Global Challenge - South Africa
Global Challenge is an initiative by OM where Christians can join a short outreach to communities around the world. In South Africa we host an outreach every year in the July school holidays. This year we will reach out to communities living around Gauteng.
Its 7PM. The hall is filled to the brim (more than 500 people) and everyone waits in anticipation for the Durban Challenge to officially start. Suddenly the music starts and the hall is filled with waving flags and people dressed in the costumes of the world. Walking up and down and finally coming to a stop where upon we all joined together in worship before the Lord. What a beautiful picture it was to stand together, friends from across all the cultures.
Mike Hack, a long-term OMer, shared with us on how we can live out the message that we want to bring to Durban: "You are loved". The best way to do that, Mike shared, is to love one another. Not an easy thing to do, especially in outreach teams made up from different cultures and people who has never met before! But if we make the decision to refuse to be offended, then we truly can live out love for one another and ultimately show Durban the love of Jesus.
The crazy day! That is what I would call the first day of the Durban Challenge. As participants arrived from across the world (some even traveled for three days), organisers were running around packing up people form airports and bus stops, while others were sorting out the accommodation and main programme venues.
But in all our running around we have to praise God for the way He has come through for us. We have faced every conceivable thing that could go wrong: electricity problems, no sound equipment, broken printers,but God came through and helped to put everything in place.
Personally God has taught me (Herman) how dependent we are on Him. Praise Him for He is good!
Earlier today was the kickoff to the Outeniqua Challenge 2007. We had about 140 people arrive on 1 July with the rest arriving today, beginning at 02:30, with the arrival of two by bus. Some people spent many hours on a plane to travel to George. Others were on a bus for 18 to 24 hours traveling to the city hosting the Outeniqua Challenge. And still others began the journey to George on 28 June from Tanzania, Uganda and Nigeria, finally arriving in George today after five days on the road and many buses.
With nearly 400 people needing to be checked into their rooms, things seemed to go quite smoothly, despite being split between 2 high school campuses. There were many flight delays and some difficulties with finding some of the participants at the bust station, but everyone seemed to get where they needed to be. Two from Australia missed a connecting flight in Johannesburg and will have to arrive tomorrow.
Tonight was an exciting opening to the Outeniqua Challenge. The evening program was the first session of the 3-day orientation. It was quite a dramatic start to the program and to the outreach with the students from the Training Team performing an impressive parade of nations, as they marched around the hall with cultural costumes and country flags, with lights, smoke and lasers.
After a worshipful time of singing praises to God, there was an excellent program put together with some introductions, an inspiring challenge from Theo Dennis, a testimony from Christina Chin, a girl who attended last year's outreach, and three dances from the Ubuntu Dancers, a local dance ministry. Even though the temperature was very cold, the warm atmosphere of bringing praises to God and looking with anticipation to what God will do during the next two weeks was experienced by all.
It has been a very long and tiring day. Tomorrow we will be having many training sessions.
Please pray for all of the participants. Pray for the warmth as some did not bring proper warm clothes or sleeping bags. Also, pray that their eyes and hearts will open to what God wants to teach them. Ask God to draw each of them closer to Him during the orientation, prior to being sent out to be a light to the community.
Please also pray for J.P. and Pollyanna as we are both being worn down by all of the work over the past days and are experiencing some minor effects of this in our health. We both have sore throats and Pollyanna has quite a rough cough.
Thank you for praying. Please feel free to post any comments or messages to be passed along to participants.
Take care for now.
