Miracles Abound 2/22

Another Monday means the start of our 5^th week here: our time is rapidly fleeing exponentially!  Although I’m stuck listening to group seminars in biology, I can blog happily knowing I only have 2 weeks of school left! Within the last week, I have been enjoying seeing each personality here truly shine and watching individuals take leadership roles, encouraging the rest of us.  We are slowly becoming a close-knit community, venturing out in trust, shared desires, and bonding in fun.  The chapel committee challenged us to give up our comforts for Christ, not serving out of our own good, but to glorify God’s purposes.  In that we challenged ourselves to partake in different Lent, thinking about Christ whenever we begin to miss things at home.

Following chapel, we were blessed by the most amazing story of God’s hand working that we are likely to ever hear.  The founder of African Enterprise in 1964, who initiated the conference center our campus is on, spoke to us today.  He witnessed the whole apartheid era into its destruction and rejuvenation of South Africa.  The destruction of apartheid, which means “apartness”, began in the late 1980s when the Church ran into theological turmoil.  They had been preaching that the God created different races for a purpose and found support for separate development in the Bible.  When a huge revival type conference was held for pastors of all denominations, Heyns, one of the Dutch Reform Church leaders called for an exegetical study of what the Bible says about race.  They discovered apartheid was a sin, taking away the government’s religious legitimacy to continue the movement. (picture = my chalet)

In 1992 after the outrageous political decision to release Nelson Mandela and unban liberation movements, African Enterprise worked hard to shower the country in prayer.  Marches were happening daily, people were being killed, and political activity was at its highest.  Realizing the need for God to work miracles in South Africa, AE organized a 24-7 two-year prayer.  People called in to sign up for 1 hour, 1 week, or any time they could pray from all over: churches, prison cells, little old ladies, people overseas, and anyone else who wanted to pray for the state of the nation.  Mike says that if you win the heavenly battle than He will bless you with a win on the ground as well.  He has amazing stories about how he took initiative to enable politicians from opposite spectrums to talk to each other through dialogue weekends spent in the bush.  In hearing each other’s stories and what brought each party to where they stand they were able to become friends and work together even if then didn’t agree on every point.  By the time elections drew near in 1994, people were going crazy and everyone thought that South Africa would go up in flames with the amount of explosions.  Much prayer, negotiations, and God moments worked together to create a political miracle.  The three political parties came together and declared to the people to take their place for the elections.  The four days leading up to the election were entirely crime free: the only time in history.  Everyone in the nation knew it had been a complete God moment and began to realize the power of prayer with miracles.