The Past two weeks in Durban contained some of the biggest ups, and worst lows of all outreach. love the city, no doubt, but this is what was up with YWAM durban. we moved three times in the two weeks, for about 10 different reasons. and we did some strange and some awesome things. the next 'need to mention' point before i continue was an aspect of our stay, known as our base liaison. On outreach, because a team is obviously not from the area, the base pairs them with a local staff member to help them out with the ways of the city/country and to help set up ministry with their already established connections. Our Guy was an African named Kimo. and just as soon as we met him we got awkward introduction to his -in his words, 'special friend' named kathrine from England. Katharine is a white English women that has been living in Nigeria for the past 3 years. and Kimo is a Nigerian that has been living in South Africa for 3 years. how their 'special friendship' started is still a mystery to us all, but what we do know is that they sure are happy to be together again. Kimo was supposed to be planning our ministry for our stay, but unfortunately for us he had other ...special...things on his mind. needless to say they werent around too much, we realized we were going to have to plan our own stuff. which is fine. no problem for us, it just took a slow start but eventually we were great. and they few times we did see the happy couple we were always amused by kimo's awkward blunders of an introduction as people meet his new friend that has just arrived. so we did a bunch in durbs, here are a few of the main or favourite ones: A kids camp (VBS) at a church, which became our second living location. we ran kingdom kids with a husband and wife from canada,who moved to South africa to plant this church. their kids were a part of the camp and a very interesting part thats for sure. so this camp ran from about 9 to 5 everyday, which was full on, but worked out great because we almost always got to watch the evening games of the worldcup. this is a picture with ethan (age 5) one of the craziest yet coolest kids i have met. were playing one of his favorite games, hand fighters, where each of his hands team fight against my left hand. honestly, imagination like this should be studied. its remarkable.
and this second one is a picture from quite possibly the single greatest thing that came out of the kingdom kids.
they called it 'Missionary Minute' and basically raf and josh, aka Ken Jenkins and Brett Dawson, did this fake t.v program everyday. the kids loved it, and i think we enjoyed it even more. it was ridiculously hilarious what comes off the top of these boys heads.
Another ministry was with a church that provided lunches for kids in an HIV devastated community. the especially great thing about these days was that we got to work with an around the world DTS that was also staying at the ywam base. these people were super cool and got to know them great as we would hangout every night to watch the soccer. and for the last two days of this ministry we went with the food van and helped distribute the lunches ourselves.
and the third ministry I chose to call by one name: Petra's Ministry. it was essentially homeless and prostitute ministry but as i explain i hope i do a good enough job explaining why I chose to call it that. ok, so Petra is a fifty-something latino women, with the biggest heart for young women who need help to turn their life around. but an equally accurate description is petra is a saint. so the first night jumped to a rather quick start in the terms of we had to decide if we were going to be up to the task,because another thing, Perta doesn't mess around. after about 5 minutes with her watching her step out in boldness, raf and I had a go. now this was a relatively new form of this, so the ideal first interaction probably wouldn't be with a drunk stumbling homeless man, with a shank made of a broken bottle in his hand mumbling and yelling about a person he thinks hes trying to hurt. but it was what we got. so first things first, lets get that broken bottle out of his hands so we took that away. and second calm him down and ask him what all the commotion was about. he got slightly better and began to tell us his name and his deal untill he suddenly walked away, across the street, had a pee against the building and then came back across. this seemed to sober him up actually. so now we got a chance to pray for him. we prayed for him and he received it. was significantly calmer, we slipped a bible into his bag of possessions that he had us hold while he peed and that was that.
Petra has these type of encounters one after another after another as she walked these streets every night. but it wasnt untill the next morning that i had another significant one.
we again were with Petra the next morning, as a matter a fact we were running her church service that she holds every Tuesday and Thursday. raf and kris did the worship and josh preeched, and before the service i walked around with Petra inviting people to the service that came with a free lunch after. with petra we just walked into shelters and down streets and invited people by the dozens. she sometimes forced them to come. it was just a way she had, but the highlight comes later. a man was there that particular day that looked no different from any of the other homeless men.but it wasn't untill he asked to come to the front to share a quick testimonie that i knew any different. you see, this man had been attending these services since he met petra, except the only thing was it was always in a wheelchair. his feet were crippled to the size of tennisballs and the previous service he received prayer and on this day he was wearing normal shoes and walking with hardly much difficulty. in the time we were with petra we saw healing, prayed against addictions and even saw a few girls come out of prostitution into her safe house. but the most significant thing i can take from it, is boldness. boldness to talk to anyone in anyplace at anytime. and thats a pretty serious challenge.
so these weeks had some pretty heavy and deep things. and along with that came many other great things aswell. worldcup games, anna's birthday, soccer on real grass and the beach, and the most exciting finish to gentlemen's league we have ever seen.
ever.
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