June 2009 Update

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20

Dear Friends,
You would expect a missionary to quote the Great Commission from time to time. We would like to draw your attention to the last sentence: "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." We thank God that Jesus is with us - not just all the time but in every place. In our last, brief, email, we thanked you for praying for our safe arrival home after an eventful trip to the Western Cape. We do spend a fair amount of time on the road here in South Africa and truly appreciate and need your prayers for safety. We recently completed an expense report where we enter our mileage for reimbursement. We thought sharing it with you might give us a chance to tell you what we've been up to lately.

First some photos of our faithful bakkie -

This is our faithful bakkie (pick-up truck). Given some of the roads we've traveled on, we're very grateful to have it!

Once, recently, we had a metal shield fall off the underside of our bakkie while out in KwaMhlanga. It was easily fixed - we just went to the local muffler repair shop (note trench underneath) and had them re-attach it.


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Pretoria-KwaMhlanga: Sun City AFM
We talked about Pastor Daniel Mahlangu before. His church has invited us to do a series of family and marriage workshops. This was the third one. The subject was family ministry and worship. As usual, we only completed about half of what we had planned as things always start late. We covered family worship fairly thoroughly. We'll pick up where we left off in July when we do the next workshop.








Bert teaching and Pastor Daniel interpreting.








The men are tasked with making a tree with the roots and fruits of a good/healthy family.








The women have the harder task of making a tree with the roots and fruits of a bad/sick family.


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Pretoria-KwaMhlanga-Bronkhorstspruit: MCDC/Ubuhle Care Centre
Nancy still works with Mukhanyo Community Development Centre (MCDC). On this day, we visited MCDC to make plans for some volunteers that Nancy will be supervising in the next few months. After MCDC, we went down the road about 50 kilometers to begin a teacher training program at a new care centre in Bronkhorstspruit. This one is for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) that live near or on one of the many farms in the area. We thank God for the Christian farmers who care for their workers and their children.








Some of the teachers at the Ubuhle Care Center









The rest of the teachers at Ubuhle Care Center


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Pretoria-Roodepoort: LifeChanging Ministries
We met Pastor John Aidoo at the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) conference in Miami last October. At the time, he asked us to assist in starting a CCDA-South Africa. A small group of South African pastors have been meeting since the beginning of the year for just such a purpose. We have a draft constitution we're working on. We hope to have a CCDA conference here in SA in 2010. These trips were for us to hold community development workshops, for Bert to preach at a Sunday service, and to continue the CCDA-SA work. Bert had the flu on the last Saturday but, thank God, he was able to do the workshop. It is getting to be winter here now and there is a lot of cold and flu going around.









Bert and Pastor Aidoo








Nancy and Bert co-led the workshop on Foundations of Christian Community Development






Here the groups are working on a drama (skit) to illustrate some important points. It's too bad we don't have video of the actual performances. They were stellar!



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Pretoria-Kempton Park: OR Tambo Airport
Stacy is a school teacher that will be spending part of her summer here working with the MCDC teachers and the children. Nancy is supervising her. We met her at the airport to welcome her to South Africa. Please pray for Stacy as the educational system here is very different from what she is used to. She brought along about 10 science lessons and all the associated materials. Pray also that the children and the teachers develop a love of learning.

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Pretoria-KwaMhlanga: MCDC
Nancy met with Stacy to go through the plans for her in the next few weeks. Nancy also made a presentation at the Theological College about the Mobile Educational Resource Centre (MERC). Since the college was still in session, Bert had an opportunity to connect with the pastor/students.

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Pretoria-Midrand: Gauteng Region Prayer Meeting.
All the MTW missionaries in the area meet monthly for prayer and fellowship. We're all busy doing different things during the month so it is very good to pause, reconnect, encourage one another and, most importantly, pray for one another.

This is the end of our travels for May. It was a pretty normal month, travel-wise. We have included prayer requests throughout this email. We'd also appreciate prayer for our travels this month. We're leaving on Saturday for 10 days in the Western and Northern Cape. We'll be showing someone the various works that we do with Word and Life Ministry in the area. As usual, this involves lots of travel. One place we're visiting is 10 hours from Cape Town. Please pray for safety as well as fruitful ministry amongst the farmers and farm
workers.

Thank you again for your kindness and support.

May God bless you,
Bert and Nancy Williams