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Mercy Ministries South Africa

News from MMSA for Nov./Dec. 2007
Thank you so much for your faithful intercession, we appreciate you.  Please continue to use the prayer calendar we enclosed with the previous letter in order to keep praying for the team and the work.

Father is very good to us!  A dear friend blessed us with a copier and printer.  We thank him and pray Father’s richest Blessings on him, his family and his business.

New structures are being put in place for MMSA to grow and function more effectively, to honour Father’s Name and for Him to be King in all we do.  Please pray for the following:

• The team is preparing a workbook for use in the workshops.  The purpose of it is to be used in the workshop sessions in order to encourage interaction of participants and strengthen key concepts.  Also we plan for a part in the book which the participants can work through afterward to be thoroughly grounded in what they have received.
• We are also putting together material to be used in follow-up sessions, as we feel Father is leading us to return to places where workshops were done, in order to encourage former participants, helping them to live the reconciliation that they received.  With these follow-up occasions we would also like to assure former participants that MMSA is committed to keep contact with them and to be involved in their communities where possible.
• Moreover we would like to encourage people to apply for MMSA membership, thus making a more concrete contribution to the ministry.  For this we need a strategy for which we are praying and planning.  If you signed up as an MMSA member end of last year, we would like to remind you of the renewal of your membership beginning of next year when we will again send out membership forms.
• Then we have an urgent need to enlarge our full-time team in order to do the work more effectively, but also to be more representative of all the people groups in our country.  So we ask that you will pray with us for the right team members to be added in Father’s perfect timing.  In this regard the Board of Directors asked the team to draw up criteria according to which future potential full-time members will be accepted.  This also needs much prayer and careful planning.
• A further current activity of the team is receiving training as well as prayerfully working out a strategy to start raising funds in order to eventually be financially independent.  (Up to now the work has been funded from our international office.)  This also requires intensive prayer.
• The full-time team has just completed a 4-week training course in community development, as we believe Father is also steering us in that direction.  Please pray with us that He will show us clearly:  would He want to use us to be involved full-time with a community project, or is He equipping us so that we can equip others?  Be it as it may, we all found the course very informative, experiencing excitement at the content of it and how we will be able to use it.

3-6 Dec. our Board of Directors, together with the full-time team and the volunteers who helped us this past year, will be doing a team development with Dr. Rhiannon Lloyd.  Please pray for prepared hearts and a blessed time together in Father’s Presence, as well as wisdom for each speaker, travel mercies for all.  Next year’s program is still open, so we encourage you to contact us for a workshop or follow-up in your community/church.  We would like to be of service.

In Christ we take hands

The MMSA team

 

Ministry Report Second Semester 2007

To God be Glory and Honor
For in Him we live and move and exist (Acts 17:28), we can do everything through Christ, Who gives us strength. (Phil.4:13)  It is not by force nor by strength, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. (Zech.4:6)  Apart from Him we can do nothing. (John 15:5) God’s Grace is all we need.  His Power works best in weakness.  So when we are weak, then we are strong.  (2 Cor.12:8,10)

Looking Back
On paper it looks like less has been done in this period than normal, but in the core team it was a very strategic time of getting to know each other better, of bonding and experiencing ever deepening unity.  Also it was a time of praying and evaluating and planning, of putting new structures in place, of establishing the ministry in more ways than one.  We thank our Father Who led us through this time in which He gave us new insight into our own hearts and motives, helping us to confirm each team member’s calling into this ministry, discovering in many ways that we are one in spirit through the Holy Spirit in us Who binds us together in the bond of peace. (Eph.4:3)
We mention the following activities that were done:
6-10 Aug. HWED workshop at YWAM Jeffreys Bay (22 participants)
13-17 Aug. HWED workshop at Africa School of Missions, White River (62 participants)
27-31 Aug. Preaching and follow-up meetings with former participants, Worcester - Rawsonville
14-15 Sept. team attended a conference on Biblical values and community development presented by the Template Institute, University of the Nations, Pretoria
21 Oct., 28 Oct. Church visits, Tembisa and Rensburg
28 Oct-23 Nov. team attended a Development Project Seminar by YWAM at Midrand base
3-6 Dec. board members, core team and active volunteers attended team development with Dr. Rhiannon Lloyd

2 Workshops that were scheduled for this time had to be postponed until next year.  We trust Father will have them take place in His perfect Timing. During these 6 months the team built good relationships in the local community and with the local churches, involving themselves in activities in the local churches.  We believe that Father has a specific plan for putting us in this town at this time, and we are excited to see how He is going to bless us through our stay here, and bless the community through our local involvement.

Looking In
We thank our Father Who is knitting us together as a team, strengthening each team member’s personal giftings, helping us to function as a Body of Christ who encourage and protect one another, who pray for one another, who defend one another’s hearts.

As the ministry is expanding in numbers and getting its roots down into the fertile soil of strife and need, we experience the necessity to put new structures in place in order to do the work more effectively.  We realise we are in a transitional phase when new ways to operate will have to be accepted. As we go along, we will put more structures in place where needed and as the board advises.

Looking Forward
We are looking forward with excitement to see what Father has in store for MMSA for next year and further.  Up to now we have done workshops as we were invited to places.  This year, however, especially in the second half of the year, very few invitations came, and some of the scheduled workshops had to be postponed.  What we experienced is that Father put several different training opportunities in the way of the core team.  He made it possible for us to attend these training sessions, because we believe He is equipping us to move into a wider area of ministry. 

The following activities are already being planned for next year:
16 Jan.          fundraising training for the core team, Pretoria
11-15 Feb.     training in networking with SSNet, Pretoria
14-16 Feb.     stall at Missions Fest, Pretoria
22-24 Feb.     team members will attend workshop on managing diversity by Vuleka Trust, Durban
25-29 Feb.     possible follow-up in KZN

In Closing
We thank everyone who has reconciliation on his/her heart, everyone who lives reconciliation and who prays for the work of MMSA and the people involved.  Without your prayers we can do nothing.  This work can only effectively be done from out of the foundation of prayer and under the protection of the covering of prayer.  We really experience that the enemy does not like what is being done and he attacks the people and the work wherever he can.

From the MMSA team