My “D-Team!”

My Dear friends and Family,

 PS 10:17 You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
   you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,

 PS 10:18 defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
   in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.

In working at the care points in recent weeks I have been praying this
verse and claiming it for so many of the children and their
stories.  More on some specific stories later…

This week we are starting the formalized discipleship program at Pastor Walter’s Care Points. For the past few weeks I have been working with a team of 3 Swazi youth, training them and preparing for our ministry. In the first phase of this long-term program we will be visiting each of the care points and doing consistent discipleship teaching once a week for a couple hours. The time is meant to be fun and interactive, with games, songs, and crafts. Kind of like a VBS program but ongoing and better! We are also choosing to go deeper with the children than ever before. We believe that God wants to know these orphans personally, and use them powerfully. Through prayer we really felt that we were supposed to have a new curriculum written. We also felt that the new curriculum needed to emphasize the importance of prayer, and developing the children to learn to pray to their Father in heaven.
We also felt led to build into the children a missional worldview. We want these kids to have God’s heart and vision for their community, their country, Africa, and the World. We started at the basics of who God is, His character, and who we are in relation to Him. Our theme for the first 3 months is entitled: “God is…I am.” The curriculum is also holistic in that we are teaching various health issues, as well as basic education stuff like counting, spelling, math, at the various age levels. Special thanks needs to go to two colleagues of mine, Katy and Ben, who put in a lot of work in writing most of the curriculum.      

My Discipleship Team, or “D-Team” as I call them, is great! They are all “20 something’s” (a club I only recently just left, how sad!) whom love the Lord and children. I have one guy named Musa, and 2 ladies named Zodwa, & Ncobile. We have been having a great time getting to know each other, worshipping together, and praying for one another. I am in charge of the discipleship program at the care points, and my job is to pastor my team and help empower them to do the discipleship teaching. The logistics and all the prep work for lessons have been enormous, but it has also been a sweet time. Just the other day, during a time of prayer together, I realized how cool this whole thing is. It made me think of the days when I was back at Nyack, part of a new ministry team called Campus Chaplain’s. Everything was new, exciting, and one had a sense that “God is doing something, and about to do even so much more!” It is hard to describe, but during prayer the other day I had one of those moments where you realize “This is why I am here on the Earth!” And you realize what a huge amount of grace it is to be His!

Please pray for my team as we start this new focused program. Please pray for the love of Christ and His unity to flow through our team, and please ask God to pour out wisdom and power on me as I lead my team. Thank you.

A few prayer requests for Swaziland…

Recent Drought – for the past 6 or 7 years some areas in Swaziland have experienced a severe drought resulting in a low or zero harvest. Other area’s in Swazi had experienced a lot of rain and flourished. Unfortunately this year almost all of Southern Africa experienced a drought condition and the results have been very bad. Maize, or corn as we know it in the USA, is the staple crop here in Swazi and much of Southern Africa. Most of the maize has died this year, including the huge irrigated commercial farms as well as the small plots people have at their homesteads to feed their family. The price of a metric ton of maize has shot up dramatically from last year’s price, resulting in higher prices on the shelves of grocery stores and small rural shops. It is a really bad situation for people that are already impoverished. There is also a big water shortage throughout the country. Please pray for the response of the churches with the Southern region of Africa. Pray that the brother’s and sisters in Africa would have God’s heart and show generous compassion to those around them.

The Political Climate – Swaziland has in recent years been extremely peaceful. At the same time in the past year there have been an increasing number of people who are not happy with the way the country is being run. There are no political parties in Swaziland, they are simply not allowed. “Democracy!” has been the cry of a few rallies that have been organized in recent months. The government and the police have come down hard on these rallies, using force or mass arrests to stop them.
This past Thursday (12^th April) a political group organized a blockade at various Swazi/South African borders to get their message out. The BBC was there and covered the protest on their world service radio broadcasts. The Swazi police were also there, as they detained many people and officially arrested 6. The 6 are being charged with sedition, a crime that is punishable by death. I guess the police used some slight excessive force with a few people. A photograph was published in the Swazi newspaper with a police officer grabbing a protester’s throat. The photograph has caused a lot of outrage among people, and the newspapers have been commentating about it daily. Please keep this nation’s political climate in your prayers. There is a small but growing undercurrent of anger towards the traditional system and growing number of people that want change. If that change is to come, (it seems a long way off) I am praying that it is done in a peaceful way. There is too much bloodshed in this world already.

Thank you so much for your love towards me. Thanks to a few of you who have recently sent me an encouraging email. I really appreciate it! It means so much to me to know that I am in your prayers. Blessings to you my support team!

Living a life I never dreamed possible…