...only God who gives the growth...

Teaching all the gogos who volunteer
at our ten carepoints.

“What then is Apollos?  What is Paul?  Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.  So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” 

                                           (1 Corinthians 3:5-7)

As teams have come and gone here in Nsoko, this metaphor is one that we talk about often.  It is easy when we are talking literally about gardens - the last team harvested & cleared the land, now it’s this team’s turn to plant & weed.  But it applies so much to the spiritual work we are doing here too - one month we handed a Bible to a disabled widower, and 6 months later we went back with another group of people to hear that he had surrendered his life to Christ as he read his Bible. 
 

Helping Zola (blind teenager) blow up
soccer balls for a fun day.

It’s one thing to talk about it with short term teams coming and going, but it’s another thing to live it out.  To watch some of the seeds that we have planted grow into fruit, and be willing to entrust them to another one’s care.  To have worked a long time weeding out the weeds in someone’s heart, and be willing to trust another person to continue weeding until the seed takes root.  Yet God reminds us again...”it is God who gives the growth.”
 

And so that’s why, in this season, I can continue to be excited about what God is doing around our carepoints in Nsoko, even though I won’t be the one watering, planting, weeding, and harvesting.  After 5 years of having a front row seat to see how God is growing His church here in Nsoko, He is calling me away.  Later this year, Mxolisi and I will be transitioning away from ministry with AIM in Nsoko.  But God’s work continues.  And He has answered our prayer to bring more workers to this harvestfield.  

With the gogos who cook at one of our carepoints
at the church dedication service. 

It is more than bittersweet as we transition from a chapter with so much history & depth & familiarity to taking a step of faith into the next chapter of our life together.  It’s impossible to walk through a process of saying goodbye to individuals and communities that we have walked through life and death with (even as I type this, I think of one of the women who almost gave birth in the back of our car with me while Mxolisi was driving, or another mom who had to bury her son who died too young) and yet that is our delicate task over the next weeks & months...to try to say goodbye in a God-honoring way to hundreds of people who have said way too many goodbyes in their short lives.  People have asked what we will be doing, and the short answer is...continuing to love God & love people, no matter where we find ourselves; serving faithfully to plant, water, weed and harvest no matter what garden God puts us in!

Mxolisi and I at one of the big game parks in Swaziland.

After a busy year with too little time to write, we will be updating the blog more often as we process through this transition and into the next chapter of what God is doing in our lives!
                    “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”
                                                        Corrie Ten Boom