This weekend on the Mariental Outreach I did my best to live the motto “sleep when you get home,” but now after catching up on that sleep and the NFL draft I think I’m about ready to try and put this weekend into words. You’ll also be pleased to know Dieter allowed me to borrow his pocket-sized camera so I was able to catch a few pics to share.
Everything went fairly smoothly on Thursday afternoon getting the group of 100ish teenagers, leaders, and volunteers from the youth camp to the train station in Windhoek, but when our departure to Mariental was delayed for about 2 hours Dieter loving reminded me TIM – “This is missions!” This experienced missionary seized the opportunity to break out the guitar and have a little worship service in the back of the train car. Sleep was hard to come by on the train, but we finally arrived at 4:30am and could catch a few ZZZs at our accommodations before breakfast.
Friday morning was spent setting up the three large tents for Saturday’s outreach. I’ll suffice to say it was the very definition of the cliché ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ so I mostly kept quiet and just did whatever I could to help.
In the afternoon we hit the streets for some door-to-door evangelism and our first face to face encounter with Mariental. I joined Ronnie, one of the leaders, and Jerry, one of the teens who spoke Damara/Nama. Our goal was to invite everyone we could to the evening session and Saturday’s programs and to pray with them if they’d like. Most of our interaction was done if Afrikaans, but at this point I was still playing observer so I didn’t mind feeling largely useless.
At the evening session I met up with Andreas, the eldest child from the Ark in Okahandja who happened to be spending the school holiday at his uncle’s house in Mariental, finally a ministry opportunity I knew what to do with. Andreas is generally a pretty quiet guy, mostly just answering questions, so it’s sometime hard to carry on a conversation. But I think me seeking him out and spending that time, despite the awkwardness, was a valuable investment into that relationship. If nothing else, it was a familiar face in a strange town where he doesn’t have many friends.
The session itself was pretty typical of what I’ve experienced at African crusades. The lively, upbeat, repetitive music stirred up quite a frenzy. The preacher read a passage then used that to talk about whatever he wanted. The altar call was filled with salvation proclamations and prayers for healing. Those who know me know this is far from my idea of effective evangelism, but I don’t limit what God can do and I know He uses these kinds of things in people’s lives, so I was simply glad to have my equally unemotional friend, Andreas, sitting next to me amidst the surrounding commotion.
After a long day, my pillow was a welcome sight, although I had started coming down with a flu so it would prove to be a somewhat restless night.
Everything went fairly smoothly on Thursday afternoon getting the group of 100ish teenagers, leaders, and volunteers from the youth camp to the train station in Windhoek, but when our departure to Mariental was delayed for about 2 hours Dieter loving reminded me TIM – “This is missions!” This experienced missionary seized the opportunity to break out the guitar and have a little worship service in the back of the train car. Sleep was hard to come by on the train, but we finally arrived at 4:30am and could catch a few ZZZs at our accommodations before breakfast.
Friday morning was spent setting up the three large tents for Saturday’s outreach. I’ll suffice to say it was the very definition of the cliché ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ so I mostly kept quiet and just did whatever I could to help.
In the afternoon we hit the streets for some door-to-door evangelism and our first face to face encounter with Mariental. I joined Ronnie, one of the leaders, and Jerry, one of the teens who spoke Damara/Nama. Our goal was to invite everyone we could to the evening session and Saturday’s programs and to pray with them if they’d like. Most of our interaction was done if Afrikaans, but at this point I was still playing observer so I didn’t mind feeling largely useless.At the evening session I met up with Andreas, the eldest child from the Ark in Okahandja who happened to be spending the school holiday at his uncle’s house in Mariental, finally a ministry opportunity I knew what to do with. Andreas is generally a pretty quiet guy, mostly just answering questions, so it’s sometime hard to carry on a conversation. But I think me seeking him out and spending that time, despite the awkwardness, was a valuable investment into that relationship. If nothing else, it was a familiar face in a strange town where he doesn’t have many friends.
The session itself was pretty typical of what I’ve experienced at African crusades. The lively, upbeat, repetitive music stirred up quite a frenzy. The preacher read a passage then used that to talk about whatever he wanted. The altar call was filled with salvation proclamations and prayers for healing. Those who know me know this is far from my idea of effective evangelism, but I don’t limit what God can do and I know He uses these kinds of things in people’s lives, so I was simply glad to have my equally unemotional friend, Andreas, sitting next to me amidst the surrounding commotion.
After a long day, my pillow was a welcome sight, although I had started coming down with a flu so it would prove to be a somewhat restless night.
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