Staff Conference

We started off the year with the YWAM staff conference. Youth With a Mission staff from across the country came together for a two day time of prayer and encouragement. The speaker was supposed to be a teacher from South Africa, but the day before the conference it turned out they would not be able to make it. So at the last moment the whole thing was changed to an interactive time filled with prayer and everyone had an opportunity to share. We were also given an overview of the history of YWAM in Namibia, it was interesting, but more than that it was great for David and I to hear about the small beginnings of all the ministries. We look forward to being able to look back at our own ministry one day. Right now we have people from several nations working together in Namibia to see the nation changed and saved.

At one year!

Reese is a year old!
At one year he loves to take baths, desperately wants to be outside at all times, and babbles non stop. He loves to eat, and if one of us tries to eat anything without Reese getting some he gets very upset, he also loves to drink whatever we are drinking and wants to drink from a glass like a big boy. He usually fills his mouth with water and then spits it all out. He is super cute though and loudly goes MMMMMM! whenever we have food or water.
He is in 18 month clothes and size 5 diapers, he is a big boy! He still goes around bare foot as his foot his too chubby for baby shoes. Lengthwise he can wear a 3 or four but chub wise he needs a 5.
His vocabulary includes: Mama, dada, dad, daddy, look there, bath, hi, bye, hellllllooo, ball, bath, and no. His first sentence was “no no dada, no no dada” when David tries to get him to go to sleep at night.
His favorite book is Dr Seuss’ “Mr Brown Can Moo,” he is obsessed with balls, and will play with anything round including apples, oranges and potatoes.
His favorite meal is spaghetti bolognaise, and he loves Greek yoghurt.
 He is just a funny, happy, sociable little guy. He loves to talk with his hands, giggles a lot, and has learned how to pour water on David during bath time.
He stands up and takes a few steps every now and then, but he prefers to monkey crawl. This is when he moves his butt forward by leaning on one hand and bending one leg then scooting. He looks just like a gorilla.
Reese is till nursing, and spends most of the night in our bed, we are starting to wean him.

He is an absolute joy, and we are beyond blessed to have this little ball of energy in our lives. The last year has been filled with so much laughter but it has gone much faster than I ever imagined it would.

Now forgive me as I dump a  hundred pictures of Reese!

Day of prayer!

Our first day of prayer for this year was a great success! Thank you to everyone who prayed for us and with us, for the little messages and all the encouragement. We started the day with some prayer on the base, Suzanne came over and prayed with us. She has a lot of wisdom, they have been on the mission field for many years. Her input was priceless. Somedays we feel a little discouraged when it seems like it is taking forever for 3 Measures to get started. But Suzanne reminded us that CHS was a dream for many years before they started, and that in their first year they only had 10 students.
I think it is going to be great to look back at this time once three measures is making an impact in the community!
After praying at the base for few hours we headed to the city park where we read from the Bible and talked about how far we had come and what we are dreaming about for the future. We then went to the mall where we could walk and pray for the people of the city.
Then we rushed to the office to skype with Mark, where he gave us an answer to one of our prayer points by telling us that the church is going to raise their monthly support to us!
Finally we ended the day with praise and worship songs at the official opening of the Discipleship Training School on the YWAM base.

We finished the day refreshed and encouraged. David read from Proverbs 20:21 which says:

 Reminding us again to remain faithful, and not be impatient!

We also felt like we have spent too much time this last year being negative and allowing ourselves to worry about things. So a scripture that we are going to focus on this year is Philippians 4:4-9:

Prayer for the new year.

We will get back to the office on Monday, but before that we are spending Saturday as a day of prayer for the new year. Take some time to pray with us for the following things:

We have three categories with some points under each:

1. Ministry
 a. Pray for the students we will be discipling in this year. David and I will continue with the kids who were baptized last year, and we will both be taking on new groups. We will meet with them each once a week.
 b. Hope Club is an outreach/discipleship group that Beautiful Kidz (a sister ministry) has been running for young adults. We have been asked to take over this group. This could be a great opportunity for us to begin with our target group in the community. Pray that we make the right decision about this.
 c. Teams: we will be receiving two teams from the USA this year.
 d. Relationships within the community.
 e. The right steps and the right community development classes.
 f. As always pray for the hearts of the people in Katutura to be softened and ready to hear the message.
 g. For God to clear the path for us, to make a way for Three Measures to be established in Katutura in 2013.

2. Planning
 a.  Wisdom!
 b. Church partnerships. In starting out our new  ministry we were cautioned that some of the existing churches in the area may feel threatened if we start a ministry without involving them. So after prayer and some counsel from the senior YWAM staff, we have decided to partner up with the churches in Katutura and offer discipleship/development classes to them.
c. Target area: we know we’ll be working in Katutura, but we’re still trying to narrow our target area down.
d. Opportunity to go to the North. We hope to be able to travel to the North of Namibia in June this year, the issue is that without any more team members the work of Three Measures will grind to a halt in the community if we leave for any kind of extended period of time. Pray for local leaders to step up!
e. Pray for our ears and eyes to be open to opportunities around us.

3. Development
a. Team team team! We need people, local or foreign, to catch the vision and join us!
b. Visas. Our work permit expired in October, we reapplied in August, right now they are saying it  may be eight more months of waiting before we know anything. Right now no news is good news, but it also feel like we are working with a weight hanging over our heads. Pray for peace of mind for us, and for some positive outcomes.
c. Communication. We live out in the sticks, we feel like we are isolated and our communication is suffering because of it. Internet is unreliable at best, but is usually completely unavailable at our house. So pray for some kind of resolution.
d. Schedule. We are working on a schedule right now that gets me (Sandy) in the office at least twice a week. Reese is older now, but a very busy toddler. Pray that we may find a nanny.
e. Finances, we are still operating on a minimum budget.
f. Our car. It needs new tires and a new windshield. And it has started to make some weird sounds…
g. Health and well being for the three of us, and for Reese to continue growing and learning.

We may add some more through out the day, feel free to email, facebook or comment to let us know that you are standing with us on Saturday. God is good, He has brought us so far and we are excited to see what will be accomplished in this year.

Pray for rain…

So if you are planning on visiting us this year, it seems wide brimmed hat would be in order…

They want to arrest both of us…

One great thing about living in Windhoek, is that we are only a few hours away from the beach. The beach town of Swakopmund lays about three to four hours to the west of us. Over the last few years we have taken several little trips there to relax and recharge.
Since we have been back from furlough we have been quite busy, the days have passed in a blur. But something interesting happens in Namibia in December. Everything shuts down. People in the city return to their homes in the North, businesses close shop, government agencies grind to a halt. We decided to go to Swakop for a few nights, we could then get away from the oppressing heat in the city and spend a few days relaxing with the rest of the country.
We headed out on Monday morning with Paul and Auguste, another couple here on the base, we split the gas bill and stayed in a BB so it was a nice little break. We played in the waves, went sand boarding, attempted to stalk Orlando Bloom (who is currently filming a movie here,) and ate out at some restaurants. By the end of the three days we were ready to get back home and jump back into things.

Now in Namibia they have police stops set up at every entrance of every major town in the country. Most times you are just waved though, but sometimes things get tricky. If you remember the stop that happened in April when the CCCB team was here, that one ended with our car being impounded. As we were leaving Swakop we were pulled over at the stop and they asked to see our passports.
David and I are currently on expired work permits, they expired in October, but we turned in our renewal application in August. The unofficial rule here is that if your renewal application is turned in you can wait in country for the outcome. They have this rule since it sometimes takes the department of Home Affairs a loooooooong time to reach an answer. So we handed over the passport to the iimigration officer working at the police stop and he asked for a copy of the receipt showing that we had in fact turned in the renewal. We did not have that little piece of paper with us.

So they asked David to step out of the vehicle and they took him into their office, he was in there for probably 30 minutes when he walked back to the car and said “They want to arrest both of us! They said I will have to go to jail and await a court date for a hearing, but they will let you pay a fine so you can take care of Reese.” Initially I would just have brushed it off, usually one can talk ones way out of a situation like this one, but then I remembered them taking our car and I started to worry. What was funny was every time the officer told David, ok come on let’s go to the police station to book you in, David would say “No, wait let me call so and so.” So we called everyone and anyone we could think of and everyone agreed that we had a legal right to be in the country. The only lady that could have helped us was the head of immigration but she was out of town on holiday. The man that was detaining us at this point then said that even if we had the receipt it would not be enough and that he was going to teach Home Affairs a lesson by putting us in jail.

Yikes!

He then brought up a second option. He said that we could take a 48hour notice. This would mean that we have 48hours to get out of the country. That would be enough time to make it home throw some bags in the car and then race to the border. This would have been a disaster as it would go on our permanent file and would cause untold problems for us in the future. So we refused that to.

We were stopped at 11 it was 1pm now. Brian, our YWAM leader here, agreed to drive to our office to fax the receipt to the immigration office in Walvisbay, about 45 minutes fro where we were. So at one, the officers left for lunch but told us to drive to the immigration office to wait for them there. All the while being adamant that the receipt would be useless and we were probably going to end up in jail. The officer also kept David’s passport so that we would not be able to run off.
We drove out to the immigration office were we were told the man would return with David’s passport by two. The receipt also came through while we were waiting there. The man finally showed up at 3:50, and when he walked in the lady working there told him “Here is their receipt just let them go to Windhoek to sort it out.” This seemed to catch him off guard, as he was the ONLY one going on that the receipt was not enough, but this lady was the first one to say it to his face. So HE LET US GO!

We made it home right as the sun was setting. It was another adventure for us. In my head I kept seeing that show called “locked up abroad,” it was a scary few hours.
Thank you so much for all the prayers, we would be lost without them. And please continue to pray for our work permit. We are still waiting for an answer!

Warthogs.

What is the appropriate face to make when petting a warthog?

Add caption

Camp!

This post is part of the series on what we did while we were on furlough this past summer.

At RFF before the camp.

While we were in Missouri we were fortunate enough to be part of a junior high summer camp.  Rocky Fork Fellowship asked us to spend the week as the resident missionaries at the camp. We had an hour at the end of each day to spend sharing with the kids about our work here in Namibia. The kids were full of the regular questions at the beginning of the week. (Do you have lions in the street?what weird things have you eaten? etc.) But by the end of the week some of the kids were asking real questions and praying with us for Namibia.

David sharing

It was a great time to get the word our about a little African country that not a lot of people know about, but it was also a time to hopefully inspire some kids towards missions. Please pray for the kids who attended the High Hill camp this past summer, pray that the little seeds that were planted in their hearts will grow, that they will remember to pray for Namibia, and that in the future there may be some missionaries among them.

Sandy sharing

3measures so far…

Hey everyone, this is David… first time guest-bogger (does it still count as guest blogging if your name is in the blog’s url?).

I wanted to let everyone know what’s happening here in Katutura with 3measures. We’re still busy laying the foundations; lots to be done. I’ve been spending my days in the office every day working on relationships, setting up the website (check it out… www.3measur.es), getting to know our sister ministries, doing survey work, writing lots of emails, doing paperwork for our Namibian bank account, etc. Oh, and getting everything together for our new support system. We have all new options for donations/monthly support (interested? Check that out too… support).

Outside of “office hours” we’re getting involved in Hope Club, a sister ministry’s program for young adults in the neighborhood. This group is great and is filled with 20 & 30-somethings who are trying to live out their faith in a difficult place. We’ll be helping out for awhile to serve a worthy ministry & to build relationships for future discipleship groups. I would really like to get a group going with the men of Hope Club as soon as they’re ready.

We’ll also be starting a discipleship group with some of the older kids from Community Hope School; specifically, with the kids who responded to the Discipleship class I taught over the last couple of years. This includes Steven and Angelika who we baptized in December last year.

As we begin discipleship groups, we’re laying the foundations for our church planting ministry.

We’re also busy working toward our goals for community development. I’ve been working on compiling a list of churches that exist in the area & we’ll be contacting them soon to see how we may be able to work with them in community development. We’re hoping to offer Community Health groups to churches who are interested. This would go a long way toward starting our Community Health Evangelism (CHE) program in Katutura.

So that’s what we’ve been up to at 3measures. Thanks for reading & for everything you do.

Keep all this in your prayers!

David

Critters!!

David said that he would blog about what has been going on on his side of things tomorrow, but I wanted to leave you today with some pictures of the creatures found in our house.
The first one is the flat wall spider, we have may of them, but we have made peace with them as they kill mosquitos and flies. It is just not very nice to be surprised by one. The second in the Red Roman, or demon from the depths of Hades, either name fits in my mind. I wish we could say we have seen one or two, but there have been at least 10-15 in our house in the last few weeks. They range from a few centimeters to more centimeters, but can get up to twelve inches. We saw Reese poking at something the other day, and when we looked it was one of these beauties. Reese was pushing it’s soft body like a button. SHUDDER!!!!