Our family moved over to Wells Estates Baptist Church about three weeks ago. Since we have been in South Africa, we have been based at Madiba Bay Baptist Church. We made the move to Wells because it’s about a 10 minute drive from where we hope to start the new church. This will enable us to work with Pastor Thami as we are also starting the church.
Our original plan when coming to South Africa involved spending the first two years learning the language with plans to start a church toward the end of those two years. Being a little eager, we hoped to start a church a little after our first year here. Well, we’re still hoping.
Although we don’t have a building yet, we had a promising lead this past week. Starting this week, we plan to go door to door in the new area to share the Gospel and collect as many contacts as we can for when we do start the church.
Pastor Sipho is still waiting to start construction for New Life Baptist Church. We are still waiting for the building plans to be approved. This process has taken a bit longer than we have hoped and planned, but we believe it won’t be much longer. We did get the go ahead to have the water and sewer hook-ups installed.
Prayer Request
- Our first church plant. We are still in need of a building.
- Our language learning. This is of course is a repeated prayer request because it’s the #1 priority in our ministry at the moment.
- More young men to step up.
More Highlights
- 8 Professions of faith at our last men’s meeting.
- Our first college intern, Bethany Staley, is in her last month of her 6 month trip here in South Africa.
- We able to build an addition onto Well Estates to expand the children’s ministry. They still have class outside, but now they don’t have to worry about the sun or rain.
- Missionary Keith Shumaker from Burkina Faso visited. He was a great help to the missionaries and to the pastors.
Needs
- $600 for the water and sewer hook-ups for New Life Baptist.
- Approx. $7000 needed to build the first building for New Life Baptist Church.