Monde and Mandela

Boa tarde friends,

     About one year ago I went to South Africa on a mission trip with some of my students. Aside from knocking down walls with children orphaned by AIDS in the north, we also stopped through Capetown to see where the mission started some eleven years back. While in Capetown I met a woman named Pumla who worked in the orphanage. She asked me to pray for her son, Monde. She said he had no direction in life, and he had just committed his life to the Lord. She was very concerned, and so I got her email address to keep in touch.
     I have prayed for her son periodically over the last year. Many times it can feel very strange praying for someone you have never met, especially when he lives thousands of miles away and you know you will probably never meet him. Yet there is a story of South Africa's national hero, Nelson Mandela, which reminds me of the importance in believing.
    Mandela was a Xhosa-speaking native of the south of South Africa, born into apartheid. In many parts of the country the segregation was so atrocious that blacks entering white areas were shot after 6 pm. Mandela was found working to end the oppression through civil disobedience, and he was imprisoned for 27 years. In the eighties after more than a decade of imprisonment, one would find Nelson Mandela doing calesthenics in his cramped cell. Another prisoner asked him why he was exercising.
    Mandela responded, "Someday I will be free and leading the people, and I will need my strength."
    At that time he was nearly in his seventies. The other prisoner mocked him. A few years later Mandela became the first black president of South Africa after the end of apartheid. Even though he was jailed for almost three decades and even mocked by other prisoners, he continued to prepare himself having faith that he would one day lead a free people.
    Remembering that story I just sent an email off to Pumla after finding the small scrap of paper with her name and son's on it. Somehow it made all the way here to Nicaragua with me. I am looking forward to seeing what God has done in both of their lives. I am sure that God is doing great things in, for, and through them!
    In the book of Matthew(8:5-13), Jesus encounters a Roman centurion who asks Jesus to heal his paralyzed servant. It says that Jesus was astonished. I was astonished when I read this. What could surprise the King of kings? It was faith, and faith moves God. When in trouble ourselves, or in the lives of others whose needs move our hearts, remember: take heart, your faith can heal you.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." -Hebrews 11:1

"Then Jesus said, 'Go! It will be done just as you believed it would.' And his servant was healed at that very hour." Matthew 8:13

Modimo ao gaugele!
Seth