Update 13 May 2022

Welcome to the Cronje Family

It is with great joy that I announce that the Cronje family is joining our blog. Since we wrote about them last year, they’ve moved into a caravan and taken the Gospel all over South Africa with some incredible results, seeing people set free from sin, baptised and filled with the holy spirit.
Henri is quite active on Youtube, so we hope to share some of his videos with you, and Yolandi has already posted her first story here. Ideally, we’d like to give you more frequent updates.

Follow me

Jesus has been challenging me for quite a while now to (as He did) call someone to follow me, and I’ve been slowly chewing on this idea. Not knowing what it would practically look like and somewhat concerned about the implications of it, I’ve been putting it off until recently, when a friend was evicted from his home for attending the Kickstart Seminar, we hosted. I had to struggle through it with Elmi as we thought of all the potential complications involved, but God showed us a beautiful picture one night in fellowship, shifting our focus from the negative, confirming that we must invite Bradley to come with us. Not knowing how we’d do it financially, we obeyed Jesus in faith and asked Bradley to follow us. The very next day, I got an email from work informing me that an annual review revealed that my salary was less than the current market rate, and I’d been given an increase, enough to pay for the extra accommodation. Needless to say, I’m blown away at God’s greatness.

Not sure if this was all a test we had to go through, but we were slightly sad and confused when Bradley turned down the invite or at least said that God said not yet. But we’re patiently waiting and hope to see Bradley on the road with us soon.

New Minibus

Elmi briefly mentioned that Roelof and Ronel blessed us with a new Kombi in our last post, but I’d like to elaborate as I feel it is an amazing testimony.

We’ve been struggling along with the old bus since the day we left home. In fact, on the day we left, the old bus didn’t have enough power to tow the massive caravan out the driveway without some help from my neighbour’s bakkie. As a result, we’ve often driven up an average hill in second or third gear at a snail’s pace purely because it wouldn’t go any faster. Once or twice we had to go up a steep hill in first gear or even ask for a hand from someone with a bakkie to get to the top. That being said, when we visited Roelof and Ronel in June 2021, they felt they had to give us their bus, but they were not quite ready. But God had a plan. In November, Roelof phoned and said they really wanted to help us with their bus, and we’d just have to settle his finance. A week later, our bus was having trouble, and it wouldn’t start unless we manually pressurised the fuel line. The first time this happened, Elmi immediately started praying, and minutes later, she received an email informing her that she’d receive some money, enough to settle Roelof’s bus and fix ours. We patiently missioned on with the manual fuel pump, excited to come and collect our new bus, but while we were on the road, we persisted with the task at hand. We first had to visit another four places before returning home. In January, we started praying about who to give our old bus to and felt that the Cronje family needed a more potent car to tow their caravan with, and it’s a perfect fit since their caravan is a lot lighter. Finally, in March, we made our way back to Joburg. After Tjaart helped us up the Outeniqua pass with his bus, the Vivaro defied the laws of physics and hurled this enormous caravan the last 1000km to retire from our service with dignity. We took it in for repairs giving it some much-needed TLC, replacing the clutch, some injectors and some other minor bits and pieces before handing it over to the Cronje family, finally collecting our new VW Kombi from Roelof and Ronel.

We’re so blessed. Not only did the new Kombi tow better. It’s even overtaking people while towing uphill.

Thanks, Roelof and Ronel, for your obedience. We pray that God will bless you a hundredfold in return.

Tracts

We’ve had a chance to sit down and put together some flyers to hand out. We don’t always have time to get the complete Gospel to someone on the road. So rather than leaving it there, we’re now handing out a flyer explaining the Gospel whenever we’re not in a place to take a person through it.