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!