Our team left Cape Town and arrived in Naries on the 4th May 2009 to embark on our rather unique outreach. I say unique (and I’m sure every single mission is) because ours had something of a dual purpose: we were entering the marketplace and spreading the gospel there, as well as spending time in a poor community and spreading the gospel there. Obviously these two domains demanded very different styles of mission work and here are our stories...
Our Marketplace Mission
My team members were me, Emmanuel, Lazarus (Daddy), Nicki, Matthews and Lelanie. A very small team, but with a very good dynamic; there were 4 guys and 2 girls, we were all single and our ages ranged between 27 and 32.
Our marketplace mission took us right into the hospitality industry. We worked (and lived) at a guesthouse called Naries, in the heart of the Namaqualand in the Northern Cape. Our living quarters were not in the actual guesthouse but in a sort of warehouse converted into bedrooms, with a make shift kitchen. There was a lot of space and so it was a very cold place to live during the wintry evenings and mornings, but we were grateful for hot running water and appliances to cook food with/on.
The idea was to work alongside the staff, build relationships with them on an individual basis and proclaim the gospel, “using words, if necessary”.
For the girls, this meant starting in the kitchen at 8:00 a.m. every weekday to wash dishes. We then proceeded to clean the guest rooms, change the bedding, dust, sweep and mop the living areas and anything else that was required of us. We did this every weekday until about noon. Sometimes we were asked to work in the evenings until 10:00 p.m., especially when the guesthouse had more guests than they were expecting, or a shortage of staff.
For the guys, this meant working outside on the property. This included everything from garden maintenance to fixing roads and roofs; from picking litter up to finding and fixing faults in the electric lines. (It was a BIG property so finding those lines could take hours).
We learned very early on that our hard work and good attitudes would carry the weight of our gospel message. The staff were half expecting us to either bible bash them or preach at them, or slack off in our work and be more of a burden than anything else. So they were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at work on time, every day, and dutifully performed our duties.
We so badly wanted to connect on a personal and one-to-one level with the staff members and we knew that building these relationships would take time and effort. So every opportunity with a mop in our hands, or a rake, would be used to engage in conversation and be as authentic as we could. In the beginning, the process was slow and (seemingly) without success but by the end they were opening up to us and allowing us to speak into their lives. It was amazing.
As a team, we would get together to pray and worship in the evenings and we always extended an invitation to the staff members to join us. Sometimes they even joined us at the end of their shifts at 10:00 p.m.! One of the staff members even accompanied us to a prison in Springbok, where he gave a testimony to the inmates of what God was doing in his life – this was his first public speaking experience, because he had grown up with a stutter. We were overjoyed.
There were also some ladies on the staff team who asked us to pray with them and confided in us about various personal struggles. It was so good to support them in prayer and encourage them with God’s word.
And so, at the end of two months of hard work, with no pay, and intentionally pursuing authentic relationships with the staff members, we were exhausted – in a good way. God was faithful.
The testimony that they gave afterwards was that they saw God at work in us, and that it was possible to be a God-loving, God-fearing individual who was still "normal". That was very encouraging.
Our Community Mission
Our community mission took us into the village of Buffelsrivier. It is about 20 km (12.5 miles) away from Naries and is inhabited by Coloured, Afrikaans-speaking locals. (The term “Coloured” is not an offensive/derogatory term: it is one of the official races in South Africa).
The village seemed like a sparsely populated area because the houses were are far apart from each other but apparently the population is about 3000. It’s very rural, many homes with outside toilets and even outside brick ovens. Some houses were made of corrugated iron and those made from brick were very simple. There were a few, big, brightly painted homes which were well taken care of.
The biggest giants facing this community are joblessness, lack of education, severe alcoholism, family violence and apathy. With this in mind, we faced an equally big challenge: how to present the gospel in an authentic and relevant way to a community over-evangelised and exhausted with churches, and struggling with poverty. The first lady we met, on our very first day in that community described the village as “sif-gepreek” (Afrikaans for ‘we’ve had enough preaching already’). Even with all the teaching/preaching from churches and evangelists and missionaries, the community was still problem ridden, poverty stricken and without hope that the Church could do anything to help them.
There are a minimum of about seven churches in this area, with attendance as low as 3 members in some of them. So, we asked ourselves how we were going to represent Jesus in a way that was refreshing and different and welcoming and full of power. And also how NOT to perpetuate religiosity and ‘condemnation preaching’ which kept so many of the locals out of church.
Two months wasn't nearly long enough to address all these issues. BUT we were determined to spend time with the locals, get to know them, and their individual struggles; to encourage them, teach them what we know about Jesus, love and support them, and even dare to dream with them about opportunities in the future.
We had such an amazing time in one particular house-hold, one afternoon. Ouma Booys, who has so little, invited the whole team round for soup and home made bread. Eventually, the whole neighbourhood gathered round to see us, and we took that opportunity to sing with them and tell them about God. There were so many people, some even sat outside on the dirt to listen. And the best part was that even the drunks gathered with us. My team mate, Emmanual, spoke and said how much God loves community and how much He loved what was going on at that moment: Buffelsrivier coming together, behaving like one extended family, caring for one another, feeding each other, singing praise to God....
That was the highlight of our time there. We left Ouma Booys with a shopping voucher so that she could buy some groceries as she needed them, from the local grocer. It was a sweet day.
How Naries and Buffelsrivier fit together
Most of the staff members at Naries are locals from the Namaqualand area. The owners of Naries, Danny and Garitha, were also on our CPx team and they completed the lecture phase with us in Cape Town. (However, they weren’t able to be with us during the outreach phase). Their passion is to see sustainable solutions for poor communities. And they are prepared to use their business to see this passion through. They have employed people from Buffelsrivier, people who have struggled with alcoholism, people who had no hope of further education or employment, and they have given opportunities for further training, opportunities to earn a salary, opportunities to provide for their families and give them hope about the future. They are passionate about marketplace mission: providing for the poor, not through hand outs but through sustainable employment and training; preaching the gospel, not through words alone, but through relationship, care, love and accountability.
We wait to see what the next chapter in Naries and Buffelsrivier will be...
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