The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

Hi everybody. This is Miah. I just wanted to share a couple of stories from the past few weeks. Also, we have some really exciting news to share, so be sure to read the whole post!

The best part of ministry for me is getting an extended opportunity to build relationships with the young people we work with and to watch God work in their lives in different ways. Over Easter weekend Michelle and I took 3 of our interns to Durban to spend some time with my folks. All the guys get the long weekend off and the local guys go home to be with their families. Unfortunately, those from other countries are not able to go home and so we try to find somewhere for them to go so that they are not stuck on the farm by themselves for 4 days. We took Ezekiel (Zimbabwe), Donel (Malawi) and Trokon (Liberia) with us to Durban. For Eze and Donel it was their first time to see the ocean. We went to the beach every day, checked out the new soccer stadium for the World Cup, and of course they were keen to go to every service that the Church was putting on for the weekend.

Besides the opportunity to just spend time with the guys, it was great to hear all the things they learned over the weekend in the car on the way back home. They were really excited about my family and how hospitable they were. Donel said to me one day “Your dad is very busy. He is always working.” – If you know my dad, I’m sure you enjoyed that! Trokon said “You parents treated us like we were their own children.” They also learned a lot from Grace Church where my parents work. Even for Michelle and myself, it was a spiritually refreshing weekend and an awesome way to cap off the Lent season.

This past weekend I decided to attend a men’s conference/spiritual phenomenon. It was started 7 years ago by a simple farmer who invited men to camp out on his farm for a weekend and talk about what God expects from them as men, husbands, fathers, and community leaders. That first year 240 men came. It grew exponentially and this year somewhere around 300 000 men showed up. It was quite a humbling experience to stand in the midst of that many men, all seeking answers from God. Thousands of men made first time commitments to follow Jesus over the weekend.

I took 3 “X-J’s” (what we call our graduated students) who I have mentored over the past couple of years along with me. It was such an amazing time with those guys. We talked about everything over the weekend including politics, ministry, what it means to be a man, fatherhood, marriage and dating, and reminiscing about what they learned from their time with J-Life. Only God knows, but I feel like it was my most impactful weekend of ministry this whole year.

We will be wrapping up our training next week and moving into the second phase of the year. We have a lot of exciting things coming up but I would like to share the most awesome one with you! I have already mentioned a trainee this year named Trokon who is from Liberia. We are partnering with a church planting organization called OMS to establish youth ministry training in Liberia and Michelle and I have been asked to lead the initiative there with Trokon. The goal of our time there will be to train a number of key young leaders from different denominations over 8 months who will be able to teach what they have learned to others in their circles and denominations. We will also help to establish Trokon as our J-Life leader and help him to coach those other leaders as they implement the training. The process that we will be using has already been implemented in Tanzania last year by a fellow staff member with really encouraging results.

As Michelle and I met with John and Trokon about this opportunity it seemed quite clear that this is where God is leading us. The church planting organization has already raised the money for me to make 4 trips to Liberia, 2 weeks for each trip, which I will make between July 2010 and January 2011. We will need to raise money for Michelle to come along for 2 of those trips (because I really need her to teach some of the courses!) We will need to raise about $4,000 to get Michelle there on the September and November trips.  This is mostly made up of flight costs. Traveling in Africa is not cheap! You can contact us or take a look at the “Donate” section of our blog to find out how to help us.

I have one more story: Henry is one of our students from Zambia. The other day he asked me (and I wish you could hear it with the accent) “Miah, when are we going back to that place with the moving stairs.”
“The mall? Do you mean the escalator?”
“Yes, I love those moving stairs.”
That is awesome stuff!

In other news, I now have 40 days until the Comrades Marathon. That’s the big 90km run that I have been training for. I ran a standard marathon last weekend and it went really well so I’m starting to feel confident about the big race. I’m really enjoying the running culture and getting to know people through the local club that Michelle and I run with. I’m hoping to finish the Comrades in around 9 hours and 30 minutes, but I’ll be happy with anything under 10 hours. And now that you all think I’m crazy…
Grace and peace
Miah