We've so enjoyed our stay in South Africa! Tomorrow we will be in Pemba, Mozambique. We wanted to post a few photos of our time here in South Africa. Last time I updated we were about to head to outreach in one of the surrounding towns. The picture slideshow below is of our outreach days. For our outreach weekend, we got to spend two days and two nights in a nearby town. We took part in a tent revival service and walked around during the day praying for the sick and blessing people. We were able to witness God touch and heal people and we were able to greatly encourage the church in the town. It was an absolutely exhausting weekend, but we gave it our all and poured ourselves out, then went back to our cabin and crashed :) Another day we went out to a village nearby to walk around and share Jesus. It was such a fun day. We started off with a bang as one of the girls in our team got a picture of a lady with a pink zip-up sweatshirt and a head wrap. We began walking through the village and one of the first people we saw was a woman that matched that description perfectly! We got to share about Jesus with her and then pray for her wrist which was hurting her. After we stopped praying she immediately looked up at us with a big smile on her face--God completely healed her wrist! Seeing Jesus pour out his love on people never gets old! A little later we stopped to talk to three teenage girls and we asked them if they wanted to know what God said about them, they replied that they'd like to so we asked God for his words. When God spoke to us, we began to share with the girls and encourage them in their destiny's. As we shared, they verified that the words fit them and they were so blessed. What a privilege it is to be able to reveal God's heart on earth! Last weekend we went on a two day safari tour! Below is a picture slideshow of our experience in Kruger National Park! What an experience to be on a safari tour in South Africa! We were able to see lions, zebras, hyenas, monkeys, baboons, elephants, giraffes and many other animals. Besides being nauseous the first day of the tour (Erika), it was a fun ride! Below is a picture slideshow of our life at the camp where we had school. As I mentioned earlier, tomorrow we will be in Mozambique. Our time here in South Africa has been wonderful. It's been much more quiet and restful here than Mozambique will be, so we soaked up as much reading and quiet time as we could. The most significant thing that we learned during our time here was the importance of knowing our identity and speaking that out over ourselves. The words we say over ourselves have the power to change our lives completely, either for the better or worse. We find it so difficult to believe God's words for us, but we are determined to begin proclaiming them and walking in them. We have the mind of Christ, so we can have the right thoughts and speak them out, first over ourselves and then others. (Ps. 23:7; 1 Cor. 2:16; Prov. 18:21) It's been a very important time for us here and one day we will have time to sit down and write more of what God is teaching us.
This is our last night of flushable toilets, bug-free sleeping quarters, somewhat clean water and decently reliable electricity...tomorrow everything will change, but we're really excited to begin a new chapter of Harvest School! Be blessed!
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Greetings from South Africa! We are currently in the city of Nelspruit staying at a lovely little campground.
It's been one week since we left and we can't believe all that has happened already. Seems like we've been here much longer than that! There are 230 students in our Harvest School. It's such an international school, there are 14 other couples and only two of them are from the states...shows how international it is. We are so blessed to be a couple in this school because we get awesome perks :) We get to stay in a beautiful little cabin and all the single students are squished into dorms together. Being married is awesome ;) Seriously, though, it's so amazing to be able to do this together. We feel so blessed to be able to spend this time together. The only thing we have to watch out for as we stay in our little cabin are monkeys. We have to make sure we keep our door shut and locked so the monkeys don't break it. They already broke into a girls dorm and stole some items! That's not a joke. I thought it was at first, too, but it actually happened! Also this morning as I walked to the meeting hall I saw a big ostrich right by the hall. We are definitely in South Africa :) Apparently there is a very severe drought here and so that's why the monkeys are coming closer than normal (you can pray for rain!) We've only been here 1 week but we've learned so much already! We've already received awesome revelations about God's grace and Holy Spirit and we've had amazing worship times and been blessed to hear from such anointed men and woman of God. We also have made some neat friendships and are enjoying the community. So many amazing men and woman that have the same hearts and passions as we do. Our day starts at 5:30am with exercise, a nice South African breakfast of porige (grits), meat and eggs. Then class is from 8-1pm. In the afternoons we either have electives, free time or meet with our outreach teams and at night we have another teaching, worship night or free night. However, our schedule will change as time goes on, especially when we go to Pemba, Mozambique. We set up a hammock right outside of our cabin so that's where we are if we're not busy :) Right now, as I type, Alex is bundled up (it's a cold spring day today!) reading in the hammock. Today we leave for a weekend outreach - we will be going on a two night outreach to a surrounding South African town with a few other individuals. We don't know exactly what this will entail, but we believe we're going to be a part of a village tent meeting and we're excited to put into practice what we've been learning and see God work wonders for His glory. There is an Iris base nearby and so we'll be assisting them in their outreaches and ministries. Every weekend we'll be doing some type of outreach and our classes will continue throughout the week. We will also be going on a two day safari trip right before we fly to Pemba. We fly to Pemba at the end of October. Unfortunately we have absolutely no internet connection here and we're not able to get a SIM card so I doubt we'll be able to post again until we get to Pemba. We apologize for not sending out our newsletter yet and for not being able to update our blog frequently. We asked to use our staff's hotspot for just a moment to upload this post but we can't promise that will happen again. So you may not hear from us until we get to Pemba unless something changes. However, we trust you will continue to pray for us and we will update as soon as we can. We thank you so much for your prayers and love! We covet each one of them! With love from Africa, A&E We are currently sitting in the airport awaiting the flight that will take us to South Africa. We are about to embark on a journey that will leave us forever changed. Tearful goodbyes have been shared, many hugs given and prayers prayed. It's not easy to leave; we're giving up a lot, but the resounding cry in our hearts is, "God, we want to KNOW you!" and because that is the deepest desire of our hearts, we are following Him into the unknown. With God, the unknown is exciting. If He doesn't show up, all is wasted and we're totally screwed. But we know He will reveal Himself, He always does. He has a way of exceeding expectations all the time. We know that His fire falls on sacrifice and our sacrifice of giving everything up to go to the other side of the world will attract his fire. We have tested him and he always gives back more than we could give in the first place. He is always faithful. He always provides.
So we're excited! Excited for all the next 6 months will bring. THANK YOU for your prayers as we travel and get acclimated. We will be traveling for over 24 hours, so prayers are much appreciated ;) Our next post will be in Africa! Stay tuned! :) |
AuthorA & E. Currently living in the USA but called to the nations for this season of our lives. Devoting our lives to His Kingdom Come... Archives
April 2017
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