Den Helder, 21st
of February
Dear brothers and sisters
and friends,
Back home in the
Netherlands. I still have to get used to the temperature but it is good to see a
lot of familiarly faces.
As you know my outreach
was in South Africa while 2 other teams went to England and Nepal/India. We –
16 men and women – were in Cape Town for 5 ˝ weeks and for 2 ˝ weeks in
Johannesburg and God was good for us.
In Cape Town we went back
to basics. This means: finding God before we start working that day and to ask
Him what He expected. There was a worship team who went everyday into the park
to sing with the homeless. This was really blessed by the Lord. There were a few
people who accepted the Lord into their hearts and we also spread a lot of seed.
There were also people who
worked with the street kids. I also had contact with them but I spend the most
time with one them. His name was Micheal. A lot of his friends sniff glue. This
is to still their hunger, to take away their thirst, to get a warm feeling and
to get high to forget their situation and misery. You can buy the glue publicly
on the street. A lot of the street kids beg for money and then they buy the glue.
Thank God that Micheal doesn’t use glue. He begs for his money to buy things
for himself and he also gives a lot of money to his mother. It was very hard for
me to say goodbye because I really built a relation with him.
I also worked with the people from the Anastasis. I worked for 3 weekends with tours and on the Wednesdays I worked in the galley (kitchen) of the ship, while the other team members worked on other departments. In the tours you tell the visitors about the history of the Anastasis and at the end you also tell your testimony. I hope I was a good witness of our Lord Jesus and that I planted more than a seed in the hearts of the visitors.
I also celebrate Christmas eve with friends on the Anastasis. That was really strange to celebrate this with 95 degrees Fahrenheit but it was really special.
The 4th of January we left for Johannesburg. This was totally different than Cape Town. We worked together with the Christian organisation: Mes-aktie. We had a schedule and rules. This because they say, that Hillbrow is one of the most dangerous suburbs of the world. The gangs rule there. For example: to go to our rooms we had to pass 3 gates.
At this moment there are still a lot of problems in South Africa. This is a part of the end of ‘apartheid’. It brought a lot of changes for the people. A lot of people are now unemployed and uneducated. Let me tell one example of how this happened: there are a lot of wine farmers who pay their employees with wine instead of cash money. Because of this there is a lot of abuse to women and children. The children ran away from home and go to the big city. Their they grow up in the criminality and when the grow older they can ‘t do anything else when they decided to try to find a job. Therefore they fall back into the hard criminality. There are also a lot of illegal African people in Johannesburg because they still see this city as ‘the golden city’. A lot of illegal people are situated in this city and the government cannot control it anymore. But we see that our Lord works There are people who accept Jesus as their Saviour, but it takes time. There is a lot of work to do in this city. The hearts of people are hardened and only our Lord can change this. Therefore we need a lot of prayer. Would you do this?
Here are two stories how God used me in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Cape Town
With Christmas we had a dinner with the homeless in the park. After this we decided to go to the beach. At the moment we decided to went to the beach one of the people who joined us asked me to speak with him because he wanted the same thing we have. After permission to the leaders of our team I had the opportunity to tell this man the gospel and I could pray the sinners prayer with him. This was very special for me because this was the day our Lord Jesus was born for us. You can imagine that my Christmas could not be better.
Johannesburg
The day before we left I had to preach to the homeless people at our Bible study. We did this every day before they received free food. After meditation I got sad. I said to our Father, that I didn’t want to preach because they already know Him and they only come to eat. I told this to Chet, my team leader, and he told me to tell that to them. At the moment I stood there the Lord came over me and He took it over and spoke to these homeless people. He used my lips. After dinner some homeless people came back to have us pray for them and this was pretty awesome. I praised God for this because He showed me again that He is a living God and that He wants to use us (Is. 28:11)
My next step is to work and to be a servant. I do not know in what way but that is up to Him.
Prayer points
God bless,
Joshua
Servant of our Lord Jesus.