Thanks for all the prayers!!!

Thank you for your continued prayers for us! The other half of the group arrived on Sunday and have done their city/safari tours that we did last week. Yesterday and today my group got to visit 2 of the areas we will be working in the next week. We went to prayer walk and to get to know the areas but already saw God at work. God is working through us, touching lives and opening doors. Today we went to Pastor Diego's church – he is a Brazilian missionary that has been here in Johannesburg for 8 years and is a pastor of a local Portuguese church. The church is located in an area of town that has had a long history of racial/ethnic hatred and even killings. We walked through the community praying for God's salvation, peace and restoration of this community. 70 Brazilians walking through the streets called a lot of attention... people would jump up and down and yell as we passed by... they love soccer and love Brazilians... this opened up doors for us to talk to people and tell them why we were here and about the church. There is a boarding house a couple of blocks from the church that has 63 older adults living there. We were invited inside, able to greet and visit with the residents and even had a mini worship service with them. It was awesome but only after returning to the church did we discover that Pastor Diego has been trying to connect with this place for years but has been unable to because of the situation here in South Africa. God used our group to open up a door and gave us an opportunity to share His message of peace, hope and salvation!

Continue to pray for our group here – for our health, safety, strength, endurance and boldness. The spiritual warfare is real and strong here in this country and we have felt it so strong. We are praying more than ever and know God is going to do great things this next week. Pray specifically for the health of each of us. People are getting sick every day. The last few days it seems like every few hours someone gets sick. And I even had a sore throat and fever yesterday morning and praise God that I am feeling better today, but our health is something I ask you to really pray about.

Tomorrow and Thursday we are doing training with the whole group and then Friday we will divide up and go to our different ministry areas. Continue to pray for us as we prepare and plan. Pray for the English training we will be doing with everyone. Pray for the leadership as they divide the groups and handle all the logistics. It's a lot of work and they are doing a great job! The group that I'm here with is amazing and I've enjoying so much getting to know them and serving with them! Thank you for your continued prayers! Love you guys!