I really did return from my trip to Africa. I know it’s been awhile since I posted anything. I’ve just had a hard time getting back into the right gear. This year, our church made it’s second visit to the Back to the Bible Training College, in Barberton, South Africa, where over 80 students from all over Africa (and other continents) are studying and preparing for ministry. Many of them are already itinerant preaching and ministering while attending the school. The college is very poor, and they have very few resources. So the purpose of our trip was to provide teaching, training, encouragement, study resources, and service to the staff and students of the college so that they could more effectively proclaim the name of Christ.
With the cooperation of the college, and following the model of Christ training His disciples, our church here in Michigan adopted twelve of these students. Our pastor is training them in expository preaching, Biblical leadership, theology, etc. On this trip, we took each of these 12 students and the college library 20 books each, including Bible dictionaries, commentaries, a systematic theology, and other study tools. We also took each of the 80+ students a book called Peacemakers, by Ken Sande.
What a blessing it was to see how God provided these resources so we could take the 700 lbs of books to Africa for the students of this college. We left the United States on October 30th at about 7am, with a couple of hops, from South Bend, to Detroit, to D.C. The flight from D.C. to Johannesburg took 15 ½ hours. From there, we traveled another 5+ hours to the college in a little van. The flight back to D.C. from “Jo-burg” took 18½ hours, with a short stop in Dakar, Senegal. The return trip back was the toughest, taking 36 hours of combined driving, flying, and layovers.
There were my four main highlights: The spontaneous praise and worship that erupted as we handed out the books, the opportunity to preach at a tiny church in Barberton on Sunday (translated into Zulu!), the opportunity to preach to the staff and students of the college on Monday morning, and the sweet fellowship of the team during the whole trip. Here's my pastor's blog post on the trip.
The college has an awesome mission, to reach Africa for Jesus. We believe the best way we can contribute to that mission is to equip and train native pastors and leaders for their work of ministry.
