South Africa had to be one of my favorite ministries by far. Working at an elementary school, Pellsrus. Pelsus was in a very impoverished area in Jeffersy Bay, South Africa. Graphic, we are ministering to allow us to share Jesus and a lot of awesome ways, But I’ll get to that in a second.
In my previous blog, I talked about the frustrations that I had with my team because of their inexperienced in real life and ministry. And how God began working through that. During one of our debriefs, a mentor told me that I had a lot of anger that I didn’t let go of. The anger came out towards my teamates and later on.It became a lot of self hatred To anger came out towards my teammates and later on. It became a lot of self-hatred. It really shut me down in the first parts of South Africa. The second week of ministry before we started working with the kids, we are doing ATL ( ask the Lord ). At the end of the day after our evangelism, I heard the Lord telling me to take communion with him. As I went to take community with the Lord, I could hear the enemies start to feed me lies. I became conflicted about why I was taking communion. Was I doing it for the right reasons? Was this honoring unto the Lord? Was I praying about the right things? As I dove into a scripture trying to answer these questions. I was reminded of the importance of communion. What community is about communion is about remembering what Christ did for us in the cross? Remembering that he has washes is in the blood. As I went into it, with all my frustrations towards my team towards all that anger that I’ve had towars my tema nd myself. I was asking the Lord to heal me from it and take it away from me, to renew my heart. After I finally decided to take communion with the Lord and pray, I was grateful that I did but I didn’t initially feel anything. Then 3 days later, I remember looking back at the past couple days afterwards and I realized just how much God changed my attitude. How much joy I was filled with how my anger and frustration went away. We’re instead of looking at everything with irritability. I was able to look at things better with love. It’s a beautiful reminder that there is power in the blood. Being set free from my anger really set uo the next step
We started ministry at the school of that next week and I had the awesome opportunity to be a track coach for the school. As I began coaching, these kids training them to do the best that they could and giving them a hope for what they are running for I begin to realize how messed up the system is it gave so little opportunity to the students who were doing track. You took your best 3, and that was it and no one else got looked after. For 4 days of school in the mornings, they would all have track practices before we did it in-house competition to see who would go to their away competitions. There was so little love and grace in the process. As I began to coach, I encouraged the ones who didn’t make the team to still come to practice. While we are there, what we realize is that these kids were starving for love. They’re entire lives. They have not been given love. They have not been given love by their parents or by any authority figure in the school. And who knows if they received love anywhere else. The Lord put in me a heart that really connected with these students and he filled me with a godly love for them. I love that I cannot explain. My heart hurt for the situation that these kids were in. In this time, the Lord began to teach me how to do ministry by simply showing love. A lot of these kids already knew about who Jesus was whether or not they truly believed but they knew who he was. They just wouldn’t make it their faith. They didn’t fully understand. And during this the Lord told me that the way I need to minister them is by showing unconditional love for them. By letting the love that I was able to show them, show them the relationship that they can have at Jesus Christ. God taught me the importance of never leaving room for anyone to feel unloved.
This is exactly what God does for us. He does not leave room for us to feel unloved. And that is how we wanted me to minister to those kids. My love grew and grew as the time went on for the students that I was teaching and coaching. It was very difficult for me to leave at the end, we only had 2 full weeks with them. But in the end, the Lord reassured me that I was faithful to him and did everything that I could and that they had been impacted even for that short time. Now all I can do is to continue to love them and to pray for them.
The very last day that we are with them was a Saturday. A couple of us were able to go to their track event and help coach their track event. It was a huge event of 5 different schools and hundreds of kids. I was specifically working with a group of hurdlers because they’ve never hurled in the school before. So I got to train a small group from scratch. It was such a blessing to get to watch them run in an actual competition. To do this last part of coaching with them. These kids are so talented and so capable that there’s no one there to really teach them. There’s no one there to watch them run to tell them that they’re doing a good job. What an opportunity the Lord put me in that I could do that for them.
I had one athlete, his name is Lamar. During the in-house, competition competing for long jump did a beautiful jump but missed his mark. I knew then he could jump further than any kid that was there. Unfortunately, though he gave up. On his second jump, he runs his mark. And does a beautiful 180 front flip into the sand pit. After that I pulled him aside and encouraged him. Telling him that he has so much potential and he could jump further than everyone else. If he just put in the effort and he can make a choice now. Whether he’s gonna put in the effort and succeed, or let all his talent go to waste. He heeded my encouragement and on his last and final jump.He out jumped everyone like I knew he couldHe heeded my encouragement and on his last and final jump. He out jumped everyone like I knew he could. Unfortunately, they did not count his jump. But it was a beautiful reminder to me of how a small word of encouragement can completely change a kid’s attitude. How can really change the attitude of anyone? How I was able to show love to this kid? Who probably didn’t get a lot of it? Just by encouraging him to do better at something he loved to do, making him feel seen and loved. My charge for this blog is to ask the spirit. Who do you need to encourage today? Who do you need to pursue to make feel loved? Even the smallest word of encouragement could completely change the way someone feels. Build the Kingdom of God by showing love.
