A big thank you to our friends and family who support, encourage and keep us in their prayers. The year started well for us, with good health and lots of ministry opportunities. We had a good break over the Christmas holiday and were refreshed to start with a new bunch of trainees. Ndumiso started attending a play school and is taking a long time getting used to going to school but he loves it when he is there. This week he has been home nursing bronchitis, doctors orders. He is doing better. Please pray for complete healing and no recurrence.
On the 10th of January we started training with our 2018 intake of Youth Workers and Bethel Semester Abroad students. This training intensive is 6 weeks long and lasted until 20 February. The participants spent 6 weeks learning to be disciples, live like disciples and make disciples. It is such an honour and privilege for us to disciple and equip them to make disciples. We aim to model and instil the character and priorities of Jesus for life and ministry. Having these two groups with us at the same time gave us such rich, inspiring and diverse community.
Youth Workers
In our year long ministry training and personal discipleship programme we have 7 interns for 2018. We partner with their local churches to disciple and train them. J-Life provides ministry training and coaching to these young adults for a disciple making life-style in 3 training intensives throughout the year. Between the training intensives they serve as interns at their local churches. Back in their church they will be discipled and disciple others as they grow in the spiritual walk with God.
Bethel Semester Abroad
This year we are hosting a third group for the Bethel Semester Abroad programme. These are college students from Bethel College in Indiana, USA. J-Life and Camp Eden acts as home base for them, from which they get to experience a variety of different ministry and cultural settings. They spent the first 5 weeks of their 3 months stay being trained alongside the Youth Worker. Because they are college students they spend some of the time studying and writing assignments.
Scripture Union
We took the 7 Youth Workers down to Underberg for a week of training with Scripture Union. Over the years we have had SU's trainers come up here and train our Youth Worker for Schools and Childrens Ministry. This year we joined them at their #CountMeIn volunteers training. Along with Scripture Union volunteers, our Youth Workers were trained in Children and Schools ministry. Scripture Union has a rich history of being active in schools as well as running excellent Holiday Bible Clubs. The training given will enable our interns to run School Christian Groups and present life skills lessons in schools. They also have the tools to plan and run a Holiday Bible Club for kids in their community.
Schools Ministry
The trainees got to put to practice their teaching skills in 2 High Schools where they got to teach Grade 8 and 9 classes. The lifeskills lessons they presented are part of what ErgoNowLead offers to churches as a means of impacting schools in their communities. For more info visit their website here
GC2 Group
We started a journey with Pastors and ministry leaders from Siyathemba to train and coach them for disciple making. This is particularly exciting to me as I get to train in my home town. Over the years it has been difficult to start a GC2 Group (Great Commission and Great Commandment) in my home town. We just completed our first of 4 Modules with these key leaders and we will embark on the journey of coaching for implementation over the next 3-4 months. Please pray that all those who have been trained will be able to implement disciple making strategy at their church. Please pray for a paradigm shift in methods and message.
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