Swakop Mission Trip

Each year at NETS we take a week out of our lecture schedule to send our students out on mission trips in various places around the country. Our purpose is two-fold: to reach out to our own population with the gospel of Jesus, and to help our students gain valuable practical ministry experience. This year we sent out four teams to Keetmanshoop, Rundu, Queen Sofia, and my team went to Swakopmund.

In Swakop we partnered with various local churches as well as just sharing the gospel with whoever we met on the street. Some of our students led Family Life workshops at two different churches, encouraging family members to treat each other with love. We met with various local pastors to both encourage them and share with them about NETS, but also to ask questions and learn from their years of experience. And on Sunday morning we participated in an ecumenical worship service including multiple churches from around the community.

"Missing the Mark" game at Youth Night

On Friday night our students organized a Youth Outreach Night and encouraged youth from various local churches to invite their friends. The evening was organized around the "wordless book" colors with a different activity focusing on each color: gold reminding us of heaven and a perfect relationship with God; black indicating sin; red pointing us to the blood of Christ; white teaching us of forgiveness and cleansing from sin; and green encouraging us to grow in our relationship with God. By the end of the night the youth had heard the whole message of the gospel!

Each day we also split up into teams of 3 to walk around the town or the beach and share the good news with whoever we came across. We would play games with children then share with them using a "wordless bracelet." Sometimes we just prayed with people. Often they were polite but disinterested, but some were open to talk. Outside the library, I was chatting with 4 young ladies who had been studying for their grade 12 exams. Their understanding of Christianity was very religious, but had little to do with their everyday lives. At one point I was encouraging them to wait for a relationship with a good Christian guy, but they told me good guys don't exist and they would rather have someone to sleep with them even if he was bad, than to feel lonely. They would rather have someone to support them and a baby even if he cheated and didn't love them, than to wait for a guy they couldn't imagine existing. I was struck by their hopelessness. They would rather cling to the temporary tangible pleasures of sin, even with lasting consequences(!), because they couldn't imagine any other option.

As I stood on a street corner a uniformed police officer came walking down the sidewalk. I chuckled to myself wondering what the police would think of what we were doing. Apparently it showed on my face because he playfully asked me, "What are you smiling about? Do you have some good news?" Again, I chuckled to myself in wonder that he would phrase it that way, and responded with an even bigger smile, "I have the best news!"

And that's exactly what those four girls couldn't understand. That gospel says that all the pain and damage of this sinful world...it doesn't have to be this way! That really is the best news of all, but some people just aren't interested. It's like C.S. Lewis said, that we would rather go on making mud pies in the slums because we can't imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

Overall it was a great trip, not only for practical ministry experience for our students, but also as a stark reminder to me of exactly why I am here, because there are young people all across Namibia who are living and dying without hearing the true gospel.