mariusdeetlefs - Expanding Our Territory....

Some of you already know this, but we want to let all of our dear friends and supporters know that Marius and I were approached in June by one of our ministry friends in South Africa to come and work with them. After several months of prayer, fasting, and seeking God, we have decided to make the move. We are finishing up our 2-year commitment with AIM and will be transitioning to Global Challenge (www.gcex.org) and moving to South Africa at the beginning of the year.

As much as we LOVE Swaziland (and we do so LOVE this place!), we both feel that this is a "God-promotion" for us. We've been ministering to orphans in this little country and now we get to expand our territory and do it globally!

The teams we will help to train work with orphans both locally (in South Africa where we will be based), and also in 7 other African nations and in India (where just one of the orphanages where they serve houses 10,000 orphans!). It's an incredible organization, and Marius has known and been friends with the founder, Anna-Marie Franken, for 20 years. She actually was very instrumental in his faith after he graduated from high school!

Marius has been asked to be the Personnel Manager and help oversee the 35+ full-time staff there, as well as to help train over a hundred mission participants each year. He is very excited to have the opportunity to do creative teaching again. He also hopes to take some classes via correspondence to work on a Bible degree.

I will be helping to work at a community center called Ithemba where they take care of orphans and other vulnerable and refugee children. (photo below)

I've also been asked to help develop a Biblical curriculum for the teams and work with the worship leaders to help prepare them. I am particularly excited about this, as I will get to sing again, which I haven't had the chance to do in our 2 years here in Swaziland.

While Global Challenge is developing young people to serve long-term in countries all around the world, they are also quite busy serving locally. Last year they opened a private high school where 1/3 of the 100 students are local orphans who are receiving scholarships. Their vision is to see these orphans raised up as leaders, and one day themselves be the ones traveling globally to share the good news and serve other orphans! I think this is such a neat concept!

This will of course be another non-paid full-time ministry position, so we are heading back to raise support for the cost of living change. We are so excited, and we hope to connect with many of you soon. We will be home mid-October til' mid-December. I promise to let you know where we will be speaking so hopefully we can connect with as many friends as possible.

Please pray for us as we make preparations to come back to the States, move all of our stuff into storage, finish up our job responsibilities and say goodbye to our dear friends here in Swaziland, (all without a car I might add.) Yeah, still no car, but we believe God is going to provide wheels for us before we come back to Africa at the end of the year. Emi is getting really good at hitch-hiking.