Stinkwater Mission Trip

About an hour and a half outside of the capital city of Windhoek, you turn onto a small dirt road that winds its way through the tiny village of Stinkwater. The community lies next to a wide, dry river bed that will only flow after the hard rains of a good rainy season. There are very few block houses, most are small tin shacks. There was formerly a mine nearby providing employment, but that has long since closed down. The only church is an old Rhenish building that is overgrown and unkept, and usually locked unless a visiting group could borrow it for a service. The small group of believers gather under a tree on a Sunday and lead themselves with no trained pastor. The community is as poor, desperate, and spiritually dry as the neighboring river bed. This is where our NETS mission team would minister for the next five days.

We started off our ministry with house visits, greeting people, hearing their stories, sharing an encouragement from the Bible, inviting them to church services, and praying for them if they would allow us. On Saturday morning, we waded through the overgrown plot to the old church building where the students led a service, including leading music and preaching the sermon. They did the same again under the tree on Sunday morning.

After the service, we hosted a little 'spa' day for the elderly in the community, including a soup lunch, hair and beard trims for the men, and manicures and pedicures for the ladies.

Children's ministry was also vibrant. We led Sunday school classes with the children during our church services. As we walked through the community, whenever we would find groups of children, we would play some games with them and share the gospel. Other mornings we visited a local preschool and taught the children God's Word through songs, puppets, and crafts.

And each evening we would show the Jesus film in one of the local languages, followed by one of our students giving an invitation to respond to the gospel.

It was a productive trip in more ways than one. The Word of God was faithfully proclaimed in a community with very little gospel witness. Our students got a chance to put into practice the things they have been learning in the classroom. And they also got to experience the reality of how many Namibians in rural communities live. On the last day of our trip, one exuberant student was convinced and couldn't stop talking about the need to plant a gospel-centered church in that community. Whether it's him or someone else, we pray that would be the case.

Osire Mission Trip

Each year we split up our seminary students into small teams, and send them out on mission trips to put into practice what they've been learning in the classroom. This year, I led a group of 9 students to serve in Osire refugee camp. This is a community of displaced people, mostly from Central and East African countries. They primarily speak French or Swahili, and bring their other African cultures with them. So our local Namibian students were in for a great cross-cultural experience.

On our first day, we went to the local school to connect and share with the students. Now, Namibia is a generally "Christian" nation and ministry in schools has historically been fairly open. But when we arrived at this school, they allowed us to share in a few classes, but said we couldn't preach or speak openly about Jesus. This is more like what I am used to from the States, but it was really surprising to my students. Many of them commented afterward how they really struggled with that, and had to figure out how to navigate these restrictions. As our government is more and more removing religion from schools, I warned them that this is the direction it's going in the future. They need to find other alternative access points (e.g., pressing social issues) to creatively communicate the message of Jesus. Fortunately, in the afternoon, many of those kids joined us on the sports field where we could play games and then share the gospel in a much more open way.

We were also able to meet with a large group of local pastors. One NETS student shared an encouragement with them about servant leadership from John 13. Then I shared from Gal 6:7-9 about persevering in ministry because our true reward is still coming. We were then invited to three different church youth groups, and a children's ministry. And two of our students were invited as guest preachers at different churches.

Sharing the gospel with the colors on the soccer ball

Sharing at a youth group

Children's ministry

Praying together at a youth group

Our NETS students were very encouraged by how hospitably we were received in the community. On our last evening together we reflected on some of our learning opportunities. They mentioned things like the resistance to the gospel in the school, and learning how to speak into people's situations (like being a refugee) in a sensitive and encouraging way. They were also blessed by the unity they felt with the community even though they were coming from so many different places across Africa. Personally, I was encourage by how well our students jumped into ministry, were flexible when opportunities shifted, and really engaged the learning process.

Summer Camp 2023

In the first week of December, just after all the schools close, Youth for Christ (YFC) in Namibia hosts their annual summer camp. The theme for camp was "But God..." from Psalm 73:26, "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." I volunteered to help as the photographer / videographer and as a host for the Bible quiz "game show."

This year we had over 220 young people ages 15-25 come from all over the country. They were split into four different teams to compete in various sports and games, team spirit, as well as the Bible quiz. Each morning and evening we had sessions with messages following the theme. One morning we split up the guys and the girls for sessions related to their more unique issues. We even surprised them with a color party which only the leaders knew about in advance! Check out the video below to see what camp is like.

NETS Gospel Show

Each year NETS (Namibia Evangelical Theological Seminary) hosts a Gospel Show, inviting the community on campus to enjoy some worship music and get to know our school a bit. Performers or choirs from various churches in the community are invited to share their talents. One student was supposed to have a young adult meeting at his church, but loaded them all on a bus and brought them to attend! Check out the video below to listen along.

Missions Conference

European missionaries first brought the gospel to Namibia back in the mid-1800s. Conversion rates took off so that Christianity has become widely imbedded in traditional life. Today we regularly hear statistics boasting that Namibia is considered 90% Christian (although JoshuaProject.net suggests only about 12.5% of those are Bible-believing, followers of Christ). Regardless of the accuracy of those statistics, the reality is that Namibia is strategically positioned to become a key source for sending out future mission workers.

Therefore, SIM Namibia recently helped host a National Missions Conference to inspire and promote a missional mindset among local church pastors and leaders. We invited the president of a Ghanaian mission board to come as our main speaker, and had workshops by the regional directors for SIM and AIM. We also had a panel of local Namibian mission workers who shared about their experiences and challenges. Some of the main themes included how Namibians can be mobilized to be part of God's mission force, how we can financially support mission from Namibia, and how we can encourage the local church to be involved in missions. Overall we gathered about 55 attendees over two-day conference, some traveling as far as 8-hrs away to attend. The feedback was very positive and all those who attended were very encouraged and suggested we make this an annual event!

The diversity in the audience helped show
how we need to all work together in mission.

A huge prayer circle to close off the conference

All our conference attendees

Teen Mission Namibia 2023

Teen Mission Namibia (TMN) was designed to help impassion and equip young people to get involved in God's mission in Namibia and the world. Our first trip back in Dec 2021 (see posts here) was a great success, so we followed that up with another trip this July. We took 6 young people and 4 staff volunteers out to the town of Outjo for ten days to train them for mission and then give them practical opportunities to apply what they were learning. (FYI - July is our winter, hence the reason why in the photos we were often bundled up while sitting in the sun. 😅)

Training session at Boot Camp

Mission Boot Camp - Our trip started out with two days of training sessions on topics like what is the gospel, how to share the gospel with others, how to share your testimony, the global need for mission, etc. During a reflection time, one young lady said she had always had the question of why God had His Son killed, and she had never been given a satisfying answer. But in our session on the gospel she heard about the great exchange, that God put our sin on him and gave us his righteousness, and that finally gave her a satisfying answer for why Jesus had to die for our sins. This is exactly why we start our training with that session, because many people have grown up in church and never actually heard the true gospel.

Practicing sharing the gospel with each other

Each morning we gave them a dedicated 30-minutes and a mission-related devotional to have a personal devotion time with God. Some of them were used to an occasional, sporadic Bible-reading or prayer time, but taking a whole 30-minutes and doing it every day for the whole trip was a new habit that many expressed they would like to continue when they go home.

The campground where we stayed had a pen
with some porcupines who came out at night!

Kid's Club Outreach - For the next 4 days, we partnered with two different community centers to organize and run kid's clubs at each location. (Since it was during the winter break, kids were not in school.) Our team organized games, songs, Bible lessons, dramas, and memory verses that all fed into the main theme for the day. They did all the teaching and the leading themselves. While there were certainly some growing pains and learning opportunities, by the end of the week they had it down and were doing a great job.

Playing "Telephone" at game time at the kid's club

A game similar to "duck-duck-goose"

Helping the small kids with games

Working on a memory verse at kid's club

Sharing a Bible story about Jesus

Teaching through a drama

Small groups afterward to help solidify learning

Small group with the youngest kids

Street Evangelism - In the afternoons, we would split up into smaller groups and go walk down the neighborhood streets. If we met people walking, or they were sitting outside at their homes, we would start conversations to share the gospel with them. (This idea may sound old-fashioned in a Western context, but it is not unusual to have spontaneous conversations with strangers in this more communal context.) One of our team members expressed how at first she was afraid of evangelism because she didn't know how people would respond, but that our training sessions gave her more confidence in what to say. She ended up being one of the most bold people as we went out, never letting someone pass on the street without making sure we talked to them! Personally, I was encouraged because many of the older people we met struggled in English, so I wasn't much use except to pray in the background. Meanwhile, the team was much more natural and fluid sharing in their own local languages! It was another reminder to me of exactly why we are training them to be missional.

Debrief - The last day of our trip was spent reflecting on our experiences and preparing them to go home. We talked about highlights, hardships, God-sightings, and how they can take what they've learned back home with them. One participant expressed how they learned the harvest really is plentiful, but "us laborers are busy with other things" sitting in our comfort zones. Another expressed that she learned fearfulness is actually not trusting God, and how she needs to have more confidence in God rather than in herself. One of the evenings we had watched a documentary called "Beyond Gates of Splendor" about some missionaries to Ecuador who were martyred trying to share the gospel with a dangerous, unreached tribe. Quite a few of our team were challenged by their refusal to fight back saying, "They are not ready for heaven, but we are."

Some debrief conversations while dinner is cooking

Relaxing a bit during our debrief time

After ten days of living on mission together with others who are encouraging us toward mission, now it was time to send them back home to go live out the mission in their own communities. Please pray for them as they go back home, that they would take what they learned from this week and apply it to their lives, that they would make missional living a priority, and that they would become advocates for mission in their churches and communities.

African Mobilization Consultation

A long time ago I wrote in my journal, "May I never pursue a vision so small that it can be fully accomplished in my own power." At the time, I didn't really know what that vision would be. It started with a vision for training Namibian youth workers. But over the past few years, I think I've been gradually shifting toward something a bit bigger.

Gathering of African mission leaders

There have been a few monumental shifts that have helped shape the history of missions. You could start right in the NT with the gospel going to the Gentiles, or more recently, the advent of mission agencies and the modern mission movement, and the focus toward unreached peoples. The latest shift happening within our generation is the mission force changing from "the West to the rest" to "from anywhere to everywhere." What that means is that places which have traditionally received missionaries are now sending missionaries.

Since 2018, there are more people who profess Christianity in Africa than on any other continent in the world. By 2050, they project there will be more Christians in Africa than on the next two most prevalent continents (Europe & Latin America) combined! So that means the future of the mission force in the next generations could be predominately African! But what we need now are Christian leaders and strategies that will help facilitate this shift.

Discussing challenges of mission

This past week I've been at a consultation of mission leaders from across the continent discussing how we can mobilize Africans and African churches for involvement in global missions. There is no shortage of challenges that need to be addressed, but we heard some encouraging stories of how it's already working (AfriGO magazine is trying to capture some of these stories). I don't think it's an understatement to say this moment in history that we're living can have a monumental impact on the future of missions for generations to come. And I'm excited to be in such a strategic place to be part of that by helping figure out how to send out Namibian missionaries to the least reached places of the world. That's definitely a God-sized vision! 😄

God told Habakkuk, "Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe even if you were told" (Hab 1:5). Something similar could be said of our day. God's word is going out to the nations, and He's using Africans to take it!

Lüderitz Mission Trip

At Namibia Evangelical Theological Seminary (NETS), we want to give our students practical opportunities to put into practice what they are learning in the classroom. So, each year we organize domestic mission trips where our student body breaks up into smaller teams, travels to different towns across the country, and partners with local churches to advance God's kingdom in those communities. This year I went with the group to the southern coastal town of Lüderitz. We did some street evangelism, ministered at an assisted living home, hosted a gospel worship night, and students preached at various local churches on the Sunday morning. We even had a few spontaneous opportunities like praying with a police group raising funds to search for a missing colleague, and giving a 'wedding blessing' for a couple who had just been married at court that morning. Then we also squeezed in some team fellowship time at the beach, and even found some of the famous desert 'wild' horses. Check out the video below to see what our trip was like!

Operation Christmas Child

Growing up in my church back in the States, every year around November-ish we would participate in Operation Christmas Child (a ministry of the organization Samaritan's Purse). We would pack up this little red & green shoe box with toys and goodies for kids around the world. Then we would drop it off back at church and usually never hear about it again. But now I've finally gotten to see what happens to those boxes on the other end!

One of our SIM team members is a local coordinator for distributing these boxes through schools and churches around her community. The first stage is gathering principals and pastors to explain the program. Then those key leaders will send their religious education teachers or Sunday school teachers to a training. For two Saturdays they spend about 5-6 hours learning how to use the OCC curriculum for a 12-week course teaching the children about the gospel. Then somewhere in Feb/Mar, eleven shipping containers of about 7,200 boxes each arrive in port in Namibia to go out to each different region. When the boxes arrive, a whole team of local volunteers come together to take the boxes out to the schools and churches.

It was my joy to participate in some of those distribution events this past week. We visited two schools and one rural San community out in the bush. We started with a little assembly to reinforce the message that the real gift is Jesus, and you receive salvation like a gift, you don't work for it, or earn it. Then kids took their closed boxes back to their classrooms to open them together. Their joy was uncontainable as they shrieked and shouted, danced and smiled. I got many little-kid hugs of gratitude around my knees. One teacher said, "Some of these kids never even get a toy." One student commented, "This is the best day of my life." After this kickoff event, they will now continue with their 12-week lessons to help them discover the true gift of the good news of Jesus.

Distributing the boxes at a school

Opening their Christmas boxes

I was intrigued by one person's question that came up while discussing this program, asking if this doesn't reinforce a 'white saviorism' mentality. But the mission worker replied, "Not at all, because it's not really about the box. From beginning to end, this program is about sharing the gospel with the kids. Whether they are rich or poor, everyone needs a relationship with Jesus." So next time you are packing one of these boxes, may it be a reminder to you that Jesus alone is the Savior, and His gift of salvation is the real message. This box is an opportunity for a child somewhere in the world to receive that most beautiful gift of all!

Easter Camp

Easter weekend in Namibia is a long holiday weekend, with both Good Friday and Easter Monday as public holidays. That means it's a prime opportunity for family vacations or church conferences! Every year the Dutch Reformed Church invites members from their churches all across the Kunene region to come camp on a farm outside Opuwo for their Easter conference.

This is our most north western region, one of the most rural areas in the country, with many places only accessible with a 4x4. This is where the Himba and Zemba tribes call home. They still live in very traditional ways, including their religion of ancestor veneration. God is using local believers and mission workers to draw individuals to Himself, but this area still needs many more inroads for the gospel.

Camp kitchen

I drove with a car-full from Windhoek to Opuwo, and we arrived on Friday evening with just enough time before before the sun went down to set up our tents. It was very rustic camping, with no showers or toilets. You bathe with a bucket and a wash cloth, and do your business out in the bush wherever you can find some privacy. Fortunately, they had a kitchen team who made meals in big pots over the open fire for the whole camp.

Sessions started after dinner on Friday evening. The theme of the conference was "Jesus Prays For Us" with messages from John 17. Saturday and Sunday each included two morning sessions and one in the evening. The afternoons provided time for rest, fellowship, and some games. My favorite opportunities were connecting with pastors and ministry leaders to hear about how God is working in their communities, and also getting to know some of the youth and different issues they deal with.

Three recent graduates from our NETS
Distance course were celebrated at the camp.

The girls played this sort of dodgeball type game
while trying to fill a bottle with sand.

Meanwhile the guys played soccer.

The young adults hanging out under the shade of a tree.

Overall it was a nice weekend to escape the city life and fellowship together with believers in a different part of the country, celebrating the finished work of Christ.