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Prayer and Praise Update March 2014

Mpumalanga Mission
BBTC students The Director of the Christian Action Network, Dr. Peter Hammond, the Co-ordinator of Africa Christian Action, Taryn Hodgson, and a missionary intern, Ryno, drove 5,000km to and around Mpumalanga and back. Michael and Renee Watson drove up from KwaZulu/Natal for our intensive Mission to Mpumalanga.

From the beginning, this Mission was complicated by unprecedentedly intense torrential rain, which swelled the rivers to bursting their banks and flooded large areas. Several of the key bridges we had to cross were rendered impassable by the swollen and fast-flowing rivers.

“When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.” Isaiah 43:2

School Outreaches
winnable war aquila While Dr. Peter Hammond was presenting a week of lectures on Church History at Back to the Bible Training College, Michael, Renee, Taryn and Ryno were daily walking out along the train track and the high railway bridge to cross the raging Crocodile River, which wraps around Back to the Bible Training College and had rendered the road bridge completely impassable. By walking across the railway bridge, the rest of our team was able to make the 7 school meetings at 5 different schools in nearby Barberton, 30km from BBTC. Taryn had an opportunity to present the Fight the New Drug (anti-pornography) presentation at a Christian School and at the local government high school in Barberton. We praise God that many government schools are still open to Gospel preaching. They also made the church services, Bible studies and youth outreaches in Barberton by travelling on foot and by taxis.

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring Good News…” Isaiah 52:7

Empower Youth to Fight the New Drug

Youth Movement

In 1997 a small office in Florida launched the "Tobacco Pilot Programme." Rather than challenging the industry directly, the initiative set out with a unique goal —"to drive a wedge between the tobacco industry's advertising and a youth audience." After a careful survey of the attitudes of local youth, the program set out to educate youth in creative and edgy ways about the "truth" about smoking. Thirteen years later, after the programme spread across the USA, its wide ranging impact on smoking rates is well-known. According to research, the decline in youth smoking attributable to this campaign equates to some 300,000 fewer youth smokers and thus millions of added life years as well as tremendous reductions in health care and social costs.

Education Empowers

More broadly, this effort illustrated the potential of a youth movement - mobilizing youth through grassroots advocacy and a youth-centred education aimed to incite their impulse to "rebel"— this time, in a good direction. What this campaign had discovered, of course, was not new or radical. Public health had been learning the same thing in its wildly successful campaigns against small-pox, diphtheria, measles and polio. Education works!

Your Biblical Duty to Vote

On 7 May 2014 South Africans who have registered to vote will have the responsibility of electing a party to represent their interests in parliament. How you exercise this right and responsibility of voting will have far reaching consequences for almost every area of our lives.

“Select capable men from all the people - men who fear God; trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain - and appoint them as officials...” Exodus 18:21

How Porn Has Helped to Fuel The Child Rape Crisis

“I saw it on TV!”

Liz Jones counselled hundreds of sexually-abused children in the years that she worked at Safeline as a counsellor. She dealt with countless incidences of porn-related abuse, but her heart sank each time she heard those familiar words “I watched it on the TV,” or “I saw it in the magazine.” On one occasion she counselled a boy just entering puberty from a top-notch Cape Town primary school. The principal referred his parents to Safeline after complaints were made to teachers about the way he kept trying to touch the girls, grabbing them between the legs and talking about sex inappropriately with the other children. It eventually culminated in a blatant incident of child-on-child sexual abuse.

Normal reprimands and discipline from teachers and parents were not working, so his mother brought him in for therapy with Liz. “But why?” Liz said to him, “Why did you say that? What made you think of that?”