Thursday, April 22, 2010

A Story to Tell

Now here’s a story worth telling. I tell you what, what and adventure. Check this...
So in November, I know that’s going back a ways, but here’s what we did; we met as a team to decide where we would be going in South Africa and asked God to show us the locations. We left the north east, mid west and south west of the country. Now on the leadership side of things we spent time trying to make contacts in regards to these locations can found this place called Upington. Furthermore we were told that there were a number of groups that we could hook up with. Now, unfortunately that is literally the last thing that we heard in regards to this portion of the outreach. That last word came in around early December.

Now let us fast forward to the end of our time in White river which brings us to the end of February. Well we still have no contacts or idea of what we’ll be doing or even where we will be sleeping. And yet, each member of the team still had peace about going, so we bought the tickets. Of course through this time we were not just sitting around waiting for contacts to drop into our laps, but talking to people we were with, making phone calls which would gives us another phone number so on and so forth until the newest phone number didn’t exist.
We tried traveler’s guides and internet to find accommodation and guests houses but to no avail; nothing that would fit our budget.

So, as I said we bought our bus tickets and climbed on the bus not knowing what was waiting for us. When we arrived it was about an hour before sunset, and had to find a place to stay for the night. Now we split into group and went around to see what we could find. Myself, I stayed with the bags to keep them safe. The team came back forty-five minutes later having found a receptionist at a guest house who called around to people that she knew and found us a place to stay at a different guest house for way under our budget. Not only did we find the place, but the owners even came to pick us up. WOW.

That’s not even the end of the story. A couple of days later we’ve got new friends from a church nearby who want us to hang out all the time, a school who would like us to come and present to the students, some social workers who were more than happy to have us come along and run some events in the townships with the kids. And by the end of the week we even had a place to stay totally free of charge, with food. What an awesome blessing eh?

This portion of the outreach was by far the favourite two weeks of the program. Probably in relation to that, this is where we saw the most growth in people and where members of the team were willing to step out and try new things, sharing with other people on the street, or in front of a large audience, or sharing on the fly without any sort of preparation.

We all really enjoyed it and I even got to play rugby while I was there...good times.

Matt Clarke
Go Big or Go Home!

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Whiteriver, or wit river, both are on the signs

Well I said that I’d let you know about my outreach, and up till now I haven’t done such a good job, but here goes.
So after we travelled through what looked so much like southern California, in a nice coach bus, we arrived in a town called Nelspruit. It sounds a whole heap different when the South Africans say it, comes out something like Nielsberry. From the bus drop off, we were picked up by a couple of guys from Krueger Park base and driven 30 minutes to the base. For some, this was the first experience of ridding in the back of a pick-up truck (or bakkie [pronounced bucky]).

For me it was a really cool ride because in talking to our driver, I disocered that his daughter and son in law were doing the DTS program at the place I had done my DTS. Not only that, but their outreach leader was a good friend of mine and to top it off, I had met both of them. Now if that doesn’t sound cool enough, well I also used his surf board and wet suit and even put a hole in the wet suit. Fun story eh? Small world in this work eh?

Well what’s next, ah yes we arrived and to fast forward a little bit, that first week we all got sick. Yes ten people with the runs. Yes that’s right, your mental image at this point is probably correct. Of course this sickness subsided a little bit but would remain on and off for the rest of our month. Not going to lie to you, it makes for a great story, and wasn’t bad enough to stop us from having fun or putting our entire heart into the ministry.
Oh the ministry, right. We spent our time digging out footers for the foundation of a care center. The ground was rock, and it was slow going with the pick axes, but luckily a pervious team had already done most of the work, so we were able to see that the foundations themselves got poured which was a great reward for our efforts. The care center will be used to help to provide a place where single and double orphans (Kids missing one or both parents) can come for food, clothing repair, help with homework or a loving friend. Now, the incredible part about this care center is that it’s already operating out of a woman’s house. She is from South Africa, saw the need that the children had, God totally gave her a burden for these people and there she is, day in and day out pouring herself into giving to them and giving what she can. AMAZING!

Our time in Whiteriver really gave us a chance to hang out with people and talk. Some were other YWAMers on DTS, some were serving the people in the community and others were local people who we got to chill with and chat about life stuff.
Church, WOW, church here was so cool. The pastor is a young man who started as the head pastor as an even younger man. He seems to have figured things out in how to run the church. Everyone seems to be involved in organising, sharing, singing worshiping, and preaching. I’m not going to lie to you, it was here that I was given my first opportunity to preach at a church. It’s was kind of exciting and kind of African, by that I mean it was last minute. I do not think I did it perfectly, but I do think that God spoke to some people in that room and that is truly awesome.

It was in this time that God asked me to let go control of the outreach, let other people get a chance to plan out how we’ll do ministry, let others lead out and let others be in charge. Well that wasn’t exactly easy for me, but as I look back now at the entire outreach, I can see so clearly how pivotal it was that God would have be do that. It simply created room for other people to grow, to experience new things and for that alone I thank God for His guidance.

We made some good friends in Whiteriver, I’m so glad we got to go there. How glad? SO Glad!

Matt Clarke
Go Big or Go Home!

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Southern California, I mean South Africa

Well, let me see. I suppose that I shall have to do a lot of updating in order to catch people up on stuff. But in all honesty there’s probably no way to get you up to date on anything. But here’s my plan. My time in South Africa was really cool and we did outreach in four different locations so I will split those up into four different blog updates beginning with the beginning of course.
Our first few weeks involved lots of hard work and long days of construction, well mostly demolition. We, our team of ten, spent 2 weeks working at an orphanage to renovate one of the homes. Because, well, you see this is not a classic orphanage. The organisation has felt that they are to create homes for the children complete with parents and not just a mass group of kids with care takers. This adds a lot more to what they have to do, including having parents. So for one of the parents and her daughters they’re planning a new house, as they are in the process of redoing all of the homes, and we were an answer to their prayers to have someone come and get it going.
It was strange to do so much practical work on the outreach as opposed to relationship building and conversation; instead we were just doing work. Although, when I look back on it now it was totally just preparing us as a team. We would during this time get used to many things South Africa and begin developing our hunger for getting to know people and tell them about who Jesus is in our lives.


For two weeks we tore down brick walls that were double brick thick, tore out tile floors and tried to keep the tiles, busted holes in the wall to make room for windows, tried to plan how to fit new doors in and new bathrooms. Luckily a few of us have construction experience, however, going from wood framed houses to brick buildings is aggravating to say the least. Things go slower, they’re more complicated and plumbing problems are ridiculous. But I won’t bore you with the details.

These two weeks were primarily filled with practical work but since we were the new people there, a good number of the kids would come around and hang out after school. We had brought some skateboards with us and they loved skating, but I think more than that they liked to borrow our iPods. And what stood out the most for me was how stinking tough they were. Man they loved to wrestle and fight. I can’t even call it play fighting, but it was funny to see them get knocked right down on their bum and jump back up ready to go again.

This time was the beginning of leading people on an outreach, and man I tell you what that ain’t easy. You have to do all the work that they’re doing and then more. Not to mention take into consideration who each individual is: their strengths, weaknesses, life experiences, and where they’re at. Now if you know me a little bit then you’ll know that I’ve got only a few modes of operation: off, slightly on and going BIG. Fortunately I had two other amazing leaders with me and we turned to God in prayer so much that I really felt that He was there with us and guiding us. Not only did He lead us through stuff but He never stopped teaching me. In this part of outreach I started learning about staying aware of what is going on with people around me. I’m not going to say that I learned this and am now a pro, but I feel like I have grown in it.
Well, I’m not going to lie, it was good times, breaking down walls, sleeping and experiencing my first African style church service. WOOT WOOT!

This little update so does not do this portion of outreach Justice, but I just do not know what to put in that would. It’s hard to explain, so this will have to do.
Matt Clarke
Go Big or Go Home!