Ministry Moments

 

PRINTER:

I’ve been spending more time in the office lately than in my bedroom.  Which, I guess is a good thing.  Three weeks ago I printed 2500 copies of a booklet on courtship & purity.  That doesn’t sound like a lot of copies but… 2500 copies of a 12pg booklet, makes 60,000 printed pages… and with the Risograph printing 130pg/min, it was a steady 8-hour job.  Most of the collating credit for this project goes to Bethany and Lydia.

A shipping container with a couple hundred boxes of ours (along with supplies/books/etc of other missionaries) arrived in the beginning of February, and many of the 30,000 gospel chick tracks needed our information stamped on the back.  Again, Bethany and Lydia pitched in and we got all the tracks done that needed to be.

I’m in the midst of adding index pages to a 50-page Ndebele (one of the main languages in Zimbabwe) songbook for the believers up there.  It has long gone out of print and they’ve exhausted the supply of 200 that we printed for them a few years ago.

“Mawungangidluli, Jesu”

(Pass Me Not)

Mawungangidluli, Jesu,

Yizw’ amazwi am’;

Lapho ubabiz’ abanye,

Mawungizwe nam’.

Jesu, Jesu, yizw’ amazwi am

Lapho ubabiz’ abanye,

Mawungizwe nam’

POSTAL:

About 3 weeks ago Dad put a small advert for our correspondence Bible study in a nation-wide newspaper here.  We had done city-wide advertisements before without much result so Dad was praying for 100 responses.  As we received over 100 SMS requests in one day, I laughed, “Oh ye of little faith!”  He quickly replied, “Oh ye of much work!”

I oversee the correspondence school and in the last month have sent out over 750 new Bible studies and around 100 following lessons.  Lydia has helped tremendously with the lesson grading and Dad usually answers any questions that the students send along with the lessons.

I often have to smile at some of the Africans’ given English names: “Authority”… “Boy”…  “Givemore”… “Human”… “Lollipop”… “Remember”… “Serious”… “Shame”… “Smart”… “Strike”… “Surprise”… “Unity”… “Welcome”… “Wonder”… and the list goes on.

It’s often hard to decipher the postal addresses that are sent in due to either hurried handwriting (on response cards that we put out with gospel booklets) or scrambled addresses such as the following (numbers changed from original):

Text received:             “TsM,makwassie lebaleng 2600,1700ext2,radebe str.”

Envelope sent:           T. S. M.

1700 Radebe Street, Ext. 2

Lebaleng, Makwassie

1600

Thankfully, I’ve found an easy and accurate website with quick searching for South African postal codes/cities. It’s been a tremendous help!

PEOPLE:

What a blessing it was to see my 19-year old cousin get saved last Sunday! She is here for a 3-month visit and the Lord has been dealing with her for several years concerning salvation.

The past two Sundays Dad was able to baptize two Zambian men who attend our Sunday afternoon services in town. One has been saved for a couple years while the other just made a profession of faith a couple weeks ago after doing several Bible studies and spending the whole day talking with Dad.  These are the first two members of the work in town!

We always try to have a couple stacks of gospel booklets in the vehicles, so when we’re running errands or waiting in the kombi, we can jump out and pass out booklets to people walking by.  (It makes waiting meaningful!)  I can honestly say that was one thing I missed while in the States.

Lydia and I recently fixed up an evangelistic tool for Dad to use on street corners.  It’s a board with “3 Things God Cannot Do” written at the top with 3 doors beneath. (YAY for old cupboards!)  Inside door #1 is “God cannot lie”, door #2: “God cannot change”, door #3: “God cannot let sin into heaven.”

In one afternoon Dad and another African man were able to talk to at least 800 people who walked by and enquired about what the 3 things were.  They exhausted a box of 1000 chick tracts as well.  Four days later, the same African who helped Dad pass them out, was visiting someone in the hospital, and saw 2 university girls, with the tracts still in their hands, arguing about the existence of God.  He walked over and was able to witness to them again!

An African girlfriend was able to get away from university classes for a day this past week and spent her whole Friday here.  What fun!  Amanda sent over some pattern paper for my birthday and I laid out four of my skirts so Elizabeth could pick a style/pattern from them. (*permissible pattern plagiarism*)  Wouldn’t you know it, she picked the hardest one…but my favorite too!  I think she was surprised at how much work it was but we had a good time together (and she left with a nice, modest, durable denim skirt!).  Had tea, a Bible study on faithfulness and made chocolate chip cookies before walking with her to catch a taxi home.

Yesterday afternoon, I printed out 500 invitations to our morning service in the village of Ga-Dikgale, and Lydia and I slipped each invite into an English chick tract – “This is your life.”  Today Dad, Lydia, 2 African fellows and I went out to a large high school in the area and handed out most of the invitations.  On the way home, we stopped to see a friend who was working on a rural village road, and I got out to pass out some bi-lingual English/Sotho gospel booklets.  There were about 30 ladies gathered there.  Dad pointed beyond them and said, “Dy, they said there are more down there.”  So, I grabbed a stack of 40 or so, turned the corner, and wow! We were told later that there were 600 road workers there and though we didn’t see them all, we gave out booklets to the majority.  We stayed there, talking and praying with different people, for about 45 minutes before having to head home...