The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

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!

Greetings from a frigid Johannesburg.

One of the main teaching tools we use at J-Life is called Strategy. It’s basically an in depth study of how Jesus “discipled” his disciples so that after 3 years of being with them he was able to leave them and let them carry on with His work. Recently Michelle and I taught this course to a group of surfers (the South African branch of Christian Surfers International). It turned out to be the most revitalizing weekend that we’ve had in a long time. Although we were trainers for the conference sometimes it felt like we were the ones who benefited the most from our time with them. We were able to hear their stories of ‘being Jesus’ to the surfing community of South Africa and the incredible passion they have to see board riders all along the coast coming to know God. I was shocked when I found out 2 days into the conference that most of the people there didn’t know each other before the conference. They all acted like they had been friends for years.
There was such a good vibe at the conference, whether they were sitting around sharing stories about tides, winds, swells, storms, sharks, reefs, beaches or point breaks around the country, or worshiping together, or paddling out at J-Bay’s famous surf spots. The other thing that really got me was how intergenerational surf ministry is. There were guys there as young as 15 and as old as 55, but it never seemed like the old guys were “too old” or the young guys (who they call “grommies”) “too young.”

After that trip we had a quick turnaround to fly out to Namibia, a vast desert country with only 2 million people. We were there to work with our country leader, Patrick, who is hoping to get their one-year J-Life program off the ground next year. Patrick recently quit his job as a pastor to raise his own support and work full time to start J-Life in Namibia. There are maybe a handful of “youth workers” in Namibia, most of them with other jobs to support their living expenses. But Patrick believes in the potential and the crucial importance of youth in the kingdom of God and He is pioneering this one-year program to encourage people to invest in the lives of youth. We spent some time visioning for next year as well as training some youth leaders in the capital, Windhoek.

Michelle and I have decided to help them out for a few months next year to get the one year program off the ground, provided they find at least 6 interns. We have been very prayerful as J-Life expands to other countries to make sure that we have a local leader who is ready and willing to springboard the movement in their country. Our job as outsiders will be to provide some experience with the program and transfer J-Life values to the Namibian context and then find other Namibian leaders to replace us for the next year of training. Please pray for us and for Patrick as we discuss details and continue working on our plans for next year.

I think J-Life will have a real role to play in Namibia, not just in training youth workers, but also in encouraging and bringing together the few people who are already involved in Christian youth work. The internship will happen in the coastal town called Walvis Bay, which will be a real different context than South Africa where we bring the guys out of the “real world” and onto the farm. I’m sure living in the desert will take some getting used to, but we are also really excited about the opportunity. Our Namibian hosts showed us some of the fun things to do, like dune driving, which is pretty unbelievable!

I hope this is all coming across somewhat clearly. It might be difficult to really picture what we are doing without a frame of reference. Hopefully, when we visit in November we will be able to explain things to you all a little better. We will also have a few new pictures in the photos section of our website. Enjoy.