Although we planned the Tshipise Gospel Festival and Hope Outreach for more than 2 months, it was still not enough time to incorporate all aspects of it – and the weekend (8 -11 Aug 2013) arrived faster than we thought.

Even the last week could have been labeled a “week of variables” as we saw such a lot of changes coming through to our program and strategies.  A double cab vehicle broke down, while one of our main vocalists could not attend anymore which forced us to revise our travelling and sleeping arrangements as well as to review the Festival program. Then the weather bureau predicted a very cold spell of weather and even some rain.  Well, that would have ruined the Gospel Festival that we planned for hosting in the open air amphitheater.  But the Lord has been extremely good to us once again, as we could accommodate everybody in the available trucks and cars (although a bit squeezed for two people in the back of my truck), and we had the best of weather with no rain at all.

The Gospel Festival on Saturday afternoon was a success despite the fact that the Resort did not put up our posters that we provided to them and hoped for, therefore little people knew about it and only became aware of the Festival late Friday.  Murphy’s Law says that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong and working with a sound system in open air is quite different than in a building.  We have learned a couple of valuable lessons in this regard and will rectify it second time around.  Most of the people who attended confirmed they enjoyed it and had been blessed by all the songs and dancing. There was even an audience on the outside of the amphitheater who clapped their hands on some of the songs.

The Hope Farm outreach included a Word ministry respectively by Dr. Frank Kotze on Friday evening and Past David Miles on Sunday morning as well as a children’s ministry on Saturday morning by Past’s Lorraine Kotze, Tracey Miles, brother Glenn and Lindsey Goslin, with the support of various other people, such as Thelma Smit who took all the photos over the weekend.  The outreach delivered another 13 people to be baptized on Sunday – which now makes it 45 people saved and baptized in 3 months in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of their sins (Acts 2:38). Praise the Lord!!!

We can actually see and experience the difference in the lives of these new born people. The new church is growing fast and they have already an attendance of 60 -70 people. We can see how the Lord is turning families around, as this past Sunday we baptized some of the wives of the men who were baptized during the first outreach. WOW!  Through this process the Lord will turn the whole village around by starting with families to serve Him.  It takes only one man to change a family and a family to change a village, and a village to change a community….. and how far can we go? As far as the Lord leads because He has shed His blood for all nations.

I would also like to extend a warm THANK YOU to all our members and friends from Galilee who supported and joined us over this weekend – as well as the friends who prayed for us during this time. Thank you for a great time and fellowship and all the hard work in preparation and in hosting the Gospel Festival and the Hope Farm outreach. You truly were a blessing to more than one of all who attended.

As our guests welcomed us to come back, maybe this will become a major event on our calendar from next year.

Be the first to like.


0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Avatar placeholder

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *