While we were at the Leaders’ Meeting, there were eight or nine pastors from Southern Africa and two pastors from the Middle East who help us coordinate Live Schools in their various countries. We had the privilege of talking and interviewing these pastors to hear the stories of what God is doing through their churches and Live School students. Several of their stories are written below. Take a minute to read one or two of them! You’ll be inspired.
After the Leaders’ meetings, the USA team went to film the story of a Live School running in a township near Pretoria, called Soweto. Soweto is a poor area inhabited by nearly three million people and founded years ago by the apartheid government as a means of moving blacks out of the city centers. Soweto was home to Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the earliest protests against apartheid begin here with school children.
Today in Soweto, there is a Live School running in a local church called New Hope that has about 25 students from the ages of 20 to 65. These students told incredible stories of their new vision and passion for missions. They now take the youth of the church out to evangelize among their neighbors every Saturday. They went on outreach to Mozambique, and though they come from a poor area, they discovered how fortunate they were when they went into the rural villages of another country.
It was amazing to see Africans reaching out to other Africans. They have realized that they are not a mission field that needs saving by the West, but that, as believers, they are a missions force that can bring the true Savior, Jesus Christ.
Watch the Soweto documentary, The Born-Frees, below!
“’We will kill you, and it will be easy.’
The text message glowed ominously on Philip’s* phone. Those were words he’d heard before. Many times, actually. They were always a little different, but they had the same goal: fear. Death. Philip scrolled through the previous messages from this number…”
“David* awoke knowing that he needed to go to and pray over his fellow prisoner. But how? That man was crazy. The prison guards couldn’t even hold him down long enough to put clothes on him. All the other prisoners feared him. The prison guards were even jumpy around him…”
“John sat on the airplane staring at the magazine article in front of him.
‘How in the world, Lord?” he kept praying over and over again. “What have we gotten ourselves into?'”