You can't steer a parked car

by allan

Swaziland was incredible! The abandoned 10,000 person mine town of Bulembu is a picture of God’s redemption like few places I know. Let me attempt to explain, which might be hard as it took us days to digest what this place is. In a nut shell; Bulembu is an old mine town in the mountains of Swaziland. It was abandoned years ago and went up for auction. It was purchased by some Christian business men with the vision of revitalizing it with innovative businesses for the purpose of raising up the next generation of orphans whom will be the future leaders of Swaziland (see a previous post about this). Now that sounds like a noble goal on paper, but it’s quite another to actually see it happening and meet the folks whom are quietly and obediently making it happen.

Lee-Ann McFarlane, an old South African Moody friend of mine lives in Bulembu and runs the community center there. She invited us to come and see, with the idea of possibly sending a team of interns there next year to help out. They need people power! They are under funded, under staffed and sacrificially serving daily. Lee-Ann and Fred, her adopted son, were fantastic hosts. Their obedience and relentless commitment to “just doing it” were challenging. And this is what “the big take home” for me was. This town that died and now is coming back to life is succeeding not because God magically called the A-Team to come and perform a miracle. No, this is all happening because some of God’s people decided to get their hands dirty and are faithfully fumbling around. Too often we want a shaft of light or the writing on the wall or some bizarre act of God to “call” us to the mission field or to the right task. Well, as a missionary I can tell you, there are seldom such things. I’m inclined to believe that God has told us what to do in His Word and that should be enough. The truth is, if you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat. Get going and get your hands dirty. Yes it’s messy; yes it’s a great struggle and yes at times it’s stressful but for goodness sake, DO SOMETHING!

Last Words
"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. - Jesus
"We have to understand that the world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation." - Jacob Bronowski

P.S. for an amazing audio visual piece on Abandoned Babies for Christ (one of the ministries in Bulembu, Swaziland) one of our team members put this piece together.
Click on the image below to get to Nathan and Rebecca Clendenin’s Blog.