Our new commander in chief

After yesterday's commissioning service, it is now official: Paul Makhurupetsi is the new National director for Navigators, South Africa!

Below you can read a bit more about him:
Paul's Bio...
Paul was born in Limpopo Province, South Africa and raised up in a village (Ga-Kuranta). He is the third out of a family of eight children (two have passed on). He came to Christ in 1986, after the sudden death of a close cousin. "I started to have a fear of death and a felt need for protection against evil. All along I thought I was a good person and therefore God's child. Another cousin of mine, Joseph Makhurupetsi, who had become a believer, shared Christ with me and after a few days of struggling with the idea, I responded to Christ." says Paul.

Paul received spiritual mentoring form his uncle, Ronald Moroatshehla (who was a teacher at his high school) and Bob Turner (a missionary who started The Navigators ministry in South Africa).

Paul studied B.Sc (computer science) and worked for 4 years in the IT division of a national logistic company in SA. In March 1999, he resigned his job in order to serve in a full-time capacity with the Navigators. His ministry focus has been on reaching and discipling students at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Paul's interests are national & global politics and soccer. For a holiday he would like to travel to any or all of these: Israel, Egypt, US, UK, or Dubai.
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Please pray for Paul as he takes over from Manfred.

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Faith gives you an unfair advantage.

"Faith is like radar which sees through the fog - the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see." - Corrie Ten Boom
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4 God's Glory!

If you live without a vision of the glory of God flooding our planet, you are in danger of serving your own dreams of greatness as you wait to do 'the next thing' God tells you. -- Floyd McClung

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Bible Reading Marathon

The 'Athletes'
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-borrowing some words from those who participated-

Bruce Nygaard:

25 books. 23 people. 13 hours. 1 great time.

If anyone thought it might be boring to read the Bible for 13 hours with only short breaks and no discussion, our Bible Marathon on Friday-Saturday proved the opposite!
The more we read, the more we found ourselves energized as book flowed into book and morning flowed into afternoon. The best part for me was reading IN COMMUNITY. For example, whenever the Pharisees said something daft (which was always), we laughed. And whenever Jesus said something so brilliant that only Jesus could have said it, our exclamations punctuated it.
It was nice not to have anyone putting their own spin on the message. And reading together as a group kept us on pace with God's train of thought, rather than getting snagged by thorny details. We could better see what's gloriously important (and what isn't).
Here are a few comments from other participants:

Zethu: God's word unedited, no one's opinion, no additions. Just His voice! I described the marathon to a friend as being like standing under a waterfall and feeling the water gushing over you. You do not feel the [individual] droplets, you feel the goodness of the whole. You are cleansed, not only because you realize your faults, but because you're reminded of the beautiful bigger picture…

Takadzani: Most of the time I read the New Testament with a very inquisitive mind, asking trivial questions, thus losing the central message-- the message of the cross and it's power! Reading the Bible in this manner helped me see the simplicity that we often complicate.

Thato: Everything came together for me. I get it now!

Felix: Doing this Bible marathon helped me see more clearly the simple fact that Jesus is being preached… It really is all about Him!

Mercy: Reading through the book of Hebrews in one sitting was just simply wow! It hit me again as to what Jesus actually came and did. And it was really great to feel part of a family. I feel encouraged to continue reading the Bible…

It looks like we will be doing this again sometime!

Thanx 2 everyone who prayed with us for this weekend.

Valentine's discipleship ministry

Archie, Valentine, & Paul.
(Paul visited our campus & we set up a meeting for a time of input in Valentine's life.)

We are giving our lives to advance the gospel of Jesus and His Kingdom into the nations through SPIRITUAL GENRATIONS of laborers living and discipling among the lost.


This is what we hope for & pray will happen with those that we hang out with on a regular basis.

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As I was driving some students back to campus, Valentine shared about his journey into a ministry of personal discipleship as a result of the input he has been receiving from us.

Valentine is also involved with SCO (Student Christian Organization.) He went to their chairperson & shared his vision for discipleship. SCO gave him their blessing, and he now has about 10 guys, some of whom have made a decision to follow Jesus as recently as 2 months ago. He went on to ask me for continued input on how to disciple these guys.

Wow! This is the kind of thing that we pray for, but when something like this happens I am still blown away by God's power!

Valentine Anye from Cameroon, is now teaching the next spiritual generation what it means to be a follower of Jesus & how to pass it on to others.

Please pray for Valentine & his guys.

Navigators Africa conference pic

If this works, I can now blog straight from my blackberry.

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Nthutu's new life

For the past 3 years we have been sharing our lives with Nthutu.

Most of the hands-on love she received was because of Marina's initiative. 

In the end, it was my (Archie's) privilege to pray with her as she invited Christ into her life.


Here are some of the highs and lows so far:

Together we celebrated when she became pregnant.

Together we mourned when she lost her baby during birth.

Together we furnished her own one-bedroom place to stay, when her sister basically kicked her out.

Together we came up with a career-plan for her future.

Together we enjoyed her first-ever meal at the Spur when we she qualified as an auxiliary nurse.

Together we mixed cement with some of our students and built her a proper cement floor for her place. (Students gave money, someone chipped in with a carpet & someone else fixed her roof)

Together we debriefed her recent trip to the Eastern Cape, where she went to ask her ancestors to help her find a job.

Together we searched the Bible to get God's opinion on it. (Deut 18)

Together we prayed and asked God for forgiveness.

On her own, in our living room, she decided to invite Him into her life for the very first time, on July 24, 2009!

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I wrote down 12 Scriptures for her and encouraged her to keep reading it.

This morning, as Felix picked me up to take me to the airport, I asked her if she remembered the date when her new life began.
Her face immediately lit up as we started talking about that last Friday of July.
She then went on and virtually quoted John 1:12
“ Yet to all who received him to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.“
as well as: Revelation 3:20.
“ Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

At the same time she told us that on the way home she shared it with someone on the train.

What's more is that she even asked me that whenever she comes over to our house , if I would be willing to spend 15 minutes 'preaching' to her before anything else!

She gets it!
She's hungry for more!!

What an honour to be a co-laborer with Christ!
What a privilege to be part of a new birth!
What a great responsibility we have to create a nurturing environment where she can grow to full maturity in Christ!

Doing life with Nthutu is not part of our job-description. It's just part of what we as ordinary people do - loving people into God's Kingdom, one at a time.

Thanks for celebrating with us!

Where are you going and how do you plan to get there?

I was just wondering about the seeds that I'm sowing.

Maybe I should make more time for thinking about what really matters most...

John Stott has the following to say about it:

"Sow a thought, 

reap an action; 

sow an action, 

reap a habit; 

sow a habit, 

reap a character; 

sow a character, 

reap a destiny."  

A Steamy conversation

I just completed 40 minutes on a stationary bike & some weights at our gym. Some of you guys may not think of 10 kilogram arm curls as weight training, but that is ok with me. Come and say that on the squash court of Friday morning! [right Tony??] :-) )

I just had the following chat in the gym's steam room:

Archie: Will you be watching the game tonight?
Random guy: I wanted to, but I'm writing a test.
Archie: It should be a great game.
(Note to non-soccer fans... Manchester United will be playing Barcelona tonight, for the ultimate European Soccer Trophy)

Random guy: My boyfriend wants to watch it so badly, but he's writing a test tomorrow morning.

(thoughts to self... Boyfriend? Did I hear correctly? Am I in the right steam room? ok, maybe I should stop the conversation right now & pretend that the steam room is just too hot for me. OR... If this guy is comfortable talking about it, maybe I could also be comfortable talking about anything or anyone for that matter)

Archie: So what are you studying?
Random guy: Finances 3rd year
Archie: Where?
Random guy: UCT (university of cape town)
Archie: How's that going?
Random guy: It's tough! but I'm hanging in there....yada yada yada... meaning I can't remember everything he said, but I do remember him saying: "Lord knows... and more yada yada yada
Archie: Hang in there man. After these exams, it's only 6 months 'till the end of the year.

Random guy: So what's it that you do for a living?
Archie: I work at UWC (univ of western cape)
Random guy: Doing what?
Archie: I ask people questions.
Random guy: Sounds mysterious...?
Archie: I ask people questions such as: "what gives you meaning in life?"
Random guy: (no response)
Archie: Feel free to answer or not ...

(Random guy goes on talking mostly about career aspirations for the next 3 minutes - without actually classifying it that way)
...steamroom is getting hot...

Archie: so it's mostly career?
Random guy: Relationships and career
Archie: I noticed you referred to 'the Lord' earlier on... how's that going for you? as in ... what's your religious journey like?
Random guy: I'm strictly atheist.
Archie: What brought you to that conclusion?
Random guy: I grew up Muslim, then last year I was enrolled in a course at university on religion and philosophy. It's not that they promoted Atheism or anything, but that's what I concluded for myself after taking the course last year.
Archie: Of course every course views their subject matter through certain lenses.
Random guy: Right, I agree, there is no such thing as 100% objectivity
Archie: mmm
(few moments silence)
Archie: You mentioned you're strictly atheist? Does this mean you've closed that chapter of the book and have made up your mind completely on where you stand?
Random guy: I guess not - not completely. That would be very close-minded.
Archie: I guess so.
Random guy: It's getting too hot in here. Thanks for the chat. Gotta go.
Archie: Cheers

As I left the locker room, he was also on his way out.
(didn't see his face through the thick steam in the steamroom, but recognized the orange flip-flops on his feet.
I tried to make eye contact, & maybe get in a final greeting, but didn't make a connection again.
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Why this blog entry?
1) I want to encourage you to do the same.
If we claim to be followers of Christ...
If He is really at the core of who we are...
...it should really be very normal for us to talk about Him.

-just like this 'random guy' found it very easy to talk about his current sexual preferences,
-just like I find it very easily to talk about my favorite sports teams: (go Man U for tonight, and go Blue Bulls, Saturday), or you might find it natural to talk about your favorite car, or coffee, or Pizza...
It should be the most natural thing to be comfortable talking to people about your best friend: Jesus. (assuming that He is in fact your best friend)

Honestly speaking: I don't chat to random people @ the gym or on aeroplanes all the time.
Sometimes I just want to be able to have some personal/ quiet time.
BUT: when I do talk to strangers, and I feel awkward to talk to them about my best friend, Jesus, wouldn't that be strange?

For the most part I feel quite comfortable talking to anyone about God - with a few exceptions.
Until this morning, it's been quite out of my comfort zone to speak to a gay person about God without feeling awkward.
-but today I thought: "Jesus is the most important of everything or anything else to me; If this guy can talk about his 'boyfriend', why couldn't I talk about the most important person in my life as well?
The ice has now been broken. I can do it again.

2) I'd like to believe that as a result of our conversation, Random-guy might think twice before saying that he is strictly atheist.
Who knows, maybe I'll bump into him again OR you or someone else might pick up the conversation where we left it...
If more people like you and I can engage in conversations about God... without condemning, but inviting them to explore for themselves... maybe we might pick up a conversation where someone else has left it...

Wouldn't that be fun?

Friday's Campus Action

Yesterday I met with Phuti who introduced me to Kabelo.

A few minutes later we were sitting in Kabelo's room - talking about the will of God.

Can we know the will of God?

How will we recognize that it's God speaking or just the 'voices in my head' or  or  or ....

We turned to Romans 12:2 that speaks about knowing God's good, pleasing and perfect will.

We can know God's will as we continue to allow him to transform us by the renewing of our minds.

Kabelo is pretty new to following Jesus.

Please keep him in your prayers - and also Phuti - as he is helping Kabelo grow in Christ.

Rich People in Africa

I recently attended a conference in Africa with the richest people in the world. It was a conference of 400 Navigator missionaries from 26 countries. None of us would have come close to the Forbes list of the rich and famous even if you combined our net worth. So how can I claim that I was among the richest people on the planet?

One thing I love about my job is that my faith is stretched every day. And sometimes, God uses my job to teach me such lessons of face that it’s like being whacked by a block of wood. Like at this conference. We were gathered for six days in Nairobi, Kenya, hundreds of missionaries, most of them living on what many of us would consider poverty level wages. Personally I found it pretty tough to ask my supporters to contribute toward this conference, given the global economic climate (oh me of little faith). But some people at the conference were coming from places with shattered economies, such as Zimbabwe, which has been ravaged by violence.

Here is the exchange rate for the Zimbabwe and U.S. dollars as of Friday, April 3, 2009:

1 Zimbabwe Dollar (ZWD) = 0.00000003 US Dollar (USD)

1 US Dollar = 37,456,777 Zimbabwe Dollar

At its peak the Zimbabwe inflation rate reached 89.7 sextillion per cent (a number expressed with 21 zeroes – 890,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 percent). I’m told that hawkers in Zimbabwe hawkers sell 100 trillion dollar bank notes as souvenirs to tourists for $2.

Lloyd and Laura Mautsa, who lead the ministry in Zimbabwe, not only came to the six-day conference, they managed to bring some other Zimbabwe staff along. That in itself is quite impressive. But what impressed me even more is the spirit in which they came to the conference - not with defeated spirits, begging for money. They came to share how God is using them on campus amidst these tough times. (And did I mention that the purpose of the conference was to equip us in being more effective in giving our lives away!)

Students in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, recently protested against having to pay for tuition fees, since faculty members no longer show up to teach classes. The faculty members simply cannot afford to come to campus any more, given that they are paid in Zimbabwe Dollar - which is worthless. Lloyd and Laura could have moved to South Africa - like so many other Zimbabweans choose to do these days, but they have decided to stay to make a difference by giving their lives away in ministry to students in Harare.

We were all touched by the hearts of Lloyd and Laura and their team. So Mutua Mahiani, the African continent director for the Navigators, felt led to take up an offering for the work in Zimbabwe. During this time he announced that there was a surplus in the conference budget. More money for Zimbabwe, I naturally thought. But then he announced that we would be giving a portion of that money to the work in South America! Now that's what I call True Riches!!!

Then there's James Sherwood, another man that I met at the conference. He might be my new living hero of faith! James and his wife are from England and chose to give up a comfortable lifestyle in order to live in Nigeria for the sake of Jesus & his Kingdom. A few years ago, tragedy struck.

Robbers shot a security guard outside their house. The guard was bleeding to death and after a few minutes, when James thought it was safe, he opened his front door in order help the man. Unfortunately the robbers were waiting. They shot him point blank in the face – blowing away the left side of his head. (sorry if this is a bit too graphic)

Miraculously, James survived. In the process, he basically lost all functioning of the left side of his face. He can’t see or hear from his left side. The tragedy couldn’t keep this man down. After multiple operations to reconstruct his face – skin transplants, rebuilding of his skull with tungsten plates, etc. – James is back in action! He still travels back and forth between the UK and Nigeria for ministry. And although he can move only half of his mouth, his speech has been miraculously restored. You don’t even notice his injuries if you’re eyes are closed.

I have tried to put myself into James’ position. Most probably I would have felt sorry for myself and chosen to live on some kind of state pension for the rest of my life - had I lived in the UK. At best I may have considered some kind of job where I would not have to interact with people at all. Not this guy! His job description with the Navigators is “church discipleship ministries.” He’s not ashamed. He talks to people face-to-face every day! Now that's what I call True Riches!

Someone did something right when they discipled this guy. James has more than enough to give away - maybe not in terms of finances - but man is he rich!

Maybe the people at Forbes magazine should put together another list – not one that measures net worth in terms of finances alone, but one that measures how much you’re giving away. This type of giving doesn’t have to include material “stuff.” This new measurement would include

TIME, LOVE, PERSONAL SPACE, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, PRAISE, etc.

What else would you like to add to the list?

Within this context I would like to encourage you with Paul's words in 1 Thessalonians 2:8: “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God, but our lives as well, because you have become so dear to us.”

I pray that you will be encouraged to do the same within your own community and that some will be inspired to go beyond what they are already doing.

*PS: By the way, if you wanted to see where you rank financially compared to the rest of the world go to: http://www.globalrichlist.com/.

UWC Pictures

(click on images to enlarge)

Dominoes seems to be the in-thing right now.

Near the library, with my colleague from UCT, Bruce Nygaard.

Phuti & myself in the student centre.

Tutu from Uganda.

Claude from Ivory Coast.

Largest Auditorium on campus.

Along the road to campus.

Campus Map.

Back on Campus

It's great to be back in action!

As you might know, this is our 1st year ministering at the University of Western Cape.

Before I left for the Kenya conference, I started meeting with some people 1-to-1 and also started a few small groups. Coming back, I was quite curious to see what might have happened since I've left. Honestly speaking, I was thinking that I would almost have to start from scratch, but by God's grace some wonderful things have happened since I've been gone.

We started a Scripture Memory Learning community. Before I left, I suggested that we could meet on Tuesdays - just for half an hour over lunch - as a weekly checkpoint to make sure everyone stays on track. Unfortunately I had to leave for a conference in Kenya before the 1st meeting took place, so you can imagine that I was very curious as to know how this has been going.  One of the guys, Phuti, could not make it last week, but he told me that Tutu called him to see how it went, and he had to 'stand-and-deliver' his 2 verses for the week right there over the phone.  Claude - a French-speaker PhD student from Ivory Coast also joined us yesterday.

Imagine: she will be building her English vocabulary straight from the Bible!

 

The investigative Bible Discussion (IBD) group has been going strong since I've been gone, and from yesterday's feedback they have had lots of fun - even doing role plays & who knows what!

Lastly, I also bumped into 2 of the guys from the Friday morning IBD and had a great time reconnecting with them.  

So far, it's been an incredible week and I'm so thankful to God for what He's been doing.

Thanks to everyone that keeps our ministry in their prayers!!

Keep rocking for the Rock of Ages!!!

Navigators Africa Staff Conference

I just came back from a life changing experience in Kenya.  There were participants from 26 African Countries (and at least 4 other countries that I know of.)

I was blown away by some of the stories that people told about how they are advancing the gospel of Jesus and His Kingdom into the Nations through spiritual generations of laborers living and discipling among those who have not made a decision to follow Jesus!

Although I only spent time in Nairobi, I have lost my heart on this place. What a beautiful country...and the people are awesome!

That being said, it's great to be home and reunited with my wife and kids, as well as the people that we share our lives with. 

If all goes well I might grow into the habit of blogging/ reflecting about life etc...

Watch this space; it might just happen. :-)