“Here I Am”
Almost There CD
MercyMe
"On the other side of the
world
She stands on the ocean shore
Gazing at the heavens she wonders
Is there something more
Never been told the name of Jesus
She turns and walks away
What a shame
Just across the street in your hometown
Leaving from his nine to five
Gazing down the road he wonders
Is this all there is to life
Never been told the name of Jesus
He continues on his way
What a shame
[CHORUS:]
Whom shall I send
Who will go for me
To the ends of the earth
Who will rise up for the King
Here am I send me
Here am I send me
Whether foreign land or neighbors
Everyone's the same
Searching for the answers
That lie within your name
I want to proclaim the love of Jesus
In all I do and say
Unashamed
[CHORUS]
[BRIDGE:]
How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news
Proclaiming peace and your salvation"
Sow Bona! (Hello in Zulu)
I have experienced a lot of really amazing things in my 44 years on many continents around the world. However, nothing prepared me for the most amazing journey of my life to the other side of the world with my church, Hopewell Reformed Church (HRC), to share the love of Christ to the least of the least - the children of Shalom Children's Ministry http://shalomchildren.co.za/. It has been said that "God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called." I spent a week and a half being used by God to do things I would have bet any amount of money I would never do the week before. Scott Quimby - Evangelist - not! But God had something else in mind. I experienced and witnessed the most amazing spiritual transformations as God worked His plan through our hands. I definitely had the feeling during the week of being very precisely positioned - just as a chess piece on the board - to be in very specific places at sometimes very odd times because God had a plan because I had a very specific skill or needed to have a very precise conversation which only I was equipped to have to further his Kingdom in profound ways. While I am writing this, I witnessed this going on again and again with each member of the team. It was so totally not about me or them. It was so totally about God for the 11 people on the team.
I told most of you about how it all started with 40 some odd
bags strewn all over my driveway on Wednesday the 8th with the chaos that
ensued. Each bag needed to be under 50 pounds.
Wouldn't you know that every bag came in at 49 pounds.
Somehow it all fit. We took everything we intended to
take. Many of you know that Rachael has been pitching the needs of
We get to Jo'Burg at 9:40pm at
night and all our 23 checked bags make it. All our 20-ish carry-ons with all the laptops make it fine. All the
computer equipment in my one large checked suitcase make
it fine. We fill out the customs forms honestly for all the computer
stuff and pray we don't have to pay duty. SA customs just wanted our
forms and not our money. Once again we're faced with two even smaller
vehicles on that end with 45 bags. Once again we experienced a little of
the "loaves and the fishes" as somehow we had exactly enough room for
what we brought and us. We leave Jo'burg
and we're driving east on the SA equivalent of the NYS Thruway and I-84 (just
on the wrong side of the road). Jo'burg
has 6 million people in it. (think
We drive to our other South African mission partner J-Life http://www.jlife.org.za/ on their 4,000 acre farm. We stayed in the Hopewell Block dorms which were 80% built by HRC. Half the team physically stayed on-site at the orphanage and the other half stayed at J-Life and went to the orphanage each day. I stayed at J-Life since I was working on the computers there before I went to the orphanage and after I came back from the orphanage.
Staying at J-Life we have gotten an opportunity to see John Abrahamse’s ministry operate first-hand. The
young people of J-Life have committed their lives to sharing the Good New of
Jesus Christ throughout southern
Personally staying at J-Life it has given me an opportunity
to help their ministry. We brought down a number of computers for
J-Life which have gone to J-Life staff members starting
their ministries as well as to substantially improve the efficiency of the
J-Life office. The computers that HRC has donated are going to make a
huge impact on their ministry. I got to briefly visit with a guy from
It was very profound to me one day to be sitting having breakfast at J-Life with a young man named Lethu who is committing his life to sharing Jesus with his people. He turns to me and asks me if I have any sneakers as he needs shoes. Here I am worrying minutes before as to whether my iPod is charged on the strange South African power plugs and this fine young man has no shoes to share the Good News! This was truly the practical lab work for the Bible stories I've read and heard all my life. So I give this young man my sneakers and was quite the fashion statement the last day with my black dress shoes dirty white socks and shorts. GQ here I come! Again it wasn't just me. Most of the team gave most of the clothes they brought away to staff and kids at the orphanage.
On Sunday morning we were taken to a
On Sunday during the day we practiced the “Ho” that
Sunday night we experienced J-Life’s version of HRC's Common Ground ultra contemporary service in combined English, Zulu, and Sutu languages. Wow!
We worked on a number of tangible projects at Shalom. We were blessed that the computer lab building that didn’t exist and we thought we might be building was installed last week complete with electricity. I sorted through Henk’s (who runs the orphanage with his wife Juanita) old computers junk donations. I had 240 volt sparks flying across the office and was blowing the circuit breakers constantly as I sorted through this stuff. We brought (5) computers for the lab, but he hoped that I could find (2) more somehow out of this pile of junk. We in fact be installed (7) computers. Six were in the lab and one in the office of Freddie who manages the kids. Looking at the piles when I started you would not have believed it was possible.
Besides the direct computer work at J-Life and at Shalom on the lab I also re-structured the Shalom office to improve their productivity. Then I spent a lot of time doing business process consulting talking about everything from ministry marketing, web site performance improvements, improving communications with sponsors, creating deliverables for sponsors, personnel issues, negotiating strategies with landlords, and visioning for what is next.
Henk would like to take over a
facility also owned by the railway that gave him the train station that is now
the orphanage. It is directly adjacent to the shantytown.
There he would like to open a day time hours soup
kitchen to feed the starving poor. A safe, free Zulu speaking daycare so
the children in the shanties will stop dying from neglect, a basic skills
parenting class so mothers can learn how to care for their children
properly. A basic adult literacy class. Perhaps a trade skills program. Henk
also has a dream of starting a ministry training program to grow more people to
do what he and Juanita does to save the children of
One thing that became evident to me is Shalom is our generation's "Schlinder's List". If the kids get to Shalom, they have physical life. Plus they'll be exposed to Christ. If they don't get to Shalom, they will die. The only question is how quickly and how painfully whether AIDS or murder or drugs (glue) or neglect. It is only a matter of time. It is really that simple
Someone just showed up a few days earlier and donated good carpet so we carpeted the computer lab and the nursery as winter is coming and is coming and they say it gets quite cold.
On the other side of the computer lab we put in a library for the kids from the hundreds of books that have been donated.
Rodney and Tina went with Kenneth from J-Life to
We did a lot of repairs and other small projects around the orphanage.
At night HRC's summer VBS program
ran to a very enthusiastic crowd under Kim's expert organization and the
ladies taking turns leading the program. We had a couple of fine young
men serve as our Zulu translators for the kids. Mauricio
shared his very powerful personal testimony of finding Christ on the
dangerous streets of
Henk took us to the shanty town
where these street kids come from. That was the Africa I remember from my
travels in
AIDS is everywhere. It is the black death of our time.
It is wiping out
The stories of these children just break your heart. There is Kenny whose mother passed out in a nearby creek and the police found him, still in his mother’s arms, in the creek with just his nose barely above the water. He was brought to Shalom and is thriving. I’ve spent a lot of time with the boy and the girl Rachael sponsors - Anna and Solomon. Anna and her sister Sonto (meaning Sunday) were found abandoned literally living in a dog house on a farm. They were foraging the dump for food for six months. They were near death when they were found by Shalom and brought to the orphanage. They were not expected to live. Sonto has numerous health issues. She raped by her father when she was two years old. She is so damaged from that event that she is still in diapers at 10 as she has no feeling down there. Sonto also has Spinal Bifida. Please pray for Sonto who needs an operation costing $43,000 which the government will not provide. Now they are in a loving Christian environment and starting to blossom. It is a very serious thing for girls to be thrown on the street because in the Zulu culture girls have financial value to the family when they are married off. There are many more boys than girls at Shalom. Solomon is a little boy who has mild epilepsy and came from a family that stole. He was thrown out onto the street. He is now at Shalom and has a love for Jesus and doing well in school and a love for dance. He teaches Sunday School to the nursery kids reading Bible stories and singing Bible songs like Jesus Loves Me. Juanita told me that after coming to Shalom he once found a wallet with about $850 in it. He promptly found the owner and returned all of it much to the surprise of the owner. One day Solomon announced to me that "his teacher" would be coming to the orphanage to meet with me in an hour. Sure enough an hour later Mrs. Fisher shows up and identifies herself as Solomon's teacher. She fills me in on Solomon's life and schooling. Again the questions come why are you here? Where are you from? There is a another boy whose parents threw him in a fire and is horribly disfigured on his back. Another whose mother tried to poison him. There is the story of a girl 16 who was staying at the orphanage and had sex one time. From that she got pregnant and got full blown AIDS. She got really sick, but the doctor's said the baby was healthy. After counseling with Juanita she decided to have the baby. But she was in the hospital because she was so sick. Her sister came to her and told her if she would just have the abortion she would be cured of AIDS. So she had the abortion and the doctor's made it even crueler leaving her with what remained of her baby. She presently is "working on dying" as Juanita calls it. What can you say to someone like that? The only good news is that in her last days she gave her life to Christ. Besides the widespread stories of rape and abuse there is story after story of entire families being wiped out by AIDS. There are also many stories of kids watching their entire families murdered in front of them. These are just few of the children’s stories. There around 80 more just like these. These children have experienced unspeakable acts and cruelty and poverty. They have nothing except Henk and Juanita who have committed their lives to saving one child at a time and show them a life in Christ. One thing Henk stressed to us on the shanty town visit was that while they may be healthy and safe, they have been robbed of the ability to dream. Most are living minute to minute with absolutely no thoughts about what they want to be when they grow up.
What we saw both broke our hearts and renewed our souls. We shed a lot of tears and felt such pain for the least of God’s children. At times it was emotionally difficult to process the reality of what we were seeing around us. I think the entire team has experienced a lot of spiritual growth as we work, listen, love, play and pray for and with these kids. The witness of Henk and Juanita’s lives and commitment to Christ is very inspiring. Shalom totally depends on God to provide the money, and means to care for these kids. At dinner Henk and Juanita relate story after story of how on a daily basis God provides miracles to care for these children who have nothing. Stories about there being no food and they stop and pray and a truck just shows up with the food they need, but didn't order. Stories about how needing 100,000 Rand to start the orphanage and having only 19,000, all the bills were paid. They take in more kids than they have beds. They stop and pray and someone shows up at the front gate and drops off just enough beds for their new arrivals. They have no bread and no money to buy bread. The stop and pray and later that day someone pulls up with a truck full of fresh baked rolls. Their very survival is based on the absolute faith that God provides. If God doesn't provide, these children will die. For seven years God has provided on a daily basis for these children. They have a guy and his girlfriend who come once a week and donate their time to run two dance classes. Shalom was praying for enrichment for the children. He said that he was driving by one day and something told him to turn around and drive into the orphanage.
Financially things are difficult. The government has not made any payments to Shalom in two years. The money goes to people with AIDS now. The fact that most people in the orphanage have been spared from AIDS is presently not significant enough for them to get money to support the kids. HRC is presently the largest single financial sponsor of the orphanage.
What a statement it made to the girls and to the community
to have these very white women walking these mostly Zulu orphan kids the very,
very long walk to the bus each morning! There is a real problem in
The other thing Henk had us do with the computer lab is pick two girls to be lab assistants and two boys. There is girl computer lab time and boy lab time. That way the girls get an equal access. It was quite funny to see the boys crowd into the computer lab and then compare it with the girls. Most of the guys were just wildly clicking and being silly. Just one boy “big” Solomon (not Rachael's Solomon) sat down and started Microsoft Word and started typing a letter about himself and Jesus as his first act in the computer lab. How cool is that? Then the girls come swarming in during girl time. Four of them sit down and fire up Word and start typing letters talking about Jesus and their desire to be more like Christ. No prodding, no suggesting. This was just what was on their hearts.
It was so profound to me that with all the horrors these kids have experienced, they have just joy and have such a love for Jesus in their hearts.
I brought an international, direct dial cell phone so Rachael and Maryann were able to talk to me twice a day about what was going on at the orphanage. She also got to talk directly to Anna and Solomon throughout the week a number of times. I told Solomon I was counting on him to look after Anna. On the last day in the last conversation Solomon said to Rachael on the phone, "don't worry Rachael (which he pronounces as Rachele) I will look after Anna just as if she is my small sister!" My heart melted. I sent one email back while I was down there because internet is quite painful and very slow and Rachael printed that out and brought the note to her teacher and kept a dialog going during the week about what was going on.
On the next to last day we were just completely broken as Henk and Juanita and family - these people who live by absolute faith who we came to serve for over a week kneeled down and ritually washed the feet of all of the team members and then anointed our feet with the anointing oil from Exodus 30:3. Nobody on the team could keep it together. We were so overcome by their actions that we just wept and wept. We came to serve them and here they were doing this for us. Words cannot do justice to the emotions of that time.
We were so moved by what was going on with God in us and
through us that as a group we felt we couldn't do our pseudo safari on our
one designated tourist day. Instead we went to the market for an hour and
a half one morning to buy a couple small things to bring home and then we went
to the Apartheid museum to learn about how this amazing country with so much
beauty and so much promise got so far off track. The South African
version of how Apartheid ended differs from the
Moving forward there are many things that trouble us.
First, for as amazing as Shalom is, it is but one building with 85 or so
kids. That is infinitesimal in terms of the problems of the
children in
It was an amazing week and so much has happened beyond the highlights I have shared. The HRC SA team was amazing. To see how we all grew during the week was incredible. It was a week all about God and sharing Christ. It was the most amazing thing I have ever done. What God did through us was unbelievable. I just sat in the library/lab on the last Sunday when it was all over and wept. A lot of tears where shed by the team during the week. It was at times really, really hard for us to process what was going on. We really experienced God qualifying the called as every one of us stepped out in ways and with gifts that were unimaginable for us to comprehend even a week before.
So that is a glimpse of our story of the absolute worst inhumanity to man and of hope and redemption physically through the life-saving efforts of Shalom Children’s ministry and spiritually as the children come to know Christ!
Please pray for these children and Shalom Children’s Ministries. Please pray for Henk and Juanita as they show us that with absolute faith in Christ, mountains can move. Please pray for John and Lorna and J-Life as they work to redeem the souls of the next generation of Southern Africans.
In
my personal reflection back on my South African journey I go back to last May
during 40 Days of Purpose when I am sitting on Bruce Pearson's couch and he's
pitching his June mission trip to
I
do desperately need older (or newer) laptops that are working for
Next
summer HRC will again be going back to
Sometime probably
in the winter in 2007 HRC will be going to
I hope this gives you a glimpse of what I did on my Spring
Break. You can see the “official” HRC report with some pictures at: http://www.hopewellreformedchurch.org/missions/safrica06/sareport.htm
. Also I have my personal trip pictures posted at: http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=15az92u.a4upif1z&Uy=-2cclsu&Ux=0
Being God's servant on the front lines is a tremendous privilege and it is a very cool thing. I will never be the same. Here I am Lord. Send me!
Sali Gassi (Goodbye in Zulu)
In His Service,
Scott