A Sad Day...

Well…It looks like Anne and I have just developed a new aspect of our ministry—community development if you will.  Our special emphasis is on technology acquisition, and we began a rigorous training program at 4:00 am this morning.  We’re starting small… at the moment we have each “donated” one laptop to the interesting fellow who broke through our security gate.  If our young “student” returns again tonight, my next donation will probably include pepper spray.  We are such giving people…

All humor aside, today was very discouraging.  Early this morning somebody broke into our apartment (It appears whoever installed our security gate fifteen years ago had never encountered a Phillips screwdriver!  I am angry with myself for never checking the frame in detail, but I never could have imagined that the entire door relied on two tiny, exposed screws!) You have all shared some amazing times with us here on our South African adventure, so we felt it would not be honest to keep the difficult times only to ourselves.  It is very discouraging to think that if any number of little things had gone differently, we would not have lost $3,000 worth of electronics.  There was a brief pursuit, and I guess I yelled enough that the intruder dropped a number of smaller items as he fled.  Then I realized I was buck naked, and was forced to admit defeat!  In retrospect, I wish I had gone for it…  people would have been talking about the white lighting all over Wellington for years.  Plus, my indecent exposure charge would allow me to take my prison ministry to the next level!

Most of our data was backed up, but we have both lost a significant amount of work.  Most awkward is the sense of violation knowing that all of our personal information is now floating around somewhere.  Please pray that we would be able to rebound quickly.  There are a number of crucial ministry initiatives that we are fundraising for at the moment, so it feels particularly daunting to watch our efforts sliding in the wrong direction. 

At the same time, we are genuinely thankful that the two of us escaped the situation unharmed.  After eleven years of working in prison, I have heard quite enough stories about violent home invasion.  It is a great blessing that the intruder was not interested in a direct confrontation (However, you can insert a joke here about white lightning!).  We believe God has protected us throughout this incident, and he will guide us in the way forward.  Thank you for your prayers and friendship in the victories and the challenges. 

Love Andrew and Anne

Hillsong Worship Concert: Pollsmoor Prison!

There are hundreds of forgotten inmates at Pollsmoor prison.  They receive no visits.  They are often the victims of post-traumatic stress disorder.  Their churches and communities do not understand them.  Their marriages and families suffer because of their time behind bars...  I'm talking about correctional officers!

(picture: a correctional officers choir at Allendale
sings for an Easter service)

There are 7,000 prisoners at Pollsmoor and hundreds of men and women officers who are "serving a sentence" right alongside them.  They face an intensely difficult job and they receive little training and support.  They also represent an incredible untapped potential!  As the gatekeepers, they set the tone for the entire prison, and when even a handful of officers view their work as a missionary calling, lives will be saved. 

We have coordinated two Hillsong worship concerts behind bars since 2010, and the officers have been asking for our help.  On Thursday 25 October we have a chance to bring light into a forgotten world.  Many officers are trapped in a vicious cycle where they take out the stress and trauma of their job on their families, the prisoners and each other.  We need grace and freedom, and you have a chance to be a 

part of it!

Pray for this even, or contact us if you want to join one of the prayer teams!

To the ends of the earth

Note from Anne: Andrew wrote this late Sunday night and asked me to post it Monday morning after dropping him at the airport, but I have had internet problems since then! He arrives back in Cape Town tomorrow evening, but you can still pray for the team as they travel, as they return home having been grown and stretched in new ways, and for the people they were able to reach that God will water and grow the seeds that have been planted.

I guess I am bad at sightseeing…

I think when you travel to a new country you are supposed to tour historic monuments and sample local cuisine. Call it God’s sense of humor, but when I visit a new country I continually find myself ministering in the local prisons.

Last year it was prisons in Botswana and Zimbabwe, and now this year it is Lesotho. Hillsong Church is sending a team into “the Mountain Kingdom” and they asked me to coordinate a prison visit. Needless to say that the only thing cooler than prison ministry is getting to the prison via a 4X4 truck on mountain roads!

(the Sani Pass -- 4x4 vehicles only! -- connecting

South Africa with the most remote region of Lesotho)

On a serious note, it is always a little humbling (or maybe even frightening) in leading an outreach to a new prison. I do not believe that safety will be an issue, but there are a thousand logistical challenges in arranging security clearance that are beyond my control. Add in the unique challenges of Lesotho’s geography and things are getting interesting! (it has the highest low-point of any country in the world, and some of the villages where we will minister can only be accessed by foot or by pony!)

I have made several connections with local volunteers who are working in the prisons, and I am exploring the possibility of future partnerships. Lesotho is an amazing country, and I look forward to what I will discover about their prisons and about myself. I will be leaving cell phones and email behind, so I am hoping that it will be a time of reflection and growth.

Thank you for being a partner on this adventure!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! The last two months have been a whirlwind, but we have loved seeing so many friends and family after a long absence. Please pray for us as we have a family wedding tomorrow and then make final preparations to return to South Africa next week!

Park Street Church in Boston produces an Advent devotional each year, and we both wrote for it this year. Even though Advent and Christmas have passed, we wanted to share them with you. Here is Andrew's piece on Gabriel's proclamation to Mary.

"Can we have your guitar?"

We made it! It was a very intense time, both physically (13 events in four days, plus 10+ hour travel in between) and in terms of ministry. Here is a post Andrew wrote for the official tour blog, which you can find at www.hillsong.co.za/about/africa-tour-blog. Feel free to check out some of the other stories there!

Over the course of the Hillsong Africa Worship Tour we had the privilege of visiting five different prisons. Whenever we finished our visit to a prison, this was inevitably the last question we would be asked. This is not significant in itself— prisoners often ask for gifts and favours, and it wasa beautiful guitar. What made the question striking was everything the prisoners were not asking.

Many of the prisons we visited did not provide beds or uniforms for their inmates. Some did not even have safe access to water. One facility was built in 1897, and it did not look like much had changed since then. I will always remember the menu taped to the main gate of one prison. If your family was willing to pay, you could get some actual food added to the small dish of maize-meal. Malnutrition and disease are commonplace, and downright starvation was a continuous lurking possibility. Why ask for a guitar?

(Afternoon Worship Festival in Livingstone, Zambia)

The inmates are intelligent enough to realize they would have more chance of getting some food or money from their visitors than their only musical instrument, but they didn’t care. In a bizarre way they were responding to a hunger that transcended even the most basic human needs. These prisoners did not have food, shelter or even physical safety, and yet all they asked for was music. As one old prisoner said to me, “music is the language of the soul.” Maybe they were so tired of scraping together an existence like animals, that they were desperate for a reminder that there was something more to life than mere survival.

If a prisoner is willing to overlook even basic necessities to nourish his soul, maybe I need to be assessing whether all the luxuries and entertainment in my life are worth the distraction...

(The crowd in Livingstone -- several thousand strong)

Prison Ministry and Missions

Everything comes full circle!

The Andrew Murray Centre began in the late '80s as a missions training program. Everything took a dramatic turn when the leadership decided to bring this training into an unlikely setting—prison. However, prison ministry was always a means to an end. The inmates we served were already leaders… it was just a question of whether they would be leaders for the church or leaders for the gang. Behind the scars and the tattoos, we saw a new generation of missionaries who could reach into dangerous subcultures where American missionaries would have no voice.

Now our mission’s heritage is combined with the prison ministry as never before. Anne and I need to be at the airport at 4:30 tomorrow morning to leave for a nine day tour of Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. The trip is organized by Hillsong Church, and they will be performing huge worship concerts in four major cities.

The Andrew Murray Centre has been asked to coordinate a series of prison visits in each of these countries. We used to do missions trips before starting local work in prisons… now this same prison ministry is taking us international again!

Here is a rough itinerary:

- Livingstone, Zambia – Saturday October 8^th

- Francistown, Botswana – Tuesday October 11^th

-Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – Wednesday October 12^th

- Harare, Zimbabwe – Friday October 14^th

A special prayer request is the prison in Livingstone. Through an administrative mistake I was unable to obtain security clearance for the team. Short of a miracle, we will not be going in there.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this journey is that I am carrying fifteen letters from South African prisoners. They are praying for this mission, and they wanted to encourage their brothers behind bars. I will share some of these letters with you in the coming weeks.

Thank you for praying with us!

Restorative Justice: How can this make sense...

This happened weeks ago, and I am still struggling to make sense of it. I asked for your prayers concerning a Restorative Justice program, and it is clear that you responded because it was one of the most intense weeks of my life.

I was a little disappointed at the beginning of the week, because most of the inmates who were attending the course were already believers. Sometimes "christian" inmates will be more excited about parading their knowledge of the Bible than about actually taking responsibility for what they have done. Heck... I guess it's kind of like church sometimes! I have heard men calmly walk away from shocking crimes because "God has forgiven me"

I could not have been more wrong. Usually the inmates I work with are incredibly guarded--almost paranoid--but these men let down their defenses and really took the discussion seriously. Restorative Justice challenges the men to understand the impact that their actions have had upon their families and communities, and these guys got it.

The highlight of the course was when one young man came up to me after a discussion: "Andrew... I feel sick. I feel like I could vomit in my spirit." He went on to explain that he was going to be released from prison in a matter of months. Unlike many of the men I serve, his family was actually looking forward to his return. He also had a young daughter that he could not stop talking about throughout the course.

His problem, was that he now believed he could not do it. In our conversation, he confessed to a murder he had committed on the outside that nobody had even charged him of. After sitting on our program, he realized that this woman's family was still hurting for the crime he had committed years ago, and they deserved answers that only he could give. He had to take responsibility, even if it meant an additional sentence.

I was shocked. Honestly I had to warn him to be careful what he shared with me, because once he started down this road it could have very serious consequences. This young man explained that he could never be an effective father to his daughter if he kept this secret.

I have never seen anything like it... It was living proof of the passage in Matthew 10 where Jesus states "those who lose their life for my sake will find it." It is a sacrifice that can only make sense under grace. This man understood that the most dangerous prisons are not built of concrete and razor wire, and he needed speak the truth before he could ever be free.

I don't know what you guys were praying for, but God was present in that prison hall in a way I have not experienced before. It was humbling to be a part of such intense healing.

I will soon be meeting with the Inspecting Judge of the Department of Correctional Services, and I would appreciate your prayers again as we take this case forward. This young prisoner has already ministered to me, and I will consider it an honor to walk with him as he takes responsibility for the past and claims whatever future God has in store.