Kinshasa report - Sept 2022
Newsletter September 2022
Outreach to mega city of 15 million
There were a few reasons I went. One reason was
to look at the possibilities of planting a new Ywam base in Kinshasa, DRC.
On the plane I sat next to a businessman from
France that does business with the mines in DRC. He previously worked for Al-Jazeera,
and he gave me a live update on what is happening in the country as he was
staying in the country for 15 years already. At the airport everything was French.
The person on the plane told me exactly what to have when I enter not to pay
extra penalties. The pastor and the evangelist were waiting for me, and they
booked me into a hotel for the whole week.
Church has a lot of authority
On the plane the French person asked me what I
was going to do. When I said I was teaching on a pastors’ conference he said:
“That is the right place to be, they have a lot of authority in Kinshasa.”
In the organizing group the evangelist was also
a qualified engineer, the pastor also a medical doctor and in the rest of the
group there was a lawyer and an architect as well. I realized I was hosted by
the intellectual elite that has a lot of authority and contacts. What was more
was that the evangelist spoke at Ywam Cambodia and worked with Ywam India for a
few years. I could really sense the evangelist was hand-picked for a Ywam
planting.
Words from the Holy Spirit
When I prayed the Holy Spirit said the following words. “Rush-in, stabilize and sardine run”. I sensed that this period is a golden opportunity to stabilize the country and that there was a lot of opportunities for the gospel for championing indigenous tribes in Kinshasa. There are 450 tribes in DRC and all of them are in Kinshasa! What is more is that Kinshasa is now safe, and that the DRC has a new Christian president from 2019.
Kinshasa is an African mega-city. The roads are
very busy and there are tar roads in Kinshasa and 1 tar road for 1000 km out of
Kinshasa. The food was very nice with a few side dishes that were foreign. One
side dish was dried Mopani worms and another peanut butter fish. I was very
well looked after, and the Hotel was like a 2-star Hotel in SA.
Time is slow
Knowing Africa runs on its on-time schedule I
asked the evangelist what the real time is when someone makes an appointment.
He said DRC time is 30 min to 2 hours after the time that was mentioned. I saw
a few things that could make it difficult for outreach groups in the culture.
One was the traffic, another the time issue and another the African culture
that is far from western culture. All of this is however normal outreach
issues. The number one issue I wanted to know if it is safe. I found it safe
and enormously fertile for the gospel. It is probably one of the mega-cities in
the world where you can literally just come in and do the work of evangelism
and there will be a huge harvest.
Picture from the Holy Spirit for
conference
The Holy Spirit showed me several domes of
light all over Kinshasa that represented the churches. On the churches I saw
written “leadership development”. I realized that the church is the place where
the new DRC is being born. The evangelist said: “We need workshops from Ywam”. One very interesting statistic I heard was that:
in 2050 one in four people in the world would be African!
The evangelist was one of 9 children and one of
the pastors was one of 14 children. Now is a very important time for Africa but
also for the mission destiny of the world in many senses. If hard work is done
now in the central African region for Christianity, they will be missionaries
everywhere in the coming decades.
For African bases -feel free to do missions in
Kinshasa. For Western bases - I would advise outreaches of 2 weeks, workshops
at the churches and disciples that are being discipled over internet after
contact on the ground. For Western bases the culture shock is normally big in the
heart of Africa. June to August is the best time for outreach as it is dry
season then and malaria is at its lowest. For safety it is good to contact me
for the right indigenous contacts. DRC has 24 provinces. Focusing on Kinshasa
for now and establishing strongly there, would train indigenous workers that
will do the work in the other roadless provinces.
Ywam Dzaleka (refugee focused base)
doing DTS in October
OPERATION REFEUGEE BANKING DETAILS:Operation
Refugee Africa NPO
First Nation Bank – Cheque / current account 62626450720 Branch code: 240438 (Potchefstroom Branch) Reference: (Please give a specific reference – eg. DTS sponsor)
Keep Contact
Facebook pages: Ywam Potchefstroom, WikusChristien Vorster, Operation Refugee-YWAM Potch, Transformation Prayer – TPMSA Instagram: ywam_potch
WEBSITE: http://ywampotch.com BLOG: http://wikuschristien.blogspot.com
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