Breakfast Meeting

Before 8am, the cell phone rings. It’s our good friend Mike from African Encounter, a Christian tour company based in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and South Africa. Living Hope works with African Encounter to set up logistics (housing, transport, food, etc) for many of our short- and long-term international volunteers, including teams. I first met Mike almost exactly 6 years ago, when I first came to Cape Town on a trip with my church on a short-term team to learn about Living Hope. That team was Mike’s first on the job, and he was essentially our guide and go-to guy for the entire time. Since then we’ve gotten to know Mike better, each year we brought church teams out here ourselves. So not only is Mike a partner, he is a good friend, and a significant part of why Natasha and I took the step to be here full-time. Mike is calling so early because he wanted to see if we’re free for breakfast. He wants us to meet his business partner and founder of African Encounter while he is in town. Amazingly, the first part of the morning was free for us, so we said, sure! I’m so glad I met this guy, full of experiential wisdom and a lot of great insight into international short-term missions. It was great to get his take on what short-term missions looks like, where it came from, and where it could go from here. It made me think, most of all, confirmed Natasha and my desire to spread the word of hope of Jesus and opportunity to serve to our respective home countries. Yes, there are many not just in the U.S., but also in South Africa who haven’t really yet heard about what the Lord doing here. May what we’re doing and what we see and communicate be a beacon of hope and catalyst to move others to act.