Dancing in the Wards

Three of our outreach teams are working with The Oasis, a hospital/AIDS ministry in inner city Pretoria. Every day during visiting hours, they go through the hospital wards with guitars and drums and sing praise songs with the patients. The life and hope they bring to the sick and suffering is amazing! On their first visit, an elderly grandmother was so happy to see them that she got out of her bed (holding her catheter bag) and began to dance.

Pastor Ransom, a team member at Oasis, was called over to the bedside of a man who had suffered severe burns over most of his body. He was heavily bandaged and in such pain that he was unable to move freely. Pastor Ransom was able to share the hope of Jesus Christ with him and the man decided to accept Jesus as his Saviour. He was immediately filled with so much joy that he too got out of bed and began to dance! His pain had been relieved and all he wanted to do was praise the Lord!

Please continue to pray for the teams as they minister to those who are suffering and in need. Several patients have made commitments to Christ and we would love to see many more do the same in the final days of the outreach.

Orientation

Gauteng Challenge is off and running! We opened with four days of orientation, with various speakers teaching on ministry related topics such as evangelism, children’s ministry, preaching, discipleship, religions of the Gauteng region and AIDS awareness to name a few. 236 people from 22 different nations are participating in this year’s challenge and we have already seen God work in amazing ways.

On Wednesday, Surine (one of our participants) was rushed to the hospital with severe abdominal pain. Her appendix was infected and inflamed and she was scheduled for surgery the next morning, provided the swelling went down enough to operate. All of the Gauteng Challenge participants joined together in prayer on her behalf. She spent the night in the hospital, but the next morning all of the pain, inflammation and infection was gone! The doctors had no explanation for what happened, but we know that God miraculously healed her. While she was in the hospital, Surine was able to minister to and pray for the other patients around her. Since she was healed, she has been able to rejoin her outreach team and is now out ministering in the community. We praise God for His healing mercy and the tremendous encouragement this was to the teams just before they went out to minister on Thursday.

All 19 outreach teams are now working with their churches and ministries throughout the Gauteng region. We will continue to bring you stories of what God is doing in and through their lives over the course of this outreach. Please keep them in your prayers over the next week. We want to see many lives impacted for the kingdom of God!