Winds of Change

What an incredible weekend. Our hearts are restless in anticipation of what God is doing and how He will lead . . . .
Every new missionary spends the first couple months visiting the existing church plants on our team. This is a fun time getting to know missionaries and national pastors, seeing the diversity of ministries and looking for a potential place to minister.
This weekend was our scheduled time to visit Richards Bay and because it is a 2 hour drive, we went up on Saturday and stayed through until Monday. Secretly, we were quite excited! Back on our survey trip we had really enjoyed Richards Bay. We almost immediately felt a connection to the area and the missionaries. But back then, the area was predominately white and not directly impacted by the Aids pandemic. 2 years later, the population has completely shifted and the need for HIV/Aids ministry is huge!
We sat down with Henry and let him share his vision for Richards Bay. He's watched the town's Zulu population grow very quickly and with it the HIV infection rate. The rural areas surrounding the town have a higher infection rate than Durban and more orphans. His "dream" would be to see Richards Bay become a training hub for many different types of ministries reaching out into Zululand.
One of the main things we discovered was the potential for better language learning, an area that we had been struggling with in Durban. This really excited us and it was hard not to let our hearts get ahead of the path God intends for us. In the next couple days, we'll try to sit down with some leaders in Durban and ask for guidance!
May God very clearly lead us!