally quite vivid.) In my dream, a group of us were driving somewhere when we saw all the animals moving off in one direction. Straight away I (in the dream) knew that some major natural disaster was going to occur and that we should all follow the animals, as they would go the safe way…

unfortunately I could not convince others of this fact. A few minutes later in the dream i am still begging people to leave (there are like hundreds of them) but they won’t budge. Suddenly it starts raining very very hard and everyone realises its going to flood. Then everyone starts to flee. But they all flee in the way that is opposite to where the animals went, because it ‘made the most sense’. I (and others) was trying desperately to get people to change direction and they kept telling me my way was illogical. In the dream I just knew they were going the way of destruction. Eventually I to had to flee (at the last moment) and I got away safe. But knew in my heart that headlines were going to tell of the mass deaths occuring…

This got me thinking this morning… about Proverbs 14v12. The application is fairly simple really:

1) A great ‘disaster’ is going to happen (death/judgement etc)
2) As Christians we know the way people can be safe from this, although it may not always seem ‘logical’.
3) We need to do everything possible to save people from this and tell as many as possible
4) People are making choices that lead to death, let pray and encourage them to chose LIFE!

Wow so i have about 8 different topics I want to blog about, but I just have not have the time… I will blog about them one by one, starting with the Harvest!

For the last few weeks God has really being laying Matthew 9v36-38 on my heart:

36When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

This had special reference to uTHando leNkosi and children’s homes and places of safety around the world and foster and safety parents and adoptive parents etc etc (ie dealing with children in need). There is such a huge need for the church of Christ to rise up and take care of children. There are thousands of kids, children just like any other child, who want to learn, who desire to have fun, who need love, and yet there are very few people taking care of them! I really felt that God was asking me to pray for more workers to be sent out to the harvest field of children. They are rip unto harvest, they are ready for the gospel… but who will go? who shall God send?

But since then this has expanded and I am really praying for more people to be going out into all harvest fields. This weekend I was at a training session and they said, (in my own paraphrased words), ” if people are looking at the health of Christianity in an area and they find that things are hard and people are ‘non-receptive’ to the gospel. They often say the problem lies with the hard hearted individuals.. yet really the problem is that there are not enough workers, we must therefore prayer that God would send out more workers.”

This verse just keeps coming up. So are you praying for the harvest fields? are you praying for more workers? Lets do what God commanded us to do! More workers, cover more ground…

That’s My King! A powerful clip that talks about Jesus!

If you have more time, here is the whole clip of what SM Lockridge said in his ‘My King’, part of the sermon. it really is pretty cool!

Hi all!

SO the last few weeks have been challenging. But I really believe God is teaching us so so much!! Like to “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice!” man i am glad there is that “again I say rejoice”! Becuase it really encourages/reminds me to rejoice even when i might not feel like it!

When Sam and I started dating, we felt GOd gave us Psalm 27v13 and 14 as a promise. “Being sure of this you will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, Be strong, take heart and Wait for the Lord.”

When our house flooded I was like God, you have promised we will see your goodness so I am excited! But then all the work started happening, and I got tired… But Sam and I truly have seen God’s goodness and we have much to rejoice for, here we go:

1) We are thankful that I only work 20hours a week, if I had been working a full time job, we really would not have been able to get through these last few week without alot of leave being taken!!

2) We are thankful that we live in a formal house. Even though we got flooded, it it only the first time this winter and we we will be able to recover from it. People in informal settlements have it so so much harder.

3) We are thankful that I am still alive and well after been knocked over by the car. If i had broken a bone or something I would still be in a cast!

4) We are thankful for our health! When you lose it and get it back again, so are so grateful for it!

5) We have truly seen God’s goodness through our AMAZING friend James, let me just begin to list some of what he has done for us in the last 2 days, COoked Dinner on Tues and Wednesday night, helped move furniture Tues night and Wed morning, lead devotions for us on Wed night (With the ladies, so that we didnt have to prepare), loaned (or gave) money as our cash flow dried up as our flat got wet (it expensive to get flooded), drove around for us, did lots of our washing up, and was all together a fantastic friend! James thanks, you really did demonstrate God’s goodness to us!

6) I personally rejoice in having a fantastic husband! He has worked so so hard the last two days! Really he has used he last drop of energy to help sort everything out! Sam you are such an encouragement to me! You also cared so well for me, with the whole accident! When you are sick in bed, you amazed me by starting your own business! You have such great faith and you are always encouraging me to go deeper in my relationship with God! THank you! with you and Jesus in my boat i can smile at the storm!

7) We are in awe of a mighty GOd! He has forgiven us sins, and He has eternal plans! Thinking of eternity helps these “light and momentary troubles” to fade away! He is the King! and He has mighty plans for His Kingdom! This week He spoke to us so clearly that He is in control of things at uThando! ANd we just want to praise Him and rejoice in that fact! WE LOVE YOU OUR KING!!

Let us Rejoice and count our blessings!

Our garden flat flooded yesterday. We’ve had some water and damp problems before, but this time it was a little bit more extreme.

The rain came down hard for about an hour! An hour…. that’s all it took to turn our garden into a little lake and cover our flat in about 8cm water. So needless to say we’ve been working hard the last day. I’m at work now, while the de-humidifiers are doing their thing. Just didn’t feel like thinking too much, so decided to quickly blog in my coffee-break.

Anyway, it’s been a bit of a crazy time lately. Since Shell was knocked over by a towtruck we’ve just had one thing after the other. It’s about time these things stop, so please pray with us. Mainly for strength and patience. We must be doing something right for the enemy to give us so much attention .

Let me leave you with this beautiful verse:
“For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” Habakkuk 2:14

Love Multiplied to you…

The remains of what used to be our bedroom

In despair (Or posing for photo )