Lighthouse Shelter Outreach

From the perspective of one of our DTS students:::::

Laden With Clothes...and a Small Dose of Sunburn!
This week was entitled Lighthouse Outreach. We were all excited for a week break from classes to get out and do some practical work! Well I think its safe to say we all envisioned holding babies, playing with children, and having a jolly comfortable time. Well we were in for a surprise when the Shelter staff decided we’d be better used to organized their clothes shed. This shed is a small inferno used primarily for holding cardboard boxes and dusty bag after bag of mis-sorted clothing, and specifically this week, for creating a sweat-box for 3 American, 1 Dutch, 1 Canadian, and 1 Sychellois (We have one guy from the Seychelles- I asked him what he would be, and I was wrong with my initial guess of Seychellian haha). After the first day, we were all exhausted and perhaps even slightly disheartened at the week that lay before us. The clothes were masses in numbers, and needed sorting in gender, sizes, season, and then finally into outfits, pajamas, and one-sizes to compile “kits” for new children that come to the Lighthouse. (In short it took us 3 days to sort just the Girls clothes and make 120 bags of kits.) That first evening I went for a walk with one of the staff members, and I talked with her about how I felt my attitude needed to change if I was going to make it through the week, and build up my peers, rather than make the week more difficult. So she asked me, “What would I choose to do” if for the rest of the week we had to do clothes, (in regards to my attitude) and I really took to focus this question.

Through this week God really laid in me a focus to serve with joyful diligence. And to work hard at service not for man but unto God, - testing service as a discipline rather than a choice. True service does not measure inconvenience, and that’s something difficult for myself to grasp.




Aside from this week’s 8 to 2:30 daily work at the Lighthouse, we went to Phokeng to play with children and have small groups with them after their dinner. We on Sunday went to a Braai at Derek & Rebecca’s (the base directors) with some of the workers from the Lighthouse shelter, and some Americans (talk about a taste of home!) from Colorado.

Phokeng itself was wonderful, I love spending time here, and I am getting better with names, Praise the Lord! This Monday I asked one girl if she had any homework I could help her with and she said she didn’t, but she brought out this coloring activity book, and it had pages of simple fun math problems and drawing pages, and after a short while we had a small group of children gathered around trying to be the first to guess the math problem hidden behind my hand. So much fun! I am so blessed by these children, and they hardly realize it!

Sustained by the Father,
Lyndah

New Year, New Students January '09 DTS

Wow, what a start to the January School! The students arrived on January 17th. We have four students, three ladies and one guy, from the USA and the Netherlands. These are great students and we are so excited about what God has already done in just four short weeks.

Our first teacher taught on “Hearing the Voice of the Lord”. We really dug deep into prayer and intercession. Martin Luther said, “More work is done by prayer than by work itself”. A lot of the time, we forget to pray or we use prayer as a last resort. And since it is a two way communication, we not only get to cast all our cares and those of others on to Jesus, 1 Peter 5:7, but we also get to listen. The God of the Universe wants to speak to us too. That amazes me. We can hear what he wants to tell us too, unless we have allowed hindrances in our lives. Fear is a big one that many people, myself included, have looming around our lives and that is a huge barrier between us and God. God is speaking and we want to hear, but the message can’t get through so we must stand on the Word of God, 2 Timothy 1:7. Some other hindrances are insecurities; how can we think we can hear from God when we don’t think we CAN! We often times don’t think God wants to use us, or we think we “can’t” do whatever He may tell us. We don’t see our worth as sons and daughters of the King! Also, selfishness is a barrier. We want what we want when we want it and who wants to wait on God when I can make it happen right now for me! That’s our attitudes sometimes. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:31, we must die to our flesh and our fleshly desires, DAILY! That is what DTS is all about. It is a Discipleship Training School but it is also teaching us, the staff included, what it means to Die To Self. With ourselves out of the way, we can be filled with the Holy Spirit and be of more use to God and the Kingdom. Distractions and confusion are two more hindrances in hearing the voice of the Lord. God is teaching us to hear him INSPITE of the noises around us. And confusion, well, the devil would just love to confuse us all but we have to stand on the Word of God and in 1 Corinthians 14:33 it says, “ for God is not a God of confusion but of peace…”. We either say we believe the Word of God and believe this scripture too or none at all. There are so many more examples but these are just some. As with most things, it sure is a process :-) Blessings to all!
Mitch

This is just a taste of our first class and God has used it to grow each of us as he has with each week. God is so amazing. He uses different ways to teach us and we are hungry!

OTC February 6-11

Our students went to OTC, Overcomers Through Christ, this past week. We headed out to Fisherman’s village which is in a suburb of Johannesburg, to learn more about ourselves, God, and receive some inner healing. We all have issues and so many times we are looking at the outer layer of what irritates us and not seeking out the root of it. So many times we have hidden unforgiveness or resentment and we have no idea we suffer, or we do not see breakthrough or blessing. Those things hinder us from walking in the fullness of God.





Our students took the weekend to sit through this intense teaching. It is a lot to take in and process all at once so I am sure they are still processing all that happened. We did make some time to relax and just hang out while we were there. Once the OTC ended we stayed on for the next few days. We were able to sleep which is what everyone needed. We did take a trip to the local mall for fun in civilization. Attended the Lion Park to pet some lions and feed the giraffes. What an experience that was.







We left on Wednesday and headed over to the wonder caves. That is something I think everyone was looking forward to. Well once we arrived there came up a huge thunderstorm. Lightening was hitting all around us and we were just under a tent waiting for the men to show us the way down into the cave. Lightening hit a pole near us and that knocked out the generator and we were unable to travel down into the earth. We were all a little freaked out that the lightening was so close and we were more than happy to run through the rain to jump in the van and head back to Rustenburg. Those few days were filled with laughter and we grew a little closer together. It was great.


It was good to be home and get back into the swing of things. We all needed to do laundry and get rested up for our Shelter outreach next week.

Botswana Ministry

Some of the leadership team, Derek van de Merwe, Matt Meng, and myself, Mitch Hassell had the privilege of attending the Open Gates Conference in Palapye, Botswana. We were invited to come from January 28th thru 31st and share a little on the Power of God. Little did we know that we were actually given the morning sessions and 2 evening sessions. We were able to speak with Pastor Peter and find out what his heart was and what the purpose of this conference was all about. To teach and equip people on how to move in the power of God. We took his idea of equipping the body and sought the Lord about what we should go over in our sessions.

Matt Meng had the first night session and he spoke on how worship is a lifestyle and not just something we do on Sunday mornings or during church or ministry meetings. That worship must begin with and flow out of relationship and intimacy with God. Genesis 1:26 Let us make man in our image, speaks of honor. We create statues to honor our heros or people we want to honor and how much would the Godhead honor one another to make us in His image. That is amazing.



Speaking of honor, I don’t think I have been more humbled at how this church served and honored their guest speakers. I have never had anyone come up to me and carry my Bible and notebooks into church and place them on my seat. Nor have I seen more sacrifice in providing meals than I saw last week. They cooked chickens and this is the first time I have seen people actually kill, pluck and prepare chicken. It is an all day event but I was in awe.
This church and culture certainly know what it is to serve. If we could all only model after that. These people gave generously out of their lack. What an amazing thing to see and experience. Jesus said of the widow with her two mites that she had given more than all the rich people had given, and we were privileged to see this principle in action.

Our team took time to seek the Lord as to what we should speak and teach on. We felt the Lord leading us to teach on Hearing the Voice of God. We were created to know God and have relationship with Him. Communication forms the basis for any successful relationship and knowing how to hear the voice of the Lord has to be one of the most important areas of focus after salvation. This was our theme in our morning sessions and while anyone was speaking or teaching the people were on the edge of their seats. "The hunger and thirst of the believers was evidenced through their note taking and questions asked. It was so encouraging. The visiting pastors were the same way. At no time did they act as though they knew everything but instead drank in every word.

On the last evening service Derek spoke about how the Kingdom of God is not of talk but of power, 1 Corinthians 4:20. God’s power to heal and save is bigger and greater than the devils ability to bring sickness and death. According to Revelation 12:11 Satan was thrown out by Michael the archangel, God did not even have to get involved in the battle. With that knowledge why do we think so often that Satan is bigger than he is? In Colossians 1:15 Jesus is the image of the invisible God. If people wanted to know what God was like they would look to Jesus. Its the same today. If people want to know what God looks like they look to you. What Jesus are you showing? When people look at you, can they see that God is a God of power? It was a great teaching. Afterwards we had a time to pray for anyone wanting to come forward. I remember praying for a young lady who said she had a backache and chest pains and afterwards, gone! Three other people prayed to receive Jesus as their Saviour. It was incredible.



To top it all off we were able to make relationships with 2 other pastors whom we will be able to come along side and minister with. It amazes me how in our obedience God opens the doors and a flood of blessing and provision comes pouring out. I’m finding that if I just take that first step in obedience He totally takes over and takes care of the rest. How many times in the Bible do we see that as well?

It was affirmed in our hearts that God desires for us to do more work in the country of Botswana. There are only 1.8 million people living in the nation and we know that God desires for the nation to experience revival. If you desire to take a team into this nation, please let us know as we would love to host you.