July 2017 - Apprentice

Winter has arrived in Mafikeng again.  Temperatures are down in the 30’s some nights, but still over 70 during the day.  I’ve gotten out the extra blankets, heavy vests, and scarves and plan to enjoy the cool weather as much as possible.

This morning I’m making the 4.5 hour drive to Johannesburg today to pick up a vet student who is flying in early tomorrow.  She will be staying with me as a Christian Veterinary Mission apprentice.  Apprenticeships are for vet students wanting to get a better feel for long term missions. This apprentice is interested in long term missions, student ministry in particular, so she has come to spend some time here in Mafikeng and get a glimpse of life on the field.  Life is not just all work, however. 

We are both looking forward to a week-long visit to the Cape Town region this month, although I think I’ll leave her to some of the more adventurous activities. She may still be able to talk me into cage diving with the great white sharks, but the bungee jumping is definitely off the table.

The day after the apprentice leaves in Aug, I pick up another CVM visitor for a two weeks stay.  We had hoped to put together another short-term mission team, but it didn’t work out this year so one vet is coming on her own. It will be a very busy winter, but it is always a pleasure to show visitors around this beautiful county.

The students are now on winter recess and will start their second term later this month.  I have to admit, it is nice to have a break from all the activities.

Well, I’d best head off down the road so I miss the traffic in the big city.

May 2017 - Baptism!

“Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection”  Romans 6:3-4

Just a few weeks ago, as the sun set and the sky turned brilliant orange, we baptized twelve students in the university pool.  Most of these students had participated in our Bible studies or witnessing training and had been believers for some time, but had never sealed their faith with Baptism. It was such a great joy to see them walking in obedience through this outward expression of their faith. 

A few days before, I had led the women’s Bible study, on campus, covering the topic of baptism. We examined what the Bible has to say about why, how, when, by whom, etc.  Because Christianity has been in South Africa for over 250 years, most people are familiar with many aspects of the faith, but the truth has also been twisted into numerous distorted forms. Relating to baptism, some of the false beliefs we encountered in that study include:

•         Baptism is what saves you – to combat this we looked at Romans 10:9-10 showing that salvation comes though confessing Christ as Lord and believing in His death and resurrection. 
•         Baptism is commitment to a church – Romans 6:3-4 shows baptism in the Biblical sense is identification with Christ and His death and resurrection, not a particular church.
•         Once you are baptized you have to be a “better” Christian – there seems to be an idea that until you are baptized you can be a “Christian” and yet still worship the ancestors a little, or not have to give up certain behaviors.  Once you are baptized, then you really have to obey Him.  In contrast, John 15 says that if we love Christ, we need to obey Him (regardless of our baptism status).  It is not baptism that demands obedience, but rather our faith in Christ.
•         You have to be a “good” Christian before you can be baptized – just as we can never be good enough to earn our salvation, we don’t earn the right to baptism though our actions.  Here we looked at I John 1:6-10 to see that all Christians will still sin and need to confess those sins and that Biblically, baptism followed immediately after belief (Acts 8:25-39; 16:31-33; 22:12-16), not after a person was found to be worthy.

It is such a blessing to study the scriptures with these students and see God reveal Himself to them in new ways each week.  Please pray that false doctrines and false teachers in their lives will be exposed and the Spirit will give them discernment to see the truth that God reveals in His word.  That they will be like the Bereans and receive the word with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether the things they have been taught are true. Please also pray that those who heard the truth, but were not yet willing to make the commitment of baptism, will soon be convicted to follow Christ in this way.

Please also pray as we develop and refine a series of initial discipleship lessons, for new believers. We will be teaching these to the witnessing students to use as follow-up to sharing the gospel.

No riots!

No riots!  Can you believe it?  We are now several weeks into the new term and there have been no protests or even signs of unrest on campus.  Since returning to South Africa in January, I have continued to prayer walk around campus with the Gestrings (IMB missionaries on campus) three mornings a week and, now that the students are back, we frequently have students join us as we pray for continued peace and God’s light to overflow this campus.

Now that schools and the university are back in session, all the associated activities are also in full swing.  Final year student rotations at the clinic are proceeding well, although our supplier keeps postponing the needed vaccine deliveries so we have been out of DAPP dog vaccines for almost a month. We are seeing plenty of interesting cases including distemper, parvo, mango worm, Ehrlichia and Babesia tick fevers, a hind limb amputation, and a possible case of rabies (sent to the state vet for testing).

Outside the clinic, I continue to help lead a women’s student Bible study on Monday nights and we have had great attendance by first year, as well as returning, students.  On Wednesday nights I assist with a student witnessing training group and we are already planning outreaches for June and October during the breaks as well as monthly trips back to the village of Sixhundred.  Fridays, my church hosts AWANA for about one hundred kids (1st-7th grade) and I do the record keeping. It is a bit overwhelming, but the kids are totally worth it.  Finally, every other Saturday is our ladies meeting at church, but thankfully I’m not currently leading those meetings.   It is nice to just be a participant!
Early in February, the Gestrings organized a showing of the movie “To Save a Life” and we had almost 200 students attend!  Over 130 filled out comment cards and we have been working through visiting each of those students in their dorm rooms, answering questions, sharing the gospel, and inviting them to the Bible Studies.

Whew! Sounds like a lot when I see it all written out, but thankfully, I still have time for some gardening, reading, and working on French with Rosetta Stone.

In January’s prayer letter, I mentioned enjoying the rain while I was home, in Seattle, but I think I brought it back with me!  It has been raining here at least weekly and we often receive more than an inch each time it rains.  I’ve logged more than 12 inches in the past month. Thankfully, that means less time spent watering the garden :)  Thank you so much for your prayers for rain over the past 18 months.

Unfortunately, the increased rain also means the recurrence of the nasty Mango worm.  The flies lay eggs in moist ground or moist clothing hung out to dry.  When the hatched larvae contact skin they quickly penetrate the skin and grow into maggots.  Once they have grown large enough, they wiggle out a hole in the skin and turn into flies.  Usually, Mafikeng is dry enough to prevent their development.  Now, all clothing/sheets/towels hung outside to dry have to be ironed to kill the larvae.  Since I don’t have a clothes dryer and hate ironing, I’ve invested in an indoor drying rack.

Now you have something to be thankful for when doing your laundry.  No fear of Mango worm!

Jan Prayer Letter

Welcome to 2017!  Can you believe how quickly the past year has flown?  Half of my three year term here in South Africa is now past and I’m sure the next half will go by even faster.

Over the holidays, I had a wonderful time at home with my family and thoroughly enjoyed the cool, wet weather and even some snow!  My parent’s kitchen had heavy use as I filled it with cookies of all shapes and sizes and even some candy and dipped chocolates.  It was so nice to bake with a “normal” size oven again.  My oven here in South Africa is too small for an American cookie sheet and only has one oven rack.  The oven’s booklet also stated that I can only use three of the four burners at any one time or two burners and the oven.  So why did they make it with four burners?

Let me backtrack a bit further into last year and let you know that the university managed to stay peaceful long enough to finish exams and complete the year (the South African school year runs Feb-Nov).  In the clinic, we spent two days in November running practical exams for the students to evaluate their clinical skills.  All of the degree (4-year) students did well, but the diploma students (three-year) struggled.  Unfortunately, when they are accepted to university they don’t always get to study in their chosen field and may end up placed in random courses.  For example, they may have applied to study education and become a teacher and ended up placed in animal health.  That tends to reduce their enthusiasm and I can’t say I blame them.  Some of the students are so scared of dogs that they won’t even touch them! 

The new school year starts with registration at the end of this month and I suspect there will be further protests/riots as there was last year.  Last year the students missed so many days of teaching and days in the clinic due to the protests that it really seemed to affect their learning. 

For this New Year, I would appreciate your prayers for the following:

• ·    Please pray that registration will proceed uninterrupted and that classes will start without hindrance.
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• ·         Please pray that the Lord’s spirit of peace will overflow the campus and that he would frustrate the intentions of those seeking to disrupt it.
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• ·        Please pray for our outreach to incoming freshmen, that many will desire to be involved in our witnessing training and Bible studies.
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• ·         Please pray for the new year of AWANA, that the verses the children memorize will stay with them over the years to come and that they will understand the gospel fully.  

Christmas Letter 2016

“Christmas time is here

Happiness and cheer

Fun for all that children call

Their favorite time of year”

                    - Lee Mendelson

What a blessing it is to be home for Christmas this year!  For some reason, it didn’t really feel like Christmas last December in South Africa. Maybe the 100 degree weather and blazing sunshine had something to do with that.  It just isn’t right, for me, to spend Christmas in a tank top and shorts!  And how can you have Christmas without baking?  But who wants to heat up their oven when it is crazy hot and there is no air conditioning?

Thankfully, Christmas isn’t about baking, wearing hats and scarves, drinking hot chocolate, or even being with family.  It is about celebrating the birth of Christ; come to redeem the world. He brought freedom, love, redemption, and hope to ALL people.  That fact holds true no matter what the weather is like!

It took 24 hours, airport to airport, to get home from South Africa, with a 2 hour layover in Amsterdam.  Thankfully, the flights went smoothly and my baggage arrived, with me, in Vancouver, BC safe and sound.  I must say, however, I’m not looking forward to the flight back on the 27th.  I don’t think I’ll ever get used to these long-haul flights. 

While home, I’ve enjoyed spending several days with my Aunt over this holiday season. She is fighting a losing battle with cancer and so I cherish every minute we spend together. This is the kind of thing that makes living overseas difficult. 

On a happier note, I had a bit of reverse culture shock in the produce department of Fred Meyer recently.  Such an amazing abundance and variety!  Not that South Africa is really lacking in their produce departments, especially compared to other Africa countries.  But still, I looked around, sighed, and enjoyed the display.

Some of the foods I’ve been enjoying while home include: eggnog, bagels, clam chowder, tortilla chips, and coffee shop drinks.  I may have to attempt making bagels back in South Africa when the weather cools down again.

As much as I enjoy being back in the US, I look forward to getting back to South Africa and starting the new year with a new group of students. My garden there likely needs a lot of love after being neglected for a month and I’m sure my foster cat, Leo, will be very happy to have company again.

I’ll skip all the details about the past year in South Africa since you have probably been keeping up with me via my prayer letters and Facebook. If for some reason you don’t receive my regular prayer letters from South Africa, please let me know or sign up at www.cvmusa.org/quam.

I wish you a stress free Christmas season and a heart filled with the peace of Christ.

Dec Prayer Letter - Project in Sixhundred

Can you believe it is December already?  By the time you read this letter I’ll be home in WA for a few weeks enjoying the holidays with my family.  I not only look forward to seeing my family, but also to experiencing a WA winter.  Hopefully we will get lots of rain while I’m home!  After the last year and a half living in near desert conditions, my soul is parched for rain.  The smell of rain, the sound of rain, and the feel of rain will all be a blessing.

Since my last letter in October, we (the Gestring’s and I) took five of our witnessing training students on an outreach in the nearby village of Sixhundred. Although the university had been shut down for two weeks previously due to student protests, we were still able to continue with the outreach.
We worked with a small church in the village to host a children’s program in the morning and a youth outreach in the afternoons/evenings.  Each morning, children came from all over the village to have a lesson in Tae Kwan Do and then to hear Bible stories and discuss them in small groups.  As always, the Tae Kwan Do was a big hit and many of the kids worked extremely hard on their own time to get the pattern down for the contest on the final day.  Thankfully, because this village is near Mafikeng, Dr Gestring will take some of his university Tae Kwan Do students out there regularly to continue working with the village kids.

This year, however, our primary goal was working with the youth of that church to train them in evangelism and outreach for their community.  After several training sessions, our university students took the church youth out into the village door to door each afternoon.  It was so exciting to see the youth of the church gradually taking on the responsibilities of witnessing and, as a result, growing in their own faith. It was also wonderful to see our university students taking on the leadership and training roles so that the Gestrings and I were simply there for support. Our university students hope to continue working with the youth of the church at Sixhundred over the next year.

After the outreach, when the university reopened, violent protests continued for several days and I spent 2 weeks living with friends off campus.  This time, the university decided to actively crack down on the protesters rather than closing the university down.  However, over the first few days, things were quite rough and one of the Animal Health lecturers was hosed down with a fire extinguisher and another was assaulted with rocks. By the second week, campus was calm enough that classes and tests could continue.

During the second week, the Gestrings started a daily prayer walk around campus at 6am and we continued these prayer walks for several weeks, joined frequently by various staff and students.  The first few days we found numerous rubber bullets in our path that had been fired by the security and police to disperse rioting students.  I picked up several for souvenirs

In early November, I spoke at the regional women’s conference in which my church participates.  I was asked to share about living for God as a single woman and enjoyed the opportunity. Quite a few women from my church were also in attendance and we relished the fellowship despite the rather rustic accommodation.

Continued Riots on Campus

Today is day three of living with friends off campus while students run amok on campus. Although the university insists each morning that all is under control and that staff should continue with normal activities, we have not opened the clinic due to fears for client and staff safety. Over the past two days many lecturers have been chased out of the lecture halls with fire extinguishers, professors have been assaulted, and one Dr who works at the clinic was attacked by students throwing rocks. How can the university continue to ask staff to come to work when they have clearly been unable to control the situation adequately? We will see what today brings.

Thankfully, our campus is not the one making headlines this time around. There has been no major damage here recently. On many other universities however, students continue to burn buses, buildings, residences, etc. In Johannesburg, one protest spilled out into the city and several shops were looted and destroyed. There is even talk of the government calling for a state of emergency.

Why are the students protesting? They have decided that it is time for the government to make university free for all students. Now, just like a toddler who isn't getting what he wants, they are throwing a temper tantrum, using violence to attempt to force their own way no matter the consequences to the rest of the country.