One of the things I absolutely love about the Word of God is that it is always true for every single human being. No matter who you are, where you live in the world or what your age or gender is.
At the beginning of the year, my friend Jo and I were praying for one another and asking Jesus if there was anything specific He wanted us to trust Him for in 2018. I shared how I felt so challenged by Amber Polly (she had come to Covenant Life Church (CLC) on her way to and from the Four12 Malawi outreach she went on) and felt Jesus stirring my heart to go on an outreach too.
Both Jo and I both have large families (we each have four kiddies) and so it has always seemed obvious that it’s just not the ‘season’ in which we could do this. Yet we both strongly felt Jesus challenge our thinking and that He would determine what each season held for us, regardless of what seemed obvious to us.
I spoke to Dan and was taken by surprise when he immediately witnessed with what I was saying.
With that in my heart, I spoke to Dan (my husband who leads our church CLC) and was taken by surprise when he immediately witnessed with what I was saying. He told me that he and the kids would be fine without me for a few days and that I should obey Jesus in His leading. My friend Jo’s husband, Tony, had a similar response.
With that, we began to find out about the Four12 outreach to Malawi in May 2018, and actively trusted Jesus for the finances to go. We held a fun ‘Malawi evening’ and shared our hearts with our CLC family and friends, where everyone was very excited for what Jesus was leading us in. Alea (my eldest daughter, aged 6) prayed every night for our trip and all that Jesus would do through the team going to Malawi. With only two weeks left before we needed to leave, God provided for the costs of our air tickets and other monies needed to go.
As I write this, Jo and I sit in the airport on our way back to Johannesburg after our time in Malawi and I am absolutely amazed at what this time has done in my heart. We both had so many moments during the outreach of looking at each other and marvelling at Jesus and how grateful we are to have responded to His perfect and gracious leading.
‘No matter who you are, where you live in the world or what your age or gender is, the Word of God is true for everyone’.
We fell in love with the Malawian people, received perspective on many things, and learned much from Lance McIntosh (a leader at Joshua Generation Church who led the outreach), the team and the local people, who face deeper poverty and more challenging conditions than we had ever seen before.
We also witnessed how the light and hope of Jesus shines so brightly in Malawi. We saw the truth of ‘No matter who you are, where you live in the world or what your age or gender is, the Word of God is true for everyone’.
