Things normally slow down here over the holidays. From December through the end of January, many folks travel back to their homelands. Kids are out of school and most businesses close down for several weeks. It has been anything but slow at our house. As some of you already know, Bekah gave birth to our son, James Siyabonga Hall, on 12/12. However, there were some complications with his heart and lungs and Bo (that’s what we call him in English) had to stay in the NICU for 19 days. God answered our prayers, and he was finally able to come home on December 30th, with a clean bill of heath.
Bo was born on the second day of our youth camp. As a result, I was only able to help in the preparation for the camp and to be a part for the first day. Fortunately, we have a good team of missionaries, interns, and folks from our churches who stepped up and didn’t miss a beat in my absence. God used them and the camp in a great way. There were 19 teens who made professions of faith, two of which were from Soweto.
Due to the holidays, and lack of outreach on our part, we have not had many new visitors over the last month at Soweto. This has already changed some as a several have returned from their trips. Even though the work has been slow, there was one man, a 42 year old named Simphiwe, who came up to me several weeks ago after the morning message with a desire to know more about salvation. This was his third consecutive time in our church. He was broken and physically showing it. I shared the Gospel as clearly as I could and he made a profession of faith. He has been coming faithfully to every service since that day. I am looking forward to baptizing him soon.
Other Prayer Requests:
- 1st Semester of our Bible College will start February 12th. I will be teaching Personal Finance and Spiritual Formation (Principles for the Christian Life).
- We have several visitors coming this month; my in-laws will be with us for 4 weeks, and my pastor, Wayne Cofield, and his wife are coming over to participate in the Organization service for Soweto Baptist Church on February 10th.
- While my pastor is here, we plan to take full advantage of him and his time. He will also be teaching a couples retreat for the missionary families and families from our churches on February 15-16th.
All that we do here is “to the praise of the glory of his grace!” Thanks be to God for your love and care for my family. 2018 was incredible and we are expecting even greater things to take place in 2019.
Thanks again for all that you do!
Sincerely,
Jeremy and Rebekah Hall