Our interns are a huge asset to our ministry. In fact, over the years we’ve had 137  interns come through our doors.

So, where do they go when they leave South Africa? Well, some come back and serve as staff, some return to school. Others, like Matt Peirce, are called to other parts of the world. Here’s what he told us recently about how the Twenty4Seven internship had impacted his life.

“Before the year ended I had confirmed my spot with the organization TeachOverseas.org which sends Christian teachers to a number of countries around the world to teach English. I recently completed my first month of teaching here in Sokolov, Czech Republic.

My year at Twenty4Seven was great. I became great friends with my fellow interns, took interesting, thought-provoking classes, and participated in some incredible ministry. I could say a lot about my year but I’ll focus on one small part. Twenty4Seven really showed me what it takes to live overseas. It is not a simple walk-in-the-park but it is also not an impossible task either.

As I continue to adjust and settle in the Czech Republic I am convinced that without my year in South Africa I would not be able to survive being here for a year. I would have less maturity, less wisdom, less experience and less knowledge than if I did not have my year with Thrive. I am so thankful for my time in South Africa, it was something that came together beautifully and providentially. I have many fond memories of all I did there and the people I met and I hope to return for a visit come next summer.”

We’re currently accepting applications for the 2010 internship year. You can find out more information and apply here.

As the Common Ground team arrived at New Life church to begin ministry in Intabazwe, they didn’t need to go far to build their first relationship. Abraham “just happened” to be walking by and decided to stop in.

Already a believer, Abraham was eager to share his faith, his struggles, and his many questions with the team. His home had just been damaged in a fire and it seemed he needed the encouragement, listening ear and compassionate heart of a fellow believer.

Abraham continued to stop by the church each morning to catch the team before they headed out. He also accepted their invitation to church that Sunday where he was welcomed with open arms. The team left South Africa encouraged and excited knowing he had found a new church family where he could love and be loved.

Recently team members from LifeChurch.tv met with a family where the parents were both Sangomas (also known as traditional healers).  The couple proudly showed their ceremonial items, and shared their cultural and spiritual beliefs.  Beliefs which included ancestral spirits as their source of healing power and communication channel to God.

With the couple unreceptive to the Gospel, the team spent the next few days with other families in the village.  Then during team prayer, they felt compelled to go back for another visit.

Only the adult daughter was home.  With her parents gone, she was eager to learn about Jesus Christ.  Together they shared the Gospel, studied the Bible, and talked about how to give up false gods and put your faith in Christ alone.   “After about an hour and a half of talking with her she said that her eyes had been opened…Right then and there she committed her life to Christ! It was so amazing to see God work.”

And it was amazing to see her at church that weekend.  Please pray with us that she continues to grow in her Christian faith and as a witness to her family.

We had the opportunity to host a missions team of 20 young people from Willow Creek Church. After spending a weekend with Thrive, they ventured to other parts of South Africa to finish their missions trip- and this is testimony is from their time with us:

“This was our second time partnering with Thrive, and though it was only for a short weekend, their team led us in the most poignant ministry moment of our entire stay in S. Africa.  It was our visit to the Qwa Qwa hospital that we are still talking about, processing, and praying about.  All five senses were engaged as we attempted to talk to patients through translators, asking if we could touch them, pray for them.  It stretched us beyond measure.

There was one patient reading and praying from a Thrive (Leadership Summit curriculum) booklet that she had brought with her to the hospital. She was sharing it with the girl in the bed next to her when we arrived!!!  It was a testament to the effect Thrive Africa is having on this community and we were blessed to be apart of it.” - Chrissie Tofilon, Willow Creek.

I wanted to share a story with you that has truly impacted my life. While we were visiting Mabula Game Lodge, I had the chance to catch up with a few of their staff workers. After a couple of conversations it was clear that one of the workers was after my shoes and he asked that I leave them for him. After about 10 min. of talking with this employee I found out that he was going through some life struggles, like all of us are, but he was looking for salvation/solutions in all the wrong places. The bottom of a bottle, smoking, etc. Then he began to tell me he knew it was wrong; he knew that it wasn’t what he should be doing, but he didn’t have anyone to teach him another way. It was during this moment that I felt the prompting of God within me to share the Word with him. Within about 10 minutes of talking about the bible, this young man began to shift. You could see it in his face and the way he held himself. It’s as if a light bulb went off inside. He understood the ramifications of living life as he had been.  Unfortunately, our conversation was cut short by my scheduled obligations. I left him with a prayer and asked God to show me what I should do next.

The next morning I ran to see if he was working, and he was! I was so excited to see him again briefly before leaving the lodge. I ran over and met him at the bar with a satchel across my shoulder. He embraced me with a big hug and welcomed me as if we were old friends. Everything about him was different. He had a little pep in his step and he embraced every word I said to him as we greeted each other. I knew I was tight on time so  I reached inside the satchel and pulled out a Bible and the same shoes he wanted when I first me him. I told him I didn’t have much time, but that I needed him to choose what I was going to leave behind. He looked at me and with no doubt, hesitation or fear- reached for the Bible and embraced it as a treasure. I was overwhelmed with joy. I told him ” God wants you to have the Bible, and I want you to have the shoes.” Go with God.

- Tres Washington, Thrive Trip team member

Our experience at Thrive was so diverse and varied: pastor’s conference, orphanage, disabled centre, relationship evangelism, praying at the local hospital, etc.- that it is hard to claim just one as being the most impactful.  Looking back on our trip, I can see God’s hand in each activity, visit and conversation we had, which is so faith-inspiring.  One such time occurred at the Limakatso Disabled Centre.  We were there for the second day in a row and my husband Dave and I were excited to get the chance to serve these delightful children for another day.

We had our “Noah’s Ark” theme and activity ready to go: the plan was for Dave to use a hand puppet to help me narrate the Noah’s Ark story.  Then we were going to have the children glue popsicle sticks in the shape of an ark and then inside we would decorate them with animal stickers and rainbows, of course, to symbolize God’s promise.  The morning started off well, with Topsy (our translator) helping us communicate this amazing Old Testament story.  After I finished reading, I told the children that now we’d be passing around construction paper and popsicle sticks.  As I was talking I turned to my basket of materials and realize with a missing heartbeat that there was NO construction paper!  I frantically looked under the basket to see if we had dropped it or stuffed it in Dave’s back-pack.  With sinking hearts, Dave and I realized at the same time that we had forgotten the construction paper. I immediately started to panic, after all, our ENTIRE lesson hinged on using PAPER to construct an ark!  And remember, this is Africa so it’s hard to improvise and just run to the big supply room to grab more or to just find new materials and switch to a different project!  Desperately I sent up a prayer to God for help...”I’m not a teacher by trade Lord you know that…how am I to fill in the time for them…what are we to do now!?”  And all of these dear children were just staring at us happily expecting the project to begin so I turned with pleading eyes to Topsy and said, Do you have ANY paper?  In my head I was thinking that even a small pad of paper would do!  She pointed to the one cupboard in the classroom and said, oh yes, there should be some there.  I walked over not knowing what to expect and inside I found big thick sheets of blue, red, pink and green construction paper!  And even better, the papers were all printed with the following graphic on the bottom: GOD KEEPS HIS PROMISES.

Well, the Lord certainly got my attention that day!  I immediately felt foolish for having had any anxiety or fear about the lesson…not only did He provide, but he provided even better paper than we could have dreamed!  And as the story of Noah is essentially a story of the Lord’s covenant with us…the subtitle of the page just made the children’s projects look as if we had planned it ourselves.  It was a small, but subtle reminder to me that Jesus is constantly walking ahead, besides and behind us all the time.

Charlene, our Outreach Staff Director, recently shared this testimony in her newsletter. I loved it so much, I just had to share it here.

“Our summer interns spend time in our local village, Intabazwe. They are encouraged to really get to know a few families by continuing to spend time with them in discipleship and prayer. Several interns became friends with an elderly lady named Rosalinda. They met Rosalinda the first day of ministry and learned that she had suffered a stroke two months before, which left her partially paralyzed on her left side and unable to walk. They prayed for her healing that day and saw little change.

“As a group they decided that they would make sure someone visited Rosalinda everyday and prayed for her. After three weeks of persistence, they not only told Rosalinda about the love of Christ, but they showed it. On the last day of ministry, they knocked on the door and for the first time, Rosalinda walked to the door and opened it proclaiming ‘Praise the Lord!’”

The Thrive Trip team met a man named Thomas who was suffering from epilepsy. Thomas had no family and was living with a friend. The man who cared for him was gone most of the time, so Thomas was usually left alone. When Thomas was younger, his mother read Bible stories to him and his siblings. Both of his parents tragically died, and the children were left to the care of their grandmother. Unfortunately, his grandma was a sangoma (witchdoctor) who tried to poison the children. Thomas thanks God for being saved from being poisoned.

The group prayed for Thomas, asking God to heal his epilepsy. When they were finished, Thomas said that he had felt power course through his body, and he knew that God had healed him.

When the group returned to his house after lunch, Thomas was already looking better. He was talking more clearly, and both of his eyes were open. They shared Scriptures with him about the healing power of God.

The next day, Thomas was walking down the street, waving to them. He told them he was filled with joy, because God sent them to him. He can’t read, so he has the friend he lives with read the Bible to him. He wants to bring the man to Christ and to church with him on Sundays. Thomas says he will always remember the day he was healed, and he wants to share Jesus Christ with everyone he knows!

When we hosted a team from Mountainview Church in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, God—as always—worked as much in the lives of the team members as He did in the lives of the nationals they touched. Here’s the stories of three of the team members.

Chris
Chris was most impacted by a woman his team met, Sarah. He was touched by her love, humility, and trust. He believes the level of trust she was able to show was possible because though she had never had a white person enter her home, the love of Christ abounded. The experience was humbling and will stay with him forever. Chris says his heart is broken for the people of South Africa, and God gave him compassion for their situation. He now feels equipped with the information and the heart to better allocate his resources for sending others into the mission field.

Lani
While Lani was in Intabazwe ministering, she met a woman who said something she will never forget: “Maybe God sent you here just to speak to me.” Lani was also utterly taken aback by the amazing power of prayer. Her group met two men who were alcoholics, and after praying with the men for an end to their addiction, the men stopped drinking.

Aiden
This was Aiden’s first mission trip, and he feels this experience has truly shaped him. His eyes were opened to many things, including the enormous amount of potential in the people of the villages—the potential for the adults and children to become incredible leaders. God showed Aiden the power of sharing Jesus Christ with people through relationships. He is anxious to share what he has learned here in South Africa with the members of his community back home. Aiden is also waiting for God to send him on his next mission trip. His heart has been burdened to share the love of Christ all over the world, “How can we stay in the United States when there are people out there like [these people]?” He is returning home equipped with a heart for many, many more mission trips!

Christina Corvin, one of our Outreach Staff interns, shared this amazing story with us:

When I was out doing ministry with the team we hosted from The Falls Church, we saw God do the miraculous!

On our second day in Qwa Qwa, my group saw a woman sitting on her front step, eyes covered with her hands. We introduced ourselves and found out her name was Maria. Her eyes were horribly bloodshot and had a slight cloudiness over the pupils. She said she had been in pain for over two years. And then she pointed to her feet and told us she couldn’t wear shoes because her feet had been painfully swollen for a long time. We asked if we could pray and she said, “If you pray for me, I will be healed.”

We were all instantly encouraged by her incredible faith, and we prayed for her. When we finished praying, she told us the pain was gone! We were so excited and told her that we would keep praying, because by the end of the week, she was going to see us coming, clearly.

Sure enough, we went back the next day, and her eyes were no longer cloudy, and there was still no pain. And then the next day, God had healed the pressure, and the blood vessels had relaxed and her eyes were no longer bloodshot. She thanked us repeatedly and told us she thanked God for bringing us to Africa. We left with our spirits high and our hearts encouraged by God’s healing grace. He is not just alive and moving, He is alive and moving in the small corners of the world, like Maria’s house in Qwa Qwa. We thank God that Maria can see perfectly and pain-free again.

Oh, and she can wear shoes again, too.