Guess what I found here in Cape Town? A street that’s named Norman Road. Just reminded me a little of my Oklahoma home.

Norman Road

Brandon and I with our new (to us) Toyota Tazz

So in order to get around town, Brandon and I decided we needed a car. And thanks to the generosity of many people, we were able to buy it this week. We purchased a used 2006 Toyota Tazz. (Pictured above, which I have named our Razzama Tazz) We don’t have Tazzes in the States, but they are a very popular car here in South Africa. A reliable car that will last us a long time and keep us safe. (Also a very no-frills machine. I will miss my old Sable’s power windows and CD player!)

Now Brandon and I are learning to drive it. Yes, we bought a car that we don’t know how to drive. It’s a standard. Which is pretty standard here. We shopped around a lot and they just don’t carry many automatics here, and the ones they do have you pay a premium for. So we’re embracing using a stick. We’ve had three lessons and Brandon actually drove home from the mall yesterday! Next we’ll practice driving up and down the less populated road near here. Then the final test will be taking the highway over the mountain…in rush hour. There are lots of mountains here, so this could get interesting! Please pray that we would learn quickly and stay safe!

Also, I thought I’d post a few picks from our Valentine’s Day date night, since I told you about that in advance. The go-as-a-group-and-then-split-into-pairs date went over very well!

The view by the restaurant

A self-portrait, so you don't forget what we look like

As of today Brandon and I have been married exactly one year. Happy anniversary to us! It’s crazy to think about the journey that God has taken Brandon and I on over the past year. Our life looks totally different now, in nearly every aspect. To celebrate our anniversary, Brandon and I went into Masiphumelele to lead house churches. Well, okay, that is how we spent our day but it wasn’t done in order to celebrate our special day. That’s just what happened to be on the agenda for the day. It’s been a busy, draining day, so we’re actually planning to spend some time alone together tomorrow to actually celebrate. Monday is our off day, so we’ll be able to get away a bit to celebrate.

So…Masi! I know Brandon has posted on this site about some of the exciting things he’s witnessed God doing in people’s lives in Masi so far. We’ve actually been going in separate groups, so I haven’t posted any of the exciting stories that I’ve experienced. While he’s been meeting a lot of men, and a lot of people from Zimbabwe, I’ve been connecting with women, mostly Xhosa people.

My group, which has consistently included Whitney Caldwell and one or two other people, has been tasked with attempting to plant churches through the connections All Nations has in one of their ministries. The Vulnerable Children program provides food for children in Masi in extreme need. This includes households that are run by children because either they don’t have parents or their parents are too sick to care for them (about one in three people in Masi have HIV/AIDS). It’s a great ministry, but no one has really intentionally tried to see if the families of these children would be interested in learning more about Jesus through simple church. So the others and I were given a list of the 25 or so V.C. children and asked to see if their families would be interested in reading the Bible together and learning more about Jesus. The idea is that we would then lead them through simple steps to have a house church with their friends and family, soon handing off the leadership of the group to one of the people in the gathering.

We have found a few of the families so far. This task is complicated by the fact that there aren’t real addresses in many parts of Masi and people are so transitory that they often move away from one house and don’t tell All Nations where their new home is. Some of the families haven’t seemed very interested in starting a Bible study. But that’s fine. Our goal is to find a “person of peace” (based on the Luke 10 model), who is hungry to know about Jesus and willing to gather their community together to form a church. Today we had our first exciting Bible study in one of the homes of a V.C. child. It was awesome to see the Lord speak to the women there, giving them insight into his word that’s far more valuable than anything I could have taught them. The whole idea is to see the people of Masi empowered to follow God, and I saw a little bit of that this afternoon.

I’ve also been connecting with other people that God leads us to as we’re walking through Masi in search of the Vulnerable Children homes. I am especially excited about one group that Whitney and I connected with Friday. All afternoon all over Masi we kept running into these people who we finally found out were all connected, all close neighbors, all of whom want to know more about Jesus. We taught one of the young women the simple method we use to read the scriptures together, and she is going to lead the study when we all meet together next Sunday. I am very excited to see where God takes this group.

Okay, I have more I could share. It’s been a big week, as usual for us here in CPx. But I’m running out of energy to type, and I’m sure you’re running out of energy to read, so I’ll save it for another blog post.

We had our second week of community outreaches this week. As I wrote before, Juli and I are in Masi so that location should be assumed throughout this note. A lot happened in my group (I walk around with our coach, named Munya who is from Zimbabwe and Lucas who is actually from Masi) so I’ll break it down into days.

Thursday

Thursday was our second official day in the community (our first being last Friday). Our goal was to meet some new people in our quest to find people of peace (a concept I’ll develop more on this blog soon) as well as follow up with those we met last week. Munya put me in charge of our time, and charged me with leading the way, so I first had the three of us stop at the playground at the library in Masi to pray and seek guidance about who Jesus wanted us to find that day (basically treasure hunting for those familiar with the concept). Not 30 seconds into praying Munya yells at a guy and ran after him. I followed and on the way he said that he saw a picture of the guy where the brown shirt that was passing. We flagged the guys down (there were two of them) and started talking to them and they immediately asked if we would sit with them and explain more (a good sign). They were actually so excited that they wanted to do a Bible study then and there, in the park. So I facilitated and taught them how to facilitate as well (the steps for praying and reading the Bible which I’ll get into more in a separate post soon). It took about an hour and they were just really excited and promised to gather their friends and family for another Bible study on Sunday. When we left they actually turned around and walked back they way they came — it was almost as if they were just prompted out of their homes to meet us.

We next went to find another Zimbabwean we had met last week. We went to the place we thought we were supposed to meet and he wasn’t there so Munya called him. He explained that he had gathered people at his home at 1 and that he was waiting for us there. This was a good and bad thing to hear. It was awesome to hear that he had gathered and was really taking the initiative to learn about Jesus but bad because it was 3pm, which is the time we’d set for the meeting, and not 1 and most of the people had gone home for the day. He met us back at the fruit stand though and took us to his home, which opened into a big courtyard. There where several people there and they all informed us how excited they were that we were there to share and how they couldn’t wait for us to come back but that it would have to be earlier (1ish) so that the women would have time to cook. So, next week on Thursday we are going to do our best to get there between 1 and 1:30. Pray for this gathering as there is a distinct hunger in the people we met and they are apparently bringing many more.

Before we left the courtyard, we had the opportunity to pray for one of the woman who was having foot problems (named Christine). She seemed touched by the prayers and told us that she could walk better afterwards but we’ll find out more in regards to this next week when we see her again. Pray for full healing!

After all of this, it was time to head back for our ride. But we were encouraged. It was definitely a fruitful day, I must say.

Friday

Yesterday was a pretty incredible time in Masi — it rivaled our other times, I must say. We started off treasure hunting again but I was the only one to get clues: a serious leg issue that required crutches or a cane and a shorter, stocky palm tree. So we started off with those in mind looking for folks to share with, pray with and start churches with. The first guy we encountered was a younger man (probably younger than me) who seemed really excited; he says he is gathering a group for Sunday, so we’ll see.

We left his house and immediately found the short, stocky palm tree and there was a woman doing laundry underneath it. So, we went up and engaged her in conversation. Once we told her what we were doing she stopped what she was doing, took us to her house, and welcomed us in to sit with her. She also immediately invited her sister in as well. We shared and explained more and she is inviting friends and family, hopefully for Sunday afternoon.

We left there and immediately found the leg problem. There was a man with crutches across the street and a foot in a cast and bandages. We ran across to him and explained what we were doing and that we thought Jesus wanted him to know His love today and asked if we could pray for his leg. He said yes and immediately sat down. We laid hands and prayed and when we finished he pointed at his leg and drew barriers (pretty much where the bandages were) and said “Here it felt very very strange as you prayed. It felt like everything was moving around and changing inside me. And now it isn’t really hurting.” He then got up saying “Thank you Jesus! King of kings and Lord of lords!”. He gave us his name and number and wants to connect again to learn about what we are doing. Pray for this encounter to — it sounds like he’s not going to have bandages and such the next time we see him but more importantly we are hoping his heart stays fixed on Jesus and that he will be a catalyst for change in his community. It feels like a lot to ask but completely within the realm of God’s possibility.

From their we met a lady we had met last week that felt peaceful (she was one that was super touched when we prayed). Unfortunately she right now seems caught up in the old ways and not just Jesus and isn’t super interested in focusing on Him above. Pray that this would change as we’ll likely see her again.

We went from her house to another contact that Munya had. He is a Zimbabwean that currently attends another house church but is interested in gather people in his own area of Masi. This will definitely be exciting if it happens (and involved no work of our own; we just get to come along for the ride, and a good chunk of discipleship).

Lastly, we had a guy run into the street and up to us intrigued about who we were and what we were doing. We told him. He immediately said he wanted to be a part of that and gave us his number. He then said that he’d gather people together for next week. He found us and it all happened in about 10 minutes time.

So yeah — outreach is definitely going well. It’s crazy to walk in the experiences that we are all walking in. All the groups have stories similar (and some can be even more fascinating than the ones from my group, for example the fundamentalist muslims interested in meeting and sharing that one group found). The harvest is definitely plentiful and ripe for the picking. Keep praying for (local!) workers to work it — we foreigners long to be simple catalysts that see a locally lead and driven movement toward Christ.

One of the big blessings of CPx is that it includes people from all over the world of all different cultures. It’s something I knew about coming in, but didn’t expect to be such a blessing and delight. There’s definitely the potential for a lot of conflict here as a result of all the different cultures, but it’s been so wonderful. There’s a feeling of spiritual family and community that I have only gotten in other groups that are similarly focused on the same mission of Jesus.

During our morning corporate worship times, I’m sometimes struck with the beauty of the worship that’s coming from all these different cultures. We sing African worship songs, which is so freeing and fun, but we also sing some Western worship songs. One morning last week we sang “Hosanna” by Hillsong United, and I was so moved by the experience that I broke down in sobs. This was the song that I sang over and over to God during the time in early 2008 in which I recommitted myself to following where God led me. I knew at that time he was calling me to missions, and “Hosanna” was a big song for me at that time. Singing it here in this context was so special to me because the Lord used it to remind me that he keeps his promises. I wanted so badly to GO to the nations, and he’s brought me here. And now I’m singing this same song with my brothers and sisters from around the world. Incredible!

Thank you to all of you who prayed that Brandon and I would make friends quickly and have a spiritual family here! Brandon and I both feel so thankful for the people here. I’ve begun to get closer to the other young married women. We had girl night last night for the first time and it was so good for my soul.

I wanted to share with you a little of the spiritual family that I have here. So Brandon took photos Saturday night at our CPx game night at Africa House. Here are a few of the faces that have quickly become close to us.

It's a good thing we brought our game of Apples to Apples, because it was a big hit!

Brits in the foreground, Americans in the background

Sbu, who translated for us in Masi in May and is now part of CPx.

Siya, from South Africa

Hanging outside at Africa House before the games

We’ve kind of settled into a rough routine here (finally!). Most days, we get up early to spend time with Jesus and eat breakfast so that we’re ready for our first session.

8:30 a.m. We have some sort of teaching about church planting, either with a leader from All Nations or a guest speaker.

10:30 to 11 a.m. We have a mid-morning break

11 a.m. Another teaching session, or perhaps meet with our small d-groups to pray or talk about ministry in the community.

12:30 p.m. We break for lunch, which is a wonderful hot meal prepared by Silvia, one of the All Nations staff members.

2 p.m. There will be another teaching session (on Tuesdays or Wednesdays) or we’ll go out into Masi to put into practice what we’re learning.

5 p.m. Begins free time. Some evenings we help cook and clean up dinner. Wednesday and Friday evenings we have Xhosa lessons. One night a week Brandon and I have date night. And the rest of the time is spent resting or spending time with the other CPx students. Or writing for our blog.

The exception to this schedule is Saturdays and Mondays, which are our days off, and the one Sunday a month that we have celebration.

We’re really enjoying that we’re finally getting into the townships and ministering to people! I haven’t been able to take any pictures in Masi yet though, because it can be culturally offensive to come into people’s homes that you don’t know and start snapping pictures. So until I develop relationships and can take photos, here are some photos of Khayelitsha, the largest township in the Cape Town area. More than a million people live in this township. It’s very similar to Masi in the way it looks, but it’s far larger (Masi only has about 30,000 to 40,000 residents) and more dangerous in parts.

Brandon took these photos as we drove past Khayelitsha last week.

You can see homes like this stretch out for miles. The sheer expanse of it takes your breath away.

Things have been pretty intense here though. Moving to another country and having everything familiar taken away was a bit of a shock to my system. Thankfully, the Lord is providing rest and peace to Brandon and I (thanks for all your prayers!).

Yesterday we were able to catch up on a lot of our rest as well. We spent the night Friday night with Mike and Kalyn Arndt, who are on the leadership team from All Nations (they’re from Oklahoma, and I’ve posted about them on our blog before). Then yesterday Brandon and I hung out at their house and read a lot and also walked to Long Beach from their house. (It’s the same beach where we saved the whales when we were here in May.) It was the first time we’ve been to the beach since we got here. Gorgeous, but the water was icy cold, so we didn’t really get in.

Long Beach

Surfers on Long Beach

Me on the beach

A real South African surfer. Notice how he's wearing a full-body wet suit. Because seriously, people, the water is that cold! It's coming north from Antarctica.

Yesterday (Friday) was our first outreach day. I’ll back up a minute — during CPx, every week we have two day of lectures and 3 of outreach where we go into the communities and practice what we have learned. Masiphumelele (Masi for short) is the community that Juli and I will be working in. We are definitely excited about working here for several reasons — for one, it is where we have worked in the past so there is some sense of it that kind of feels like home and for two, it is the type of community we envision ourselves working in long term. This isn’t to say that Masi is the community we will forever work in (for various reasons, we aren’t expecting this) but it is the atmosphere and type of community that tugs at our hearts.

Anyways, yesterday was our first day of getting into the community for outreach and the our first opportunity to practice all that we had learned. We’ve been broken up into d-groups of 6 or 7 for these outreaches, and further divided into 2s and 3s and 4s for the purpose of ministering (a group of 7 is rather intimidating to people — we aren’t wanting to gang up on them!). For this and future trips, we are really focused on planting simple churches and so we were looking for peaceful people — people that would open a community or network of people to the Gospel as well as finding people that would intentionally gather their friends and families for little “Bible Studies.”

This last part is key (and in many ways paradigm shifting). When we’ve been here in the past, we’ve focused pretty heavily on finding as many people as possible and grouping them together. Often the people aren’t in any way relationally connected which makes the groups dependent on the outsider for gathering and providing the special sauce that makes the people stick together. This time though we are intentionally not doing that but rather getting locals to gather their people. For more about this, keep following my blog.

Back to the story of outreach numero uno. I went with two other guys — our coach Munya (who is from Zimbabwe) and Lucas (who is actually from Masi). We went out and pretty immediately found 3 different guys who told us that they (a) were interested in studying the Bible and (b) were interested in gathering their friends and families. And they were interested enough to give us their phone numbers so that we could SMS them to remind them. The last man in particular (Richard) we felt particularly good about. He not only seemed interested but also excited.

As we were leaving Richard’s place, we passed a house where a woman called out to us. She had heard about us (or people like us) and had some questions about faith and wanted prayer. We shared with her about Jesus and answered her questions and told her testimonies of His love in Masi. We then prayed for her and it seemed incredibly impactful — she was in tears when we got done and immediately asked us to come back to study the Bible with her (and that she wanted to do the same as the guys: gather friends and family). So we were quite encouraged by this point. I wasn’t expecting quite this response. I knew Masi as a spiritually hungry place, but expected a bit more resistance to the gathering concept. And we may run into it — we’ll find out next week if anyone is “gathered” but I have a lot of hope.

I know I would have probably been thrilled if this was the end of the story for the day but it wasn’t. Our next encounter was with a man named Eddy. He was also from Zimbabwe and was just passing through Masi. We still got an opportunity to share with and pray for him though. And he was another person left changed by the love and presence of God. He’d been struggling with pretty serious neck pain for several months. When we first met him he actually couldn’t move it at all. But we prayed! And Jesus healed! And the pain went away and he could move it again!

And this isn’t even the end of the story — we had two more significant encounters with people! They both revolve around a Zimbabwean house church that meets in another part of Masi. Susan, a woman in it (but who lives elsewhere in Masi) took us to her home and had us pray for her pregnancy. I felt like the Lord was asking me to pray Isaiah 40:31 for her (which I did) and she was really touched. She is even wanting to try and gather her neighbors to start a Bible study (which we were all surprised and excited about since she is already a part of the other). After this, we got to teach the Zimbabwean house church how to facilitate meetings and pray times without us which is significant — prior to this they had been reliant on us outsiders for meeting times and facilitation.

Anyways all that said and done — we were really excited about our first trip into Masi and can’t wait to see what else God does with our time there.

“Molweni! Ninjani? Ndipilile, enkosi.”

Translation: “Hello! How are you all? I am fine, thank you.”

I have been taking Xhosa lessons from one of the other students in CPx. Nceba (his name means mercy in Xhosa) is an excellent teacher, even though this is his first time to teach anyone Xhosa. He has had two evening sessions already with several other CPx students. Brandon and I are praying for the gift of learning other languages quickly– especially because this one’s got clicks in it that are hard for Americans to learn!

Xhosa is what many of the Africans speak here. It is only one of the 11 official languages in South Africa, but is the predominant one spoken in Masiphumelele (or Masi, for short), the township where Brandon and I have worked in the past. Oh, and we found out last week we’ll continue working there during CPx!

We’ve now had a crash course in the basics of church planting, and will begin outreach to those in Masi tomorrow. We will meet the local people, looking for a person of peace, someone who is eager to hear about Jesus and obey him and connect us with others in order to start a Bible study. In all this, Xhosa phrases will come in handy. Our goal isn’t to become fluent in the language — so many people speak English here that we can get by with that alone. But our goal is to open up doors to people’s hearts by showing them love. One major way to show we love the Xhosa people is to spend time learning their language even before we meet them.

I’ve often heard it said that short term trips are a waste of time. Some claim that those on them just tend to “get in the way” by distracting long-term missionaries from their mission, whatever it might be. Others have said it’s an excuse for comfortable Christians to take a “vacation” while masquerading as mission focused individuals. Other people tend to make up other stories and excuses too.

I don’t buy it though.

I mean, sometimes it might be true. There are times I wonder with some of the trips I’ve heard about in my days. You’ve probably heard of those I’m talking about too — the ones that sound like wild and crazy adventures that might include a bit of evangelism (or might not). But by and large I think many times when we pull out the “waste of time” card, we do so erroneously.

So why do I say this?

The biggest reason is the overwhelming amount of evidence that lives are forever changed by short term teams. My church in the states, for example, has sent short term teams to Cape Town, South Africa the past 3 US summers (it’s actually winter then in Cape Town). On those trips we saw God move in many incredible ways. Lots of people professed HIS name for the first time. Many of those (and others) were healed of infirmities as serious as TB. Still others saw God move into their lives in ways they have never experienced before.

On those trips, we worked in a particular township called Masiphumelele (Masi for short). And if you are reading this blog, you likely know that my wife and I are currently in cross cultural church planting school called CPx which started a week ago. We were so encouraged upon arriving to find out that their are 3 people from Masi actually in CPx! One woman was led to Christ by a few women on our short term trip 2 summers ago. The other two also have less direct but ties none the less to our short term trips. And it’s so exciting to see that fruit matured and so encouraging to know that God can and will mightily use short term trips. They aren’t just sightseeing ventures for Christians and definitely will, when walked out in the right attitude, radically affect the kingdom.

There are other readily apparent benefits too. Short term trips can do wonders to encourage long term missionaries. They can allow for a more targeted, direct and focus mission that might normally take a long term team a while to get into. They often can allow long term workers to rest for a period (particularly in the case of the AIDs orphanage I worked with 3 summers ago). And they often allow for individuals with specialized skills to briefly provide services to those that might need them.

I’m definitely for short term mission trips and encourage everyone to go on one at some point in their life. If you are looking for a place to go — I heartily recommend Cape Town, especially after the World Cup finishes in July.

Snake Attack! from Brandon Jones on Vimeo.