Stories from the Field #3. South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique

So, here is a picture of my first ever outreach. The date was March 27/04, and it was Day #2 on the Foreign Mission Field. Pastor Supresa drove us all an hour and a half outside of White River to the border of South Africa, Swaziland, and Mozambique. I had no idea what to expect. We got out and used a generator to set up a couple of speakers and a keyboard, then blasted worship music into the village to draw a crowd. It worked well enough. About 80-90 people showed up to check out what was going on. The music was an attraction, but so were these "whities" that were there too.

Anyways, we worshipped for about an hour, then the mic was handed over to Jack (our team leader) who preached a message on "The Prodigal Son". It was kind of funny; there were some youths standing some distance away from us back on the road shouting obsenities at us. We, of course, couldn't understand them, but Jack changed his message a wee bit to include them in his presentation of the gospel. None of them responded but they sure heard the Word anyway!

In the end about 20 people responded to the alter call. When we got back to Supresa's house later, I asked him if he thought that it had been a sucessful outreach (seeing as I had never been on one before). Keep in mind that this man speaks a dozen languages (give or take a couple), has planted scores of churches, seen the dead raised, ministers to witchdoctors, etc etc etc. He said, "If one person accepts Christ out of ten thousand, then, yes, it is a good
night. So, yes, tonight was a sucessful outreach."

I wasn't much the same after that night in late March/04.