Journey of Purpose : Melanie Dill: April 2012 update from South Africa

April 2012

This month carried over from the hectic pace of last month. School holidays were still in effect during the first week of April and we kept Capricorn busy! Lots of amazing God-things going on here; some good, some hard. I’ll recap the month in bullet points for brevity:

. Early Childhood Development ministry the first week of April was fabulous! We hosted different preschools each morning and did an Easter program for ages 3-5 years old! I LOVE this age group; this is an African-revelation for me. Never did I yearn to work with this age group in America, but there’s something about preschoolers here that draw me. It might be that this age group is often given little attention and older, teen siblings look after the preschoolers. Whatever it is, God blessed me through these little ones this month!

. During the afternoons of the April school holidays, we did sports and arts emphasis in Capricorn Teen Clubs. A short-term team from Australia did soccer ministry and I was able to teach art lessons for the non-sporty ones. These art lessons had a Biblical emphasis. The theme for the week was 'We are one body with many parts.' The devotion was on Romans 8:28 and 1 Corinthians 12:14-31, making the point that all things work together for God's glory! The teens learned artistic methods of using tiny pieces of paper to make one large picture, called a mosaic. The next day they built on that lesson and included artistic styles of pointillism, and forms of line drawing where all strokes are small; therefore, all methods focused on all the small strokes making one large, beautiful picture. With soft, soothing music in the background, the teens showed great concentration and interest in doing a Bible 'lesson' in a creative and new way! The whole week was exciting and a fresh way to communicate Biblical truth and actively help teens to see their place in God's big picture! Thanks to my friend Marti who wrote multiple art lessons that are ministering to many teens here in South Africa!

. Easter brought REST! Not only did we have public holidays and no work on Good Friday and the Monday after Easter, but I took vacation days the whole Easter week! It was nice to take a breather and be home and simply rest!

. With my recent Warehouse Transformation Training that I mentioned awhile ago, we had out-of-class assignments. Those of us that attended this training chose to do our assignment with the LSEs we work with. We took them through a shortened version of the training and it went over so well! The bottom-line to this training was that we as a Life Skills department need to rethink and refocus ministry efforts – making the most of our time and really meet a need of the community, not just offer a service and hope people want it. So, our teams are busy evaluating their ministries and we’ll reconvene soon to find a way forward for more strategic ministry. Please be in prayer about this process!

. I got to attend a Women’s Conference with the Ladies Ministry of Capricorn Community Church. Hillsong’s Colour Conference came to Cape Town. It was a wonderful time of teaching and ministry for me personally. It was nice to attend a ‘church meeting’ and not have to set up the room or be in charge of the teaching. This was a receiving-weekend and I really did receive lots of information and heard from the Lord! This was good and hard as once you’ve heard from the Lord, there are usually difficult action-steps to follow through with. So, I’m in that process and am trying to be guided by the Lord in this crazy ministry here!

. The last Friday of the month brought another Youth Camp Fundraiser at Capricorn Community Church. This time, we did a family movie night. We showed the movie, Courageous, and sold doughnuts, pop-corn, and soda! We had about 100 attendees, lots of children and teens, and some visitors not from our church! It was truly a fun night of community-building and a fabulous movie of inspiration!