The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

So, I (Miah) thought I’d get in one more blog before we head to the States. The next two weeks are going to be busy, so its now or never. We fly out on October 20th. We will spend most of our time in Texas and a bit in Indiana/Michigan. Here are a few recent events and thoughts from my side.

Michelle and I have been mentoring a dating couple friends of ours for the past couple of months. The guy, Johannes, was on J-Life last year and started a youth organization in his township (ghetto/shanty town) on his return home. He started dating Donna, who works with him in the organization, and Michelle has been meeting with her as well. This past Sunday we went to visit them and I was chatting to Johannes about how we as men find our purpose in God’s kingdom. We were talking about how we all have to find those things we see in the world that fill us with a sense of holy rage and that compel us to respond with the ways of Jesus. So I asked Johannes what that was in his life and he responded with 2 things that were not only profound, but are things that Joe is already living out.

He talked about his frustration when people abandon some of the simple truths of the gospel and try to add extra bits or to make things which Scripture is clear about more obscure. Johannes has a passion to live out the gospel through the great commandment (love God, love your neighbor) and the great commission (make disciples). He has been able to direct a lot of people towards God by boldly speaking out, even when it could get him in trouble.

The second thing that Joe talked about was his frustration with people in authority who abuse their positions at the expense of the innocent, especially the poor. One of the things Joe’s organization does is help with legal cases of the young people who would otherwise have little chance of receiving just treatment from the police or the courts. He is intent on sending the message in the community that people who sexually abuse young girls will be punished. He has even befriended the police chief who told him that if any of the cops are not doing their jobs in one of the cases that he is working on, Joe can let him know so that he can discipline them appropriately. So Johannes is out there making sure these girls get fair trials, and that edivence is properly collected and documented. He also tries to make sure they stay in school, and that they hear the gospel as well (it’s a whole nice package).

Anyway, its cool for us to be involved with people like Johannes and Donna. They are the whole reason we are here, and J-Life has impacted Joe hugely, giving him confidence and and steering towards fulfilling his dreams. Oh, Joe is also studying theology. In a couple years he will be an ordained Anglican Priest, and I’ll have to call him Father Joe

I recently participated in the Harrismith Mountain Race, the most difficult 15km race in the world (self-acclaimed). I’m still in pain 5 days later. I put a couple of pics in the photo section of the day. It was really fun because we had a big group of friends there running together. I was feeling really good at about the 10km mark and then I got really sick, threw up everything in me, and then finished really slowly. So I was a bit bummed, but there’s always next year.

We are getting very excited about coming to the States. Our calendar has been filling up with a lot of great friends and family. The other good thing is that we are really busy right on either side of our trip which I think makes it better, especially for Michelle, since she will have to do the whole leaving the family thing again. I’m also excited about having uncapped Internet bandwidth and I’m looking forward to perhaps splurging on a few books and maybe even some music. I’ll probably get Ed Dobson’s book “A Year of Living Like Jesus” which was inspired by the agnostic Jew who wrote “A Year of Living Biblically” where he followed strict Jewish law for a year. I’ll also check out Don Miller’s “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.” On the music side I’m keen to hear Avett Brothers’ latest album, and we’ll just have to see what else is good. We’ll also be running a half marathon in Houston on October 26th I think it is. That should be fun.
Well, we’re off to Durban now. We are attending Willow Creek’s “Global Leadership Conference.” Looking forward to hearing from Bono and the speaker from Uganda. There’s always a few surprises as well.

By the way, we don’t think we’re more interesting than y’all just because we’re missionaries. We’d love to hear what’s been going on in your lives as well.

Grace and Peace
Miah

Last week was a great week for ministry here as we are starting to see fruit coming from many different areas of our training. We heard from our staff in South Africa testimonies of the short term missions training in Zimbabwe. Let me give you a little background:

Zimbabwe is in one of the worst economic crises in history right now and many people are suffering and starving because of the exorbitant inflation rates daily. We have a country leader named Tarisayi who is a passionate incredible man of God, on fire for Jesus and his country. He has been trying to start a J-Life training center, but it is very difficult to set up any sort of organization in his political climate. So, Tarisayi got the vision from the Lord instead to run a short term mission training and he has been preparing leaders and has brought them to the South African version of this mission training and finally, he set up and directed this training two weeks ago. The training consisted of 4 days at a training center and then 4 days in communities and then one last day for an evaluation of the trip.

They had around 15 Zimbabweans attend this training and it was led by a group of 5 Zimbabweans ( we also had 5 South African staff there just to help out when needed). They went to many different areas around Zim., and shared the Gospel and served the people there. One of the most dangerous was a Zanu PF repossessed farm. This is the political party of Robert Mugabe, and what used to be a vast functioning farm, was now a complete waste where people are trying to live off less than $1 a day (if you have not been following this country’s story, e-mail Miah if you want more details).

But the most exciting part of this story is one of African disciples making other African disciples. I cannot tell you how stoked we get when we hear about leaders starting their own initiatives and changing their own countries for Christ! That is what we are all about!

We had two of our Malawian country leaders, who spent the four months with us, come down from Malawi to help Tarisayi with this short term mission training. And after seeing what Tarisayi is doing in his country, they are now wanting to do a short-term missions training in Malawi! The best part of that is that they have asked Tarisayi to come help them run their own training!

And to drive home the fact that these leaders now own the vision of making disciples, I have one last story. Our boss, Tara, the South African director of J-Life was giving the Malawians the ministry money that they needed to get transport back to Malawi. As she gave it to them, she said to them, “ I hope this is enough for you to pay for the bus”, and their response was, “ Tara, if it is not enough, it is not J-Life South Africa’s problem, it is our problem and we will make it work.” She says that this stunned her as she realized that even the financial help that these guys might need to get started is becoming their own problem and not our issue. It is this idea of independence that might seem a little strange at first, but if anyone has ever spent time in Africa, this mentality is something extremely hard to come by and it is something that I believe is the key to many of the problems the people here face. Our leaders are owning the vision! They are taking it and making it their own, contextualizing it, and taking their own initiatives from it. We are always there for them and are constantly encouraging them, but this independence and self confidence is something that words cannot describe. Praise the Lord for He is taking His children and empowering them and showing them the purposes He has for them in His Kingdom!

We just finished another training seminar in the Eastern Cape region of the country. We are now splitting the regions of South Africa to strategically promote and recruit in each region. Miah and I are in charge of the Eastern Cape which is also known as “the wild coast”. It has many beautiful cities and beaches but most are much smaller and les populated than the rest of the country. We love being in charge of this region and have met many amazing people as we make new connections there. Here is a testimony from the training we did last weekend in East London written by Ryan who is a youth pastor for First City Baptist:

on another note I want to thank you again, the course opened my eyes to the truth and I feel I know why and what i’m here to do. Make disciples. i’m very involved in missions and we plan on going into all Africa in the future but for now we just been to Zimbabwe 3 times. My aim was always to see miracles and healing, which we have seen, but that is not what its all about. its about making those people we meet disciples who make disciples. its such a simple instruction yet it has not been my sole focus. now it is, and it has rekindled something in me.

I think something that makes the organization we work with harder to adapt to than any other missions organization is that it is not American. There is really not much that is American about J-Life. That’s why I love it, and that’s why I struggle with it sometimes. Instead of taking the American culture and adapting everything to it, J-Life has started with South African culture, and is now using the South African example to reach out to other countries in Africa. And in this way, it is way ahead of its time. And it is J-Life’s Africanness that is so powerful in creatively and innovatively reaching out to African youth.

This idea of making things indigenous or having a vision that is locally owned is amazing and it is an idea that I think any missionary agree with in the end. But my question is, although we believe that we should just be empowering other nations to take the gospel to their friends and family, how often do we actually live out this belief? I think this belief more often than not becomes a nice idea in our heads that never really makes it into our everyday living. The reality is, empowering others is not prestigious or glory filled. It is not an up in front job, it is not a job that produces tangible fruit everyday and many times it is a job that is never appreciated.

I think as American missionaries, we’ve glorified the job title of “missionary”. It has become popular to go to Africa and do your part for the world. We’ve elected ourselves to be the hand that feeds and patted ourselves on the back when we give stickers and candy to poor snot nosed African children. The thing is, we advertise these “mission trips” as a way to give back to God when in reality, many short term mission trips just give us as Americans a better conscience and in turn create a cycle of dependency on our resources and programs (I know I am generalizing and there are yes, there are many other benefits to short term missions if done with a long term perspective).

This is a crisis that I face daily being a longer term missionary. I have faced the hardships of what it means to truly support local people taking the reigns and doing it their way and it is a daily dying to myself and what I think is best. I am also constantly analyzing interactions and how I word things so as not to promote my way of doing things as a better way but just a different perspective. There is this conviction of a calling here to Africa, but also a constant questioning of how I can make myself less needed in my job and make Africans more needed in the job I am doing. It is a desire to be reproducible in every aspect of my work that inspires me and tires me out. It gives me a purpose and yet makes me more transient. It makes me more teachable and more of a teacher at the same time.

So, I believe that Africans are the most effective evangelists of Africans. They are the most effective ministers to other Africans. I believe it, and I constantly wrestle to live it out. And I challenge other American missionaries to live out that belief as well. It is more of Christ and less of me that I long for. God humble me and take away my pride that You can move to even greater depths in my ministry!