Africa Mission: Nuts & Bolts

On April 27^th, we will be heading to South Africa to minister with our friends and partners at the Nelspruit Lighthouse Church in Nelspruit, South Africa. Nelspruit Lighthouse Church is pastored by Pastor Kariuki Wamai. Pastor Alfred, His wife Edith, and two children Shangwe and Shani are originally from Kenya. They were sent out 10 years ago as church planters by their Pastor, Don Matheney of Nairobi Lighthouse Church, In Nairobi, Kanya. They have planted 4 churches, 2 in Zambia & 2 in South Africa. 

They also founded an organization known as Arise Africa, which is the compassion arm of their ministry. Arise Africa has assisted in projects including a Micro-finance project in Livingstone, Zambia, a Community Development center in Kasama, South Africa, and Monthly soup kitchens and clothes distribution in the township of Phakane, South Africa. Phakane is one of the poorest townships in South Africa. It is crippled by stifling unemployment, rampant witchcraft, and very high rates of violent crime & sexual assault. The Nelspruit Lighthouse Church planted a church in this township last year called Nelspruit Lighthouse Church, Phakane. Pastor Alfred has raised up a campus pastor for the Phakane church named Pastor Muzi.

They were given a piece of property by the chief of the village. Pastor Muzi lives on this property in an 8' by 8' shed. Last year New Hope Church of God sent a team to minister with Pastor Alfred & Pastor Muzi as well as to assist in the soup kitchen aw well as help with a construction project and tear down a witchdoctor hut on the property that was rumored to have been used for human sacrifice. The hut was burned and torn down and a cross was erected as the church prayed and dedicated the property to Jesus. The church plans to build the "Phakane Dream Center" on this property which is the new home of Nelspruit Lighthouse Church, Phakane. The dream center will house a bible training center as well as a job training center that will teach various job skills and inspire entrepreneurship.  

Our family trip will see us ministering to the Nelspruit Lighthouse church from April 30 - May 2 at their Leader's retreat. We will minister in worship and do ministry training sessions and anoint leaders for the work of ministry in the churches in South Africa.

May 3-4 we will minister in the evenings at a 2 night revival at the Nairobi Lighthouse Church, Phakane. This will be a gospel crusade type revival. May 5 we will minister at Nelspruit Lighthouse Church for their Missions Sunday. We will again minister in worship and preaching and we will assist the church in presenting their missions vision for the year. They will be receiving faith promise cards as we challenge their church to sew into the mission field for the next 12 months. Last year the church, which is mostly made up of very low income or unemployed people, pledged over $15,000 USD to missions. We will also take time to minister in the Barberton Prison near Nelspruit. We will minister in the Barberton Medium B as well as the Barberton Maximum Security prison where all of the prisoners are serving a minimum of one life sentence.

As part of our fundraising efforts, Carrie is releasing a 2 song EP tribute for mothers and daughters that is set to release on March 20th.  (All proceeds from this cd will go directly toward the expense of this mission trip.)  This cd will be available for download on iTunes, Amazon, cdbaby and facebook from her music page.  To find out more about Carrie’s music ministry, please visit www.carriebowen.com  

Thank you for your love & support.  We greatly appreciate it!  If you would like to make a donation toward this trip, please click the link below:
http://fnd.us/c/dRR48