We witnessed dreams coming true. We saw how one person really can make a big difference- in a women who cared enough about children in their community to take them in then to start a preschool in her backyard with two shipping containers, now getting ready to move into a beautiful two-story building.
To build up, the rise up, to do for oneself- these are the meanings of so many of the names of the ministries we visited. South Africa is a people resilancy and courage and strength to do for themselves, to rise up and make a life for themselves. We visited empowerment ministry after empowerment minisry. Hillcrest, a ministry committed to helping people gain new skills or learn a trade to make a living for themselves, and respite to help vicitms of HIV/AIDS is one such ministry. Out of the awful nature of apartheid rose a people deeply commited to unity and diversity and seeking ways to thrive in this life. In apartheid rose a church siding with the oppressed. South Africa still has a way to go, but never have I experienced like this what God is capable of doing in the midst of such ugly, terrible, situations; how God is able to take something so wretched as the apartheid times and breathe new life into a country committed to making a better life for themselves and for each other.
God is so much more than I think. Every time I go to a new place I see a new portion of this amazing tapastry God has made, and I am convined all the more that that is why we need each other because with each person we met these past 10 days I saw the incarnation in a new way.
I am inspired by the young people and children we met so filled with joy and dreams in spite of the strugles they face. To be able to dream in the midst of adversity, is a sign of real faith- to be able to dream of running a foster home, living in a community wracked with drugs and crime and lack of solid education, electricty, or running water is AWE-some.
So much of what we saw were grass-roots, organic ministry that rose up from the needs of the community. I feel like so much of the time I try to force things to happen. Perhaps if things are not organically rising up to meet needs of the people, it is because we don't know the needs of our community and are not spending enough time getting to know it.
We all have a new understanding of "partnership" now and are not moving away from that word. As Alan helped us see, partnerships are extremely difficult because of the power dynamics. Relationships is the word. It's all about building relationships. So I think, in that sense, things are not what we expected. The path forward isn't exactly clear becuase we went looking for partnerships and we're uncertain what that looks like now, but we do know we need each other and can learn a lot from each other, sharing in the jouney called faith, working towards the same thing, which is the Kingdom. And there are also some things we just can't turn our backs on- things like the child abuse taking place throughout the country.
God, give me courage, the kind of courage I witnessed in Alan and Peter and Jack, and the kind of courage the young people of M-Power are displaying through their move to stop violence in their schools. Continue to surround me with people like those on this team to help me know how to be prophetic and be on the side of the poor in fighting for them and seeking the root cause of certain injustices and the wisdom to know the right next steps.
