Thank you for your prayers during our outreach last month! It went incredibly well despite many unexpected last minute changes and circumstances. I took a group of six North-West University (NWU) students from the evangelism group I inherited and we met up with two former NWU students, a couple from the International Mission Board, and five Americans from Kentucky. The first blessing was how well everyone gelled as a team despite different nationalities, cultures, and ages.
We partnered with a local church in a township (black, poor, outlying, densely populated suburb) called Jouberton, outside the city of Klerksdorp. Many of the homes here are cobbled together from cement blocks, corrugated steel, and anything else that can be scavenged. Most only have outhouses for toilet facilities. Trash gets dumped wherever is convenient and sewage frequently overflows from manholes and runs down the dirt streets. Jouberton’s population of 111,938 people is crammed into eight square miles with extremely limited public services.
We had two main goals for the week: a children’s program in the mornings for three days and a youth (teens and young adults) outreach each evening. The children’s program was the primary responsibility of the Americans and they were excited this year to mostly hand off the program to the local church, Letlhabile Baptist Church, with a training day on Sunday after church. One of the former NWU evangelism students led the kids in Tae Kwon Do for an hour each morning and then they had a Bible story time and discussion groups. Finally, games were organized for the last hour, with football (soccer) being a favorite of the boys, and a cooked lunch was provided. Ages ranged from around 3 to 15 years of age with 180-240 children coming each day. On the final day, over 40 kids indicated a desire to know Jesus as their savior.
 
Although my NWU students helped out with the children in the mornings, their primary focus was the youth in the evening. We went out into the streets each afternoon to invite people we met in yards or walking down the street and had many great conversations. Wonderfully, many of those we spoke with did come along in the evenings. The students planned out 4 discussion based gatherings using movie clips to introduce a different topic each night. After the movie clip the students led the discussions and finished each night with related Biblical foundations. We had a wonderful turnout of youth each night and they were actually willing to interact in the discussions and ask questions. On the final night we had 35 youth attend! Although the students and I returned to Mafikeng exhausted both mentally and physically, everyone is eager to do it again! Please pray for us as we look into starting a similar youth program in a village near North-West University. The student evangelism group is also using the last few weeks before summer break (Nov-Jan) to plan outreach activities for the incoming freshman in Feb. Please pray for guidance from the Lord in how we should reach out to both non-believers and Christians next year. For more photos from the outreach visit my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/GoSpeakLiveBoldly. God bless,
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