Back in the Bay
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We made it to Jeffreys
Bay about two weeks ago. We spent a few days getting settled and
reacquainted with the town, and then spent the weekend camping out in the
bush. It was a cold weekend. We zipped our sleeping bags tight and built
campfires every chance we got. Its
winter here in Africa – most mornings we woke
up it was around thirty-two degrees.
Things aren't quite the way I left them.
Some of my friends are in prison, some have disappeared, and some are
worse off than when I left them. It
feels like the darkness that hangs over this place is heavier than before. All of that hit pretty hard in the first few
days – but God keeps reminding me that he's still here.
listen to me to some extent. I'm learning all of the
things that have changed in the world of the street kids – the hard stories
about cold weather, rejection, power struggles, rape – but the basics are the
same. There are somewhere around fourteen
boys in this town in desperate need of fathers and the Father – all hoping for
redemption, whether they know it or not.
still have a flood of compassion for the street kids. It has been a sweet, sweet thing to see them
again and to get back into those relationships.
But this go round my ears are a little less tuned into their cries. The focus of my ministry has shifted from the
boys on the street to the students in the FYM program; but that's a difficult
thing to explain to a bunch of streetkids that own some pretty sizable chunks
of my heart. Sorry boys, you've moved down the food chain once again. I'm glad that God's ears aren't any less
tuned to their cries, and I'm praying that He'll walk me through all of this
shifting.
one-on-one basis. We meet up once a week
to study scripture, to talk through the celebrations and struggles of ministry,
and to vent the frustrations in living in small spaces full of lots of
people. It's the thing that Adventures
in Missions does really well, and it's the place where we're praying to really
see the students grow and come to a deeper understanding of what it means to
follow Jesus.
Tyler Bussanich. Pray that God will grow
our relationships in a deep way, that all three of them would be challenged and
encouraged by that relationship, and that God would give me wisdom as to which
pieces of their lives need to be rooted up and which pieces that need to be
poured into and called out. That they
might become the people God has called them to be, more than the kinds of
people I want them to be.
ministries. My team is at Joshua
Project, where I worked last year.
Others are at ministries ranging from kids to clinics to care centers
for children born with disabilities and deformities. The teams are doing well. They've been pushed hard, they haven't had
much of a break since we got here, and they've handled it really well.
we're all pretty tired. Ive been feeling
a bit flu-ish the last few days and running a fever. Pray
for rest – the good kind. Not just a
good night's sleep, but the kind of rest that goes deep and makes you feel new
again - the rest that comes under God's wings.
We need a lot of that.
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