Transformational relationships

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Orphans transforming their own community

Orphans transforming their own community

After five years of working with teams in Sweet Home, a township outside Cape Town South Africa, I wanted to write up my favorite story. There are literally hundreds of stories. In January 2011, I was co-leading one of our short term teams. We had learned that one of the graduated students who was now attending the University of Cape Town would be helping us.

His name is Sinethemba. He was in the first graduating class for Bridges Academy. He grew up in the township of Phillipi which is next to Sweet Home. It would be an injustice for me to describe the difficulty and danger of growing up in these townships. To lose your parents only makes the transformation of Sinethemba a complete miracle. We thought he would help us for a day or two, but he spent the entire two weeks as part of our team. Sinethemba was the helper we didn't know we needed, but God sent us. Sinethemba was central to our team and helped our team achieve things that would not have been possible without him. I readily admit that God orchestrated it all, but He sent us Sinethemba.

We were running an OVC (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) camp at the academy. These were all kids from the township of Sweet Home where we have been partnering for five years. One of the boys, he was probably 12, was acting up so we assigned him a “time-in” where we just take a break and sit with them for five minutes away from the activity. I asked him if he thought he would go to the Academy (Bridges Of Hope Academy http://www.bridgesworldwide.org/south-africa/bridges-academy/) someday? Surprisingly he said no and after more discussion I realized he didn't even know what the Academy was. It is a top-tier boarding school for kids just like him. We finished the time-in and I took him over to Sinethemba. We could see the Academy buildings in the distance and I asked Sinethemba to explain to him about the Academy. The boy listened intently. That boy was the most disruptive up to that point and was transformed into one of the best behaved. Later Sinethemba said he told him about the school, but he also told him about the food.

On the last day of camp I felt like God gave me an idea. I gathered all the boys, led them over to that same spot and asked Sinethemba to give them all a vision for their lives. I stepped back and just waited while this group of boys listened intently. I snapped this photo of one man who had been transformed by the Lord explaining his path to boys who are in his same situation. Nothing I could have done would have made that sort of impact on these boys. Nothing. Our mission and the mission of Bridges Of Hope had just come full circle.

This is the proof that the big differences in transforming a community come through relationships, not money and donations. If you want to make a difference, God wants your heart. He wants you to create a relationship.

-- Wood

Learning to Trust

Learning to Trust

Shortly after I gave my life to Christ I felt the call to go to South Africa. I was a new believer, still riding the emotional high of being adopted into a divine family and confused as ever about what life should look like. All I knew was South Africa was where I was supposed to go.

The first time I applied, the leadership that interviewed me was incredible. They recommended I get myself a little more grounded in my faith, but honored the fact that I was feeling the pull in my heart. They left me with some recommendations and a tremendous amount of encouragement. They continued to stay in touch, and when the next trip came around, and it was time to apply, they made sure I knew.

Getting the call inviting me to go with the team to South Africa is one of my most memorable moments. It was an invitation to step out and take a risk. It was the most exciting invitation I’d received since God opened His arms and asked if I wanted to come home. I didn’t even have to think about it. I was going.

The training was hard. It took a lot of commitment and work to prepare to go, and it was during the holiday season when it’s easy to let your relationship with God slide a little as you succumb to the busyness of the season. On top of that, I was still less than a year old in my relationship with Christ. I was still (and always will be) struggling to let go of my old self-- the self that was very broken, very beaten and didn’t trust other people very easily-- while trying to bond with this new group of people in my life and spiritually prepare for what God had in store for us.

Trust was my main issue. All my life the people who were supposed to love me tended to hurt me instead. I knew God wasn’t like that, but I had a hard time truly living in that belief that God wasn’t going to turn on me the minute I screwed up. In so many ways I lived in fear of losing God’s love.

Our God is so faithful, and so very, very patient.

I feel that in South Africa, I fell in love with God all over again. South Africa is where I learned to trust God.

I was under some serious spiritual attack in the two weeks we were there. I felt undermined, weak, ugly, useless and awkward. I desperately just wanted to fit in with the team, but couldn’t understand why I was there. I felt like the band kid in the gym locker room. For the first time, though, rather than wallow in those feelings, I found myself reaching out to God.

I lived for our moments together throughout the day where I would get out my journal and pour my heart out. I’d sing worship songs whenever I was working, and I’d take time to myself whenever possible to reach out to Him. What was such a struggle back home became the most natural feeling in the world in South Africa. I’d pray in my head as I headed into difficult situations and I’d pray in thanksgiving when God pulled me through them. Time and again He rescued me in South Africa. He opened up my heart, poured into it and then helped me pour out of it.

My favorite memory of this was teaching the poetry class to the kids at Bridges of Hope. I was really nervous, but poetry is a passion of mine. I worked really hard to find poems that would address pain and freedom, and to give the kids a chance to reflect on many of the same things in the poems we wrote that day. A poem I read to every class was “A Hymn to the Father” by John Donne.

I chose the poem originally without really thinking about it, but by the end of that day, after reading it out loud to the classes all day long, I felt as though it was written just for me. It is about the poet and his sin, and his struggle to believe that God could truly forgive him for all that he’s done. It talks about the layers of sin we live in, and that as soon as God uncovers and helps us heal from one, there is only more to be exposed. At the end of the poem, Christ’s power over sin is realized. God is bigger than our sin.

This rocked my world. With every recitation, the words sank in more. My sin isn’t more powerful than God’s love. It took a whole year, and a trip to South Africa to truly understand that. I cried the last time I read the poem for the day, happy tears of finally letting God through that brick wall I’d been trying to keep standing in my heart.

I walked away from that day with a renewed sense of who our God is, and with some amazing poetry from those incredibly talented kids. Their love, vulnerability and eagerness only made it easier to fall in love with South Africa and with the God who made them the special people they are.

South Africa changed me forever. I brought what it taught me home, and left a piece of myself back there.

-- Siobahnne Tyler

How does God actually transform one's heart?

How does God actually transform one's heart?

Growing up as a Christian I have often heard rallying cries for congregants to “be transformed.” I have heard it whispered, shouted, and even made into awkward hip-hop lyrics from pulpits throughout Southern California. It’s like one of those banners attached to a small airplane, the ones you see flying over the beach on a hot summer’s day. Although this banner wouldn’t say “Budweiser,” it would say “be ye transformethed,” or something esoteric like that. The words float listlessly by, as we stand, mesmerized by the droning airplane motor.

It’s easy to throw around this phrase, without considering the implications. But as Christians, I believe there are tangible moments in each of our lives, where we have been transformed by God. This happened to me about two years ago when I decided to go on a Mission to South Africa with Rock Harbor.

Even before I heard about the Mission, I had been working through a season in my life where I was dealing with “fear.” Fear of being out of control, of trusting God; fear of resistance, and doing things differently. For a variety of reasons I felt that the Lord wanted to grow and mature me in my faith. In Romans 12 Paul gives us a laundry list of what it means to live a transformed life. Christ makes this possible, but He is always (gently) calling us to be transformed further, deeper. So as I worked through my “fears,” I would intentionally do things, or seek out projects where I could essentially address and overcome these fears. It felt exhilarating. At the time, I remembered having an excitement, and a slight trepidation, about “what is next.”

Then one day at Rock Harbor, I was minding my own business, when I felt a nonchalant punch from God. There on the screen was an announcement for a mission trip to South Africa. My heart sank. I knew I had to go. Now, I had never done anything like this before in my life! I was 29 at the time, and I had never been outside of the country (save a few times to Mexico). It had been ten years since I last flew on an airplane, and I generally didn’t like traveling, or the possibility of communicable diseases like Typhoid or Malaria. This sounded scary! It sounded like I would not be in control. Exactly what God wanted to use. He had been transforming me, drawing me through a process of addressing fears, and developing trust and faith in Him.

So, I said yes, and went to South Africa.

The point of this blog is not to recount the story of my mission in South Africa during the summer of 2010, but I will say, in all honesty and humility, that the days I served in Africa were, by far, the best days that I had ever lived in my life. It was an experience that not only met, but completely exceeded, all of my expectations. But the point of this blog is “transformation.” The point being that God had taken me through a process of transformation (addressing and conquering my fears) in order to bring me to a place where I was willing to step out in faith and totally trust in him. For me this was expressed in the form of a Mission Trip to South Africa. Having gone on that mission, God transformed my heart even farther, beyond what I could have imagined! I discovered a new-found joy of traveling and serving people. Celebrating, laughing and crying with people. Hearing about injustice, and striving to enlighten others to the suffering that is going on around the world. Suffering, that I believe, grieves the Lord! My heart was transformed in an unexpected way!

Global mission work is now a natural expression of my faith. In the two years since going to South Africa, I have served with other mission organizations in Central America, the South Western U.S. and most recently to Israel/Palestine. Now I am by no means suggesting that everyone must go on a Mission trip to Africa to be transformed, but for me, that helped. The idea is being open and willing to be transformed, allowing God to take you to places you never would have dreamed. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2).”

Sincerely,

Shawn Thomas

South Africa Transformation

Over the course of the past two summers, I have had the opportunity to go on mission to South Africa with Rockharbor.  South Africa for me has become more than a memory of a past destination, but has become a representation of change and transformation in my life.  While there are many ways in which South Africa transformed my life, one specific area of transformation spurred by South Africa is my understanding of mission.  This transformation took place over the course of about a year.

Rewind back to summer of 2010.  A group of fellow Rockharbor folks and I rounded the lines of the globe landing in a place most of us were completely new to, South Africa.  During our time in South Africa, we were exposed to the reality of a broken world.  Our eyes were opened to the reality of AIDS, the reality of extreme poverty, the reality of fatherless children, the reality of rape and murder...the list goes on.  It was much for our eyes to bear.  It was like someone had pulled back the bandage on a gaping, bleeding wound.  Despite the pain and suffering that we were newly exposed to, we saw hope.  We saw the work of Christ weaving in and out of the lives of those we met.  Children accepting Christ into their lives, people being prayed over in their homes, persons infected with HIV/AID’s singing and praising the Lord.  God opened our eyes and transformed or vision of His mission globally.  For the two weeks we were there, we got to see and participate in Christ’s global mission and it was simply extraordinary. 

As I returned home with fresh eyes to the reality of brokenness across the globe and attempted to jump back in to ‘normal’ life, I struggled.  My heart had been burdened for South Africa and I longingly wished I was still there participating in God’s work.  I could hardly do the simplest of tasks at work as everything seemed less than the mission we were a part of in South Africa. I wrestled and prayed about this position that I found myself in.  It wasn’t until the plane ride home of my second visit to South Africa in 2011 that everything would fully come together and make sense.

In August of 2011, I had the opportunity to return to South Africa for my second visit.  My visit in 2011 was, again, extraordinary.  After our two weeks were through, we made our way onto our planes to return home.  As we flew back home I sat contemplating, again, how I could possibly return home to worthless work and feeling mission-less.  Sometime during my contemplating and thinking, I lifted my head to peer over the seat in front of me, and was struck with a sight that transformed me.  As I sat gazing over the seat back in front of me, I saw a sea of people quietly sitting in their seats.  Something looked different.  In that moment, God had given me eyes to see a plane full of people as souls, as people no less in need of Christ than those I had come across in South Africa.  At that moment, God transformed my thinking and connected the dots between what I had learned about mission in South Africa and the mission that continues at home.  I don’t know why I hadn’t seen the connection before.  The people on that plane looked like my coworkers.  They looked like my neighbors. They looked like the folks working the registers at Target.  Maybe their lives looked different, maybe the pain in their life looked different than what I had seen in South Africa, or was even hidden in their hearts, but the need for Christ was no less.

Through my global mission experience with Rockharbor South Africa, God transformed and widened my eyes to be conscious of His mission that plays out globally as well as His mission that continues locally.    God transformed my eyes to see His mission as something that transcends physical location.  Whether we are thousands of miles from the places we call home, whether we are inches over the threshold of our neighboring cubicle, God’s mission remains the same, our mission remains the same.

-- Ryan Richards

Transforming stories

When I was chosen to go on the South Africa trip last spring I was incredibly excited, but also a little scared and weary. There was something inside of me that kept reminding me that I was broken. And something that was reminding me that even though I was fighting through darkness that God was going to use it, I just had to be on the look out.

In our trainings for the trip each of us on the team and the leadership team would share our ‘defining moments’. I learned as I heard the different members of the team’s stories that we were all twined together. That our stories were matched to each other and that we would be able to support each others strengths and weaknesses.

I was transformed by this information. I was strengthened and encouraged. And I didn’t know how I was going to be impacted by this while on the trip. I just had this feeling that God was showing me and giving me the tools to keep fighting no matter what happened while we were in South Africa

When I was younger I had a simple tonsillectomy that completely changed my voice. I had to go through speech therapy to learn how to use my voice again. And still to this day I have to think before I speak and slow down. While in South Africa I was working a lot with the kids in Sweet Home and told the Bible stories for VBS. We of course used a translator for this. I felt when I was getting translated for that it was going fine, but the next day when I was going to give my testimony in Sweet Home for the Orphans and Vulnerable Children [OVC] The woman translating said that she could  not understand what I was saying and would not translate for me. I was completely blindsided.

This was not something I had thought to prepare myself for. Not only had I been hit with an overwhelming anxiety the night before but I had now been plummeted with this insecurity that came all the way back from my childhood. It was like I had been slapped in the face.

That is when I was reminded. Keep fighting, keep going. I have always said that God has given us our story and our life to share with others and that is what He was calling me to do in that moment and I was not going to let anything stop me. One of the team leaders that was there sat next to the translator to tell her what I said though in reality she only had to tell her one or two sentences.

I finished that afternoon feeling lifted up. Like I had faced a demon head on and came out the other end only a little shaken. And it was ok.

I realize that God had a reason for ever member on our team to go. I realize God had a reason specifically for me to go. To show me that through Him I can do anything. To show me that in that moment where I thought I could never feel smaller, I would come out changed. 

-- Meghan Reeve

Sive's Story

Working here at Bridges Academy, we have the privilege of being witnesses of how God is at work in the lives of the students here at the school. 

Sive (See-VAY), a 10^th grade boy here at Bridges Academy, has had his life transformed by God and the ministry of Bridges of Hope.  I recently sat down with him, and he shared with me the story of how God has worked in his life and changed him into the young man of God that he is today:

“ I grew up growing to church with my mother and would go to church with her just to sing the songs.  When I was younger, my mother died, and I blamed God.  I began to feel anger towards Him about my mother.  I started doing drugs and drinking alcohol and doing bad things that I knew I shouldn’t be doing.  I never really had a problem with people who were Christians, but I just felt like it wasn’t for me.”

Bridges of Hope runs After School Programs (ASP) and Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) support groups in Philippi and some of the other local townships.  These programs provide kids with a safe place to go after school and help them stay out of trouble.  But even more importantly, they also introduce them to Jesus and provide much needed support for these kids who have lost either one or both of their parents.   After his mother passed away, Sive became involved with Bridges’ OVC program in Philippi:

“I started going to the OVC group and it was here that I first learned about who Jesus was.  I began to learn that there is more to it (Christianity) than just going to church and singing songs. But during this time I was still drinking and doing drugs and those things.”

Bridges of Hope has also started Bridges Academy, a boarding school that currently houses about 50 orphans/vulnerable children from Philippi and other surrounding townships.  Bridges Academy provides the students with a safe learning environment to equip them with the educational and Spiritual tools necessary to e successful.  The hope with the Academy is that by providing the students with education and sharing Jesus’ love with them, then they will become leaders who will strengthen their communities and bring about positive changes in their country.  All of the students at the Academy are selected from Bridges’ OVC programs.

“I began attending Bridges Academy in 2010, and it has changed my life.  I started meeting with Mr. Sawers (school chaplain), and he would talk with me about how Jesus loves me and died for me and wanted to have a relationship with me.  After meeting with Mr. Sawers, I realized that I wanted to have a relationship with Jesus and I decided to give my life to Him.

My life has been very different since I gave my life to Him.  I stopped using the drugs and alcohol.  I didn’t want to do those anymore.  Now I just want to follow Jesus and know Him better.  Each day I want to grow closer to Jesus and learn more about who He is.”

Sive is one of our quiet leaders here at the Academy.   Sive, along with some of the other older students, has recently started leading discipleship groups for some of the newer, younger students at the Academy, and they are currently going through the book The Purpose Driven Life.  He is also active in the school’s basketball team and choir.  He is one of those kids who always seem to be so full of joy and always has a smile on his face.  It is obvious that God is at work in his life!

A few months ago, the students participated in the Sunday evening service for a local church by helping lead worship, act out some drama performances, and share testimonies.  Sive got up in front of the few hundred people that were there and powerfully shared his testimony and the story of God has transformed his life.  I was blown away because the Sive that I interact with on a daily basis is completely different than the one that he describes in his testimony!

Sive is a great example of how God works in the lives of His people and radically transforms us into new beings.  Like Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”  Praise God that He sees us for the people that can become and then leads us on the journey to become that person!  And praise God for the work that He has done and continues to do in Sive’s life!

-Matt Andre

Transformation

What does transformation mean? We have been working in the township of Sweet Home out side of Cape Town South Africa since our initial visit in 2007. When you land in a place like Sweet Home the needs seem overwhelming. Where do you even start? What are your goals? What can you possibly expect to change?

We partner with Bridges of Hope (http://www.bridgesworldwide.org/about/mission-story/). Through the use of a CHE (Community Health Evangelist) model Bridges organized a group of community leaders who want to transform their own community. These leaders make hundreds of home visits every year bringing spiritual and physical lessons to the residents of the community. With a deep knowledge of their own community these volunteers direct resources towards the greatest needs in the community.

This has been the biggest learning curve coming from the US. We alone cannot transform this community. We want so badly to just pour a ton of money and donations into every situation and think that can solve all the problems. The money and donations create a dependency and actually causes more problems. Instead, it is all about long term, deep relationships, and through Jesus Christ that we are all transformed through this shared mission. Physical conditions improve slowly, but they need to improve in concert with spiritual conditions. Which is why just throwing money at a problem can make things worse. We need to create a relationship before positive sustainable changes occur.

We have seen many success including a growing pre-school, a new church in a community that has no school and has never had a church before. There is also the start of an elementary school run by community leaders. Those are the external signs of a slow progression. The internal signs are things we may never know about. Many CHE volunteers end up finding permanent employment through their training. This leads to a better outlook and hope for their family and neighbors. Hundreds and hundreds children attend after school programs. Orphans and vulnerable now have a support group with male and female mentors giving them a better support system. Those same orphans have the opportunity to attend Bridges Academy which is a top tier boarding school specifically for kids from Sweet Home and the surrounding townships.

When we started we never expected to see over night transformation in an deeply impoverished community. We made a commitment to create deep relationships over an extended period. After five years the external change is only like a blade of grass peeking through the ground after a devastating forest fire, but the spiritual transformation has been remarkable. The people of this community can see hope and jobs and a future for their children.

I've been lead to see this in terms of God transforming Moses and the Israelites for 40 years through the wilderness. Real transformation takes a long time and a deep relational commitment. It is my hope and prayer that we can continue walking with each of our global partners for many many years to come and we can look back and see our own paths through the wilderness as the communities we work in reach the promised land.