The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

So this morning, like many mornings that we drive into the farm, we saw many people on the side of the road trying to get a ride into town, or out of town, or wherever they need to go. Miah and I have a sort of rule, for safety, that we will only pick up women and children on the farm roads or from the farm roads trying to get to Heidelburg. But even then, it is so hard to just drive past these men who can clearly see that we have space in our warm car while they have to stay in the cold and spend half an hour to an hour trying to find someone to take them into town.
But this morning, as usual, we saw a woman with a baby and two small kids walking along the 9km dirt road, so we stopped to pick them up.  Most of them don’t speak English too well, so I usually settle on speaking through smiles, laughter, hand motions, or the minuscule amount of Zulu that I know. This morning, I looked back as they settled into the seats and smiled at the little girl behind me. But her face made an impression on my mind that I think will stay with me a long time. She looked at me with what seemed like a look of shame, and confusion.
I tried to put myself in her shoes and this questioned burned in my head, I felt like she was questioning in a way that only young innocent minds can question, “What makes you so different that you get this warm car while I have to walk for miles every morning holding my little sister’s hand?” And my only answer to this question was that I had had the privilege of being born in the United States, while she, she had the privilege, yes privilege, of being born here in Africa.  I know that when we look on the physical, immediately we can see that I am the blessed one. But I have had the opportunity to experience more than what we can see and feel. I have experienced the profound, resilient, beautiful spirit of the African people. And when I think about the spiritual, I believe that they are the blessed ones. And I see a freedom in that spirit that Americans rarely experience, if they experience it at all. Now, we could all go into arguments of what is the actual definition of blessing, etc, but at this particular moment in history when I was in the car with this little girl, even though our cultures are worlds apart, I knew that there was a common bond of humanity and womanhood that united us, and that this bond is a powerful connection. Near the end of the car ride, this little girl’s sister just burst out laughing, and then she started laughing as well. I don’t know what she was really laughing about, but by the end of the ride, we were all laughing. Beautiful.

So Miah and I have been away for the last two weeks traveling to Swaziland and the coast to visit teams. It has been such a great experience to see these places and to meet with some incredible people. Along with visiting the teams that are working in churches in Richard’s Bay and Umhlanga, we have been meeting with youth pastors and youth fraternals to see what needs they have for their youth ministries. It was a great thing to get a chance to discuss with such a diverse group of pastors to see what God is doing and what kind of help they need. The crazy thing was the difference we saw in the youth each pastor was trying to reach out to. The youth in Umhlanga (very wealthy predominantly white and Indian) need a very different approach to ministry than the youth from the Bluff (more like the type of kids you would have in inner city Detroit).  It was a little overwhelming to see the needs of around 20 youth pastors who are either just stuck, losing vision, or are trying to reach out to youth who are just not responding.
I pray that God starts to refresh the vision of youth ministries throughout this country and that He brings a wave of young leaders into this generation that so desperately needs some kids with integrity to model what it means to follow Christ in the schools and situations youth face today.  Will you pray with me that God will give J-Life discernment on what the Holy Spirit is doing in the youth in this country and that we will be conduits of hope and life to youth ministries throughout South Africa and throughout the continent. It seems like such a lofty prayer because the needs of each region are so different, but I know that God is moving and that He has created this organization with the heart and vision to see youth being reached all over this world, and the beauty of the diversity of each group will be so powerful to this messed up world. So I have to hope in the vision He has given us and I have to believe that He will guide us and lead us to meet the specific needs of these people.

We live in a mobile world. I was reading a book chronicling the life of a faithful missionary to South Africa a couple of hundred of years ago (I wasn’t actually reading it a couple hundred years ago). When he left England it was seen as his final departure. There was very little likelihood of him ever returning to his home country, and he never did.

As I sit here in a coffee shop in South Africa, Michelle is back in the States just months after our arrival here, to be with her family as they mourn the loss of Michelle’s grandmother and family matriarch. I’m waiting eagerly for her return on Tuesday.

Michelle and I have settled into a church home. Acts Church meets at a farm house about half an hour’s drive from where we live. The church is about a year and a half old and a lot of the J-Life staffs attends there. John, our ministries’ director, is an elder there.

It is a privilege to have an English speaking home church. When you live here, you realize that English is just one language among many, and although many people here speak English, those of us who would prefer to watch the news, write a love letter, or speak to God in English are in the minority.

I always have felt I’m a small church kind of guy caught in a mega-church so this is a real pleasant change for me. People speak candidly during services about common subjects like depression, crime, economic strain, questions about the future of the country and the constant lure of “the lucky country,” more commonly know as Australia, as well as New Zealand, the UK and the USA. (When America or Europe experiences an economic shakeup, a country like South Africa feels it much worse because developing nations are considered “risky markets” and economists tend to avoid them when there is global economic insecurity as we are experiencing now.)

Michelle and I have found ourselves drawn to this church where a great majority of its tithe goes to projects outside of the church. They are also not interested at all in attracting people from other congregations. It is the responsibility of every person in the church to build meaningful relationships with people in their communities. Once a month the church gathers together not for a service but simply to share a big breakfast which has earned them the nickname “the breakfast church.” I enjoy that a lot.

Over the past week or so a wild fire of violence against immigrants has been sweeping across poor areas of Johannesburg and elsewhere around the country. There is said to be 2 to 3 million Zimbabweans living in South Africa along with many others from across Africa, India, China and the Middle East. Foreigners have been blamed from everything from crime, to stealing jobs and girlfriends. They say about 50 people have been killed so far. I left the controversial issue of immigration in the States and found it quickly gaining attention here. When I realize how much foreigners are despised around the world, and then I realize that we are also a foreigners where we live, it makes me very thankful for the many people who have treated Michelle and I with so much love and hospitality over the past four months.

Michelle and I will be going to neighboring country, Swaziland this weekend. I am excited for Michelle to see the place and the people for the first time. Then we will be going on a trip along the east coast to visit teams and meet with pastors and church leaders to talk about J-Life.

We continue to pray for Zimbabwe, our neighboring country to the north, which will hold its “run-off” election soon. We also remember our friends there: Richmond, Nhlanhla, and Terasiah, who continue to trust God in incredibly difficult circumstances. 

Time. The continuum between reality and unconsciousness.
Isolation. This realization of inner grace that cannot be squelched by the reality of my flesh.
Yet my heart is still burning, on fire with this yearning for more. More power in the desolation of the sabotage of our minds as we’re forced to live in this media driven generation, distorting God’s creation and turning to intellectual misinterpretations of the actuality that cannot be sufficed with a secular explanation. Meandering through the streets wet with the molecules of elements that sustain life, numb to the divinely abnormal beauty of this circular rock that orbits so my feet are drawn to the blackness of the concrete underneath them. Torn between two realms of reality and questioning the integration between them. This inner drive won’t stop beating, beating, beating at my heart and propelling me with forces of passion (a concept of this integration of my realms of humanity and spirituality). Yet the whispers of conformity surround me, beckoning me to the norms of this social depravity. Inhaling......exhaling...it concentrates and simplifies. I think..... therefore I am? Or are these revelations a call to the only non-refutable truth that is experience. I will think it, I will interpret it, I will live it.