Dear friends,
we greet you from a sunny and humid Durban! It has been very warm since we have arrived back in January which has been a welcome respite from the cold we experienced the back end of last year!
We wanted to update you on a few things that have been happening over the last few months, so you can continue to praise and pray with us…
1. Theological Education future in Durban…
As many of you are aware, we have been pursuing a sustainable, non-missionary dependent future for our Theological Education in Durban and the greater KZN for some time now. On March 17th, delegates representing four Colleges around South Africa met to discuss our options moving forward. A lot of the work we have done over the past year has been to help determine who is “in” and who is “out” of a collaborative venture. It has, at times, been a frustrating process but a necessary one as we seek to build a future together instead of separately for the Cause of Christ. At last we have a pretty clear idea of who would like to participate and in the next week we will begin formal negotiations. Our College is committed to this process and we hope to continue our work in training men and women for vocational Christian ministry on an even larger scale soon!
2. The Phoenix Fellowship...
Those of you who use Facebook would have hopefully seen our dedicated page for the fundraising effort (www.facebook.com/thefinalpush). We have been able to raise around $10000 so far through the page which has been amazing, especially considering that most of that has come from within South Africa! We hope to complete the roof by the end of April and be able to ‘move in’ soon thereafter. We still have a long way to go for the interior though (chairs, tiling, painting, appliances, furnishings etc.) but we continue to press ahead with what we have currently. Please visit the Facebook page or go to thephoenixfellowship.com to find out more.
I wrote in a blog entry (www.themeekinsfamily.blogspot.com) recently, that we have also been focusing on the community we will be moving into soon. A staggering 61% of people we have surveyed so far indicate that Drug and Alcohol addiction is a huge problem in the community. It affects the whole family and the community as well. We hope to bring Christ’s message and freedom from addiction by using some powerful tools to help people overcome this scourge. In addition, we would like to create some kind of ‘youth center’ to use as a way of getting to know some of these kids from very troubled backgrounds. Please visit the blog site to find out some more information about the survey and the plans we have…
3. On a personal note…
This past Sunday was Darryl’s birthday and we had some fun celebrating that. Right now we are helping with premarital counseling for a young couple and may have another one starting in June. Please pray for us as we plan to build into the lives of these couples. Emma has become quite a pray-er and she gives us a list of all the sick people we have to pray for at night before bed. We are thankful for all of you who continue to pray for us and support the ministry here in SA as well. Below is a short list of needs we would be grateful for you to take before the Lord.
Serving together,
Darryl, Casey and Emma
Please Pray for...
- Jenelle Bressette who is an intern from BBC working with us until December.
- The two couple we will be doing premarital counseling with
- “The Final Push” campaign for our church building
- For the “Next Steps” 9 week study Darryl will be teaching from 1 May at our church
- For our negotiations for Theological Education collaboration over the next few months
Please remember to catch us on Facebook (dcmeekins), Twitter (meekinsfam) and Blogspot (Transformission- The Meekins in SA).
*** Don't forget to check out the pics and video from our Baptism on the beach on Facebook***
