latest news and some almost latest
Hello Everyone, I thank you all so much for your prayers, they are needed for sure and God is good.
The last couple of weeks my outreach team joined with a larger team from a local Church and did a large varity of ministries. It was challanging for our small OM team to enter a much larger team of primarily Afrikaans people, there was a big culture shock then with both the team we were with and the people in the village, I think the biggist one sence comming to South Africa. I thank God for all that I learned through that and all that I saw God doing in other people lives as well.
Now we had a couple of days off but it will not be long untill I get on a train for about 12-13 hours heading for my last outreach while in South Africa. I will be in a city called Durban working with a church there for the next two weeks. My team could be involved with both Childrens ministry, general evangilism and helping with regular church events. The area has lots of Hindu and Muslim people living there so that will present its own challange and need lots of prayer.
Once I get back from that there is less than a week untill I fly back to Canada. So time flys and it is time where the future comes into view. I am looking at joining OM Ships and going on the Logos Hope early next year. The prosess of applying has been started, I will wait now and answer any questions they have before they decide if they will accept me or not. This is a big prayer point now, for God to open or close doors to show me where He wants me to go.
***if anyone has not seen my latest prayer letter about our inner city outreach you can get the PDF by clicking HERE***
Thank you all for your support.
-Trevor
Official prayer letter April 2010
in this update is my official (already either printed out or in a pdf) update and a few extra stories below it.
---official letter
So it had come time for our first outreach which would be what they call the rural outreach. We would be going in small teams to a church in a small village for two weeks. We would be tenting and cooking on a open fire. I volunteered to be in charge of the food, not so much cooking it all but organizing what is eaten when to make sure we don’t run out. We left just after 3 am so that we could get there in time to separate all the groups and get them to their villages in time to set up camp. After a few stops my team finally got to the church that we would be staying at for the next two weeks. A little mud church was there along side a partially built building that is to be a new larger church.
Our first morning on site was a real test of patience and how the team was going to work together. Summed up we had planned to leave camp at 7 am and go to the local primary school to do a short program for the kids and meet the principle. What actually happened was that in the middle of a disaster breakfast due to bleachy water the people that were going to show us to the school came at 6:30 am and said we need to leave. We were totally not prepared to go but we had to leave to get to the school on time. So after leaving for the 30 min walk there I had no sunscreen or hat but I still had my flashlight, total chaos. We got to the school in time, did our program where I actually ended up singing in front of about 400 kids. After this we were shown around the school and after that we thought that we were going back to camp to get ready to leave again for door to door ministry. We actually ended up walking for another 2 hours or so visiting all the places that our pastor contact wanted us to see. So by the time we got back we were so tired and just had to make lunch and get ready to leave again. It was a very hard day but we learned so much about how life would be in our village.
The first week was filled with many new experiences. We went to the school each morning that week to give a Bible story and drama for the kids. We also went and visited many of the villagers in their homes, some from the church and some not. Some church members were too sick to walk to church so they enjoyed having someone come to spend time with them, sharing from the Bible and praying with them. Many don’t have their own Bible and so it was an amazing thing so see how special it is to have the Bible read to them. Our church also had a service each night and on the first Fri-day I gave my first sermon ever, praise God that I was able to do it speaking clearly enough for the translator to understand and that it went well.
One of the hardest and most memorable days was the day that we were going to help them build their new church building. We really ended up not doing so much building at all. The women in our team wanted to work but it turned out that in this culture women don’t build they cook, so they helped cook. Also later in the day they were not even letting us guys do all that much anymore. It ended up that because we had time and someone to show us the way, some of us walked for almost 2 hours (total time) to a small store to get some more flower to make bread. Yes it was mid day, maybe +45C and no shade on the road but we did it. For supper that night we were treated to a meal of chicken feet, necks and heads...with a South African food called pap, it looks like mashed potatoes but is made from corn. When we ate the women and men sit separate and eat at different times. The whole day was a large cultural challenge and was very hard physically from the work that we did do, the heat and the food. So much more happened there isn’t space to write it all, people getting sick, prayers being answered, learning so many lessons from the people, both doing and eating crazy things all the time. I thank God for the team I was on and that during the whole outreach even when I look back on a day or event and it seems as if I failed that God came through and it wasn’t a failure because God was in it.
The church that we camped next to...we fit close to 50 people in there once.
we had a cool camp fire to cook on, this was up making bread on it.
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The Chicken feet and head that we were to eat before it was cooked
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----some extra stories
One of the things that humbled us so much was to see how the church that we were helping accepted us. They brought us water, gave us food even though we had enough and in general you could just feel that they were happy to have us there. Even though we didn’t know how their church service worked and at first we didn’t know when to get up or sit down and all those things, they didn’t think bad of us for it. As time went on you could see how happy they were to see us adapting and fitting in better. The last Sunday service when it was announced that we were leaving the next day they all were so sad. When we left many people from the church came at 7am in the rain to say goodbye to us.
That day that they gave us chicken feet may have been a hard day but it had its good side. One of the girls who came to help prepare the feet had a long talk with the girls from our team while getting the feet ready. During this talk they discovered that she knew about Jesus but did not know Him personally. In the end she gave here life to Jesus. Her father who was already a Christian ended up coming to a few of the services at the church there after this and expressed how thankful he was that his daughter had become a Christian. So as much as I don’t like to eat chicken feet if God can save someone while preparing them I guess they can’t be that bad.
While there are many stories that you could call more serious and there were many trials there were also times when life was just good and funny. there were so many frogs there, sometimes they would jump on people while we were having meetings, you would be walking in the dark and something would move kinda scaring you but in the end it was just a frog. One night some people slept outside and in the middle of the night one girl woke up only to find a frog on her forehead. Planning on making bread (kinda a flat type) for the night but the person doing it put too much flower in so we ended up making something like 50 small bread rolls, and taking forever cooking them three at a time while trying to keep the heat even on the fire. The night that some people slept outside the sky was so clear and there were so many stars many of spent a long time just looking up at them. It was made even better because we just happened to be making doughnuts that night. Sadly many of the truly funny events wouldn’t make sense without the context, but while we had many hard times God blessed us as a team with some good times where we could just be joyful together.
Thanks you all.
*The update below is about the last couple of weeks before the outreach, it was never in an official prayer letter, feel free to read it if you haven't.*
Update March 21st
My hands tied behind my back, just like so many others being led through the field heading for a unknown destination. This was part of a very differnt evening during a very differnt week. The weeks of classes on topics more related to personal growth were over and we had changed gears totally. We started the Missions Mobilizing Training week, it was a week all about moblising people for missions. One way to describe Missions Mobilising is any event where Gods people are awakened and keep moving and growing untill they find their place of stratigic involment in the task of world evangelisation. We learned all kinds of ways to talk to churches and even do events with youth groups. We had many cultual meals and we leanred about so many countries all over the world. The night where I ended up walking through a field with my hands behind my back was the night we were watching a movie about the percicuted church. Right when we were about to start the movie a group of people dress like soldires ran into the room blowing wisles who then pushed many of the guys onto the floor and tied their hands behind their back. For all of us that were tied up we had to watch the entire movie with our hands tied behind our chair. After the movie they led us around the property while still “under arrest” and eventually we had a time of prayer for the purcecuted church. They did lots of activites to give us a little bit of a personal experiance to help us think more about many things going on in the world.
The next week we started learning about HIV/AIDS which is a very large problem in South Africa. After a few days of this we started to get ready for our first outreach. All the trainiees are spliting up into groups of 10 and being sent to a village for 16 days. We will be tenting, cooking over an open fire and we will not even have a car once we are there. We also will not have our electronic stuff, only 1 cell phone per team and a camera per team, no ipods. There is a pastor that we will be working with while there and we could be doing everything from teaching about AIDS in the community school to being asked to give the Sunday morning sermon. They tell us to just be ready for anything because what we do depends on what the pastor that we are with thinks the community needs. It may seem strange to be teaching about AIDS prevention but often people in the rual areas can still believe that it is a curce that they can’t avoid without going to a witchdocter so there is sometimes a real lack of acurate knowlegde.
For the whole trip I am in charge of my team’s food, so I have to decide who cooks what and make sure we don’t run out to soon. We just got everything packed up and ready to go, it was crazy getting everything packed up. We leave at about 3 am so we can get there in time to set up the camp. its our last night to have a real shower and sleep on a bed for couple of weeks, we are all enjoying it. we know that it is likely to be a hard two weeks but in the end we will be glad we did it and we will learn lots. thank you all for your prayers.
-Trevor
Febuary 2010 official prayer letter
My time back in Canada had come to an end as I boarded a very small aircraft on the first leg of my trip to South Africa. First though there was a stop in Germany for a preparation conference for all the new OMer’s. We had almost two weeks of Bible teaching, info about OM and many other learning experiences. It was a experience in itself just to be around people from so many different countries and cultures
Many people worked hard to make this conference happen and we were put through many different experiences. The most unique was a simulated trip to another country complete with a fake flight to the “country” and a immigration area set up to look like Russia in the early 80’s. I even ended up in fake jail! But no more, it would take a short novel to properly explain. We were also experienced an afternoon in a classic European city, Heidelburg. It was a very nice place to walk around and see. Overall the conference helped prepare me for the many different challenges I have had and will go through while living in South Africa.
Many of us who were here arrived a week before the actual program started because of the timing with the GO conference. It was good to have the time to adapt to the climate and the area in general. We did some work around the property and had some time to rest. The first day that they took us to the mall was one of the first time I actually got a good look at the country I was in. It is very strange in many ways from any other countries I have visited. When they take us shopping we go to a nice mall and it is all in English and everyone speaks English. It is really hard to think of being in Africa while sitting down eating a burger and fries while drinking a Coca-Cola and enjoying the fact that I was able to buy Heinz Ketchup. The Africa that we see on TV in North America is very real and we will be going to see much of this on our various Outreaches but there are also some very nice places. South Africa is the wealthiest of the African countries but there is a small percentage of the population that has most of the money and so you can find a huge difference between the rich and the poor. This can create many problems as you can guess.
So the first week of actual classes started with the rest of the trainee’s arriving and the property became very crowded. In the end
there are about 80 of us from at least 16 different countries. This really does create a very interesting cultural mix, which has the potential to be either very enjoyable or very difficult. We jumped right into a full schedule that includes waking up before 6 am to go have a short morning devotion from a leader and then we get until 7:30 am for personal devotions. The quality of this time is very dependant of how well you slept the night before. Because of this they want in our rooms and getting to sleep by 10 pm. On a regular basis we have classes in the morning and rotating afternoon activities. Monday night is our prayer night that everyone attends.
There are more than just classes as we will be going to many different places for outreaches in the near future. These will range from
going to very small communities in rural areas to the middle of the big city. We will also be helping out a country wide outreach during the 5 weeks of the World Cup Soccer. OM hope to take the opportunity of there being so many people from all over the world spending time in this country to show them the love of Jesus. There are all kinds of different ministries planned and they will have all the trainees sent all over the place to help with many of them.
I thank you all for your prayers and support, things are really still
just getting started here, I am learning lots and will soon get some more practical experience. Not everyday has been easy but God has been good in helping me learn from the difficulties.
-Trevor Robinson
first update
Well I decided to do a small update before I actually head out to South Africa. It is a good thing to do with the fact that I will not have any regular access to the internet (other than e-mail) unless I want to pay an aparently high price for it. I am going to try to put my prayer letters on here so they can just be read by anyone even if they arn’t on the list. I don’t know how it will work though because I will have to get my Dad to do it as far as I know with the way the internet works down there.
For the last week and a half I have been in Mosbah Germany at what they call the GO conference. As you can guess it is about getting the new Omer’s ready to go to their field of ministry. People from all over the world came to the conferance. There has been much singing, many messages and some pretty differnt exeriances. Some of these I have mentioned on Facebook. It was awesome to meet people from all over the world, with so many differnt native languages and cutlures, but yet still Christians.
Saturday I night I fly out for almost 11 hour flight and then I will spend a few days at the bace before the actual program starts. I will likly have an official prayer letter hopefully not too long after I get there once I know more about what life will be like there and what we will be doing. It is hard to beleive that it is actually about to start, but it is also good to know that it is about to start. I am happy to be going to South Africa, I feel like God has confermed that it is the right thing this week.
People have already started to leave, the people who are going to the OM ship Logos Hope left at 4:00 AM, I would say last night but it really was this morning. Some of us stayed up to say bye, so many of us are a little tired now. People will continue to leave over the next day or so and soon we will be spread all over the world again.
Thank you all for your prayers.
