Cape Town week 2

So I went through week 1 of my Cape Town trip pretty quickly on the last post, so now its on to week 2!  I believe I left off last time at the Saturday night braai at the McGinty's.  By the way I must say that the McGinty's worked so hard and did so much to host our team the entire time we were in Cape Town.  It is a lot of work for a missionary family to host of mission team, but we felt so well taken care of.  So let's pick up the next morning which was the 2nd Sunday morning we were there.  So we got up and headed out to worship at a church in the Gugulethu township.  It was such an awesome time of worship where everyone there was truly joyful and showing it in their worship.  It was also very much a day that was dedicated to the Lord.  They got started around 9am and the service went until a little after 12.  Often times here in the States when we are in worship, we get impatience if the sermon goes longer than 30 minutes, and we start looking at our watches if worship goes beyond the 1 hour mark.  These brothers and sisters in Christ there in Gugulethu were in no hurry to be anywhere or do anything except worship the Lord.  Also, when they worshipped they had great joy in the Lord and they actually showed it!  They were not afraid to express their emotions as they worshipped their Father in heaven.  So often in our "reformed" traditions at least, we are afraid to express too much joy and emotion in our worship, but their at Gugulethu, they were making a joyful noise to the Lord, and it was truly joyful!  By the way, this church is reformed in their theology.  Another really cool thing was that most of the worship was in their own language called Xhosa.  It was beautiful to here the Lord worshipped in their own language!

Coby speaking at the Gugulethu church about our mission week.

Standing outside of the Gugulethu church after worship.

So later that evening we went back for an evening worship time at the Message church (the one we went to the Sunday night before).  This was the church that is very close to the campus of UCT and is made up of many UCT students.  This was also a very sweet time of worship.  

The next morning (Monday morning) we got up early and headed to the Student Y to begin our big mission outreach week on campus.  We began every morning gathering in prayer for the day.  One of the wonderful things about this outreach was the fact that it was so covered in prayer.  It was very important to the ministry to pray knowing that we did not have the ability apart from the power of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the gospel on the UCT campus.  So each day after praying together, we all headed up to upper campus and set up the props out on the Jamison plaza (the main gathering place for students on upper campus).  Here are a couple of photos of our set up there:

The scales of justice that we build

Our big white board we build for students to write on

Interacting with students on plaza with a beautiful view of the mountain in the background

So each afternoon after talking to students all day we gathered together again for a time of debriefing, sharing about our conversations, and prayer.  In the evenings we would go different directions to attend bible studies or to simply spend time with the students.  It was so encouraging to spend time with the students who were involved with the Student Y to see how mature many of them were in the Lord.  In just a short 2 week time I build such great relationships with a number of these students.  I miss them a great deal.  

 

By the end of the week we were tired but very excited about everything that we had seen the Lord do.  A number of students had come to know Christ for the 1st time!  We were able to plant hundreds of seeds of the gospel as well.  The encouraging thing about this also is that we got contact information from many of these students and the Student Y will be praying for and following up with these students to grow these seeds that were planted.  When Friday came it was time to gather for the Student Y large group worship (called HUB) that evening.  This was our last night in Cape Town and it was a bitter sweet time.  The worship was one of the most wonderful times I had ever had.  There were probably 80 students there from all over southern Africa (such as Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, of course S. Africa, and many others) and we were all worshipping Christ together with a great sense of joy!  These students love the Lord and they love to express it in their worship.  It was one of those times were I felt like I got a taste of what heaven will be like!

Gathering together for HUB!

The next morning, Coby and his two sons picked Todd and I up to go meet a few of my new S. African brothers to watch a rugby game with them.  It was the Eastern Cape province team playing a province team from New Zealand.  The New Zealand team won, but it was still a blast just hanging out with them before we left.  After that we all packed up our stuff and gathered at the McGinty's house with some of the students and had a debriefing time and a great time of prayer.  The Beadle's came by to hang out as well, which was awesome!  It was an emotional time as we all said our goodbye's with some of these awesome students!

Hanging out before we left for the airport.  Miss these guys!

After this trip a have a greatly renewed sense of the importance of doing evangelism.  We must always be ready to proclaim the hope that is within us, and to do it with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).  The riches of this great mystery has been made known to us, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory.  And it is him we proclaim, that many may be presented mature in Christ (Col 1:27-28).  We are also called to worship the Lord with great JOY (Ps 47:1; 66:1; 81:1; 95:1-2; 98:4-6; 100:1) and that is what we must do.  Worshipping with these students as well as the people of the Gugulethu church reminded me that we must do this.  Scripture doesn't say "don't get too excited in your worship"...it says "shout for joy to the God of Jacob!"  I am so thankful for my time in Cape Town!  In my next blog I hope to write about the wonderful couple of days I had in England with the Donahoos!