Adding Value to Others

Both Faye and I consider it a privilege to be missionaries and to know that God is gracious enough to afford us the opportunity of adding value to others. We have both had the opportunity to speak at Encounter Camps, Faye to the ladies and me to the men, organised by a Powerhouse Family Fellowship - a church based in Windhoek.

Faye participated as a small group leader and came home so blessed and fired up after the weekend of ministry. Dad of course had the joy of babysitting.. Confidentiality commitments prevent me from giving details of some of the ways in which lives were impacted as the Holy Spirit worked through us. I can however say that both Faye and I were very conscious of the Lord's hand on us in giving us wisdom to know how to speak to and pray for people whose lives have been traumatised and who have come to such a camp looking for answers and looking for solutions, and some not even sure of what they are looking for.

Through a structured programme of big group and small group sessions we listened, prayed spoke and saw how God became more real to so many of the people and how eyes that appeared dull and without light suddenly came alive and lit up with hope as people experienced the person of the Holy Spirit and a revelation of Christ which brought hope..

I was invited to be a guest speaker at a youth camp and while taking the campers through the Biblical account of the prodigal son had the joy of sharing with them about the Father heart of God. On the final night of the camp I spoke on the value and importance of a father's blessing.. My dear friend Tony Duran and I then invited the campers to come to the front for prayer if they wanted to receive a father's blessing.. Almost all the campers came forward to receive a blessing and it was my singular joy to not only bless these young men and women, but my own daughter (Larnelle) was on the camp and I was honoured and moved as I held her in my arms and blessed her and spoke words of life and destiny over her..

Parents you know how your heart lurches and questions go whizzing through your mind when you receive a message that the principal of the school your child attends, requests that you come in to see him ? Well I did get just such a call from Larnelle's school.. I had no idea what to expect and was just about blown off my feet when the principal explained the reason for his wanting to see me.. NO Larnelle was not in trouble and in fact there was no problem with her at all, in fact to the contrary. Because of how well Larnelle is doing at school (and at the end of the second term she got all A's) the principal informed me that there was a scholarship/sponsorship being made available specifically for Larnelle that would cover her school fees for all of 2010 ! This comes to a total of about twenty four thousand rand for the year !

While still giving thanks to God for His provision for Larnelle I received another call and on going to see this precious person was told that he and his wife wanted to cover Sydney's school fees for 2010.. This amounts to an annual figure of fourteen thousand four hundred rand. How awesome is that ! God is indeed Jehovah Jireh (Go our provider) and he does meet our needs.. It seems as though God has been pleased with us adding value to others and so moved others to add value to us..