What an incredible month of Manestry (men’s only ministry). I spent this past month with my teammates Jack and Jacob in Lesotho, a small country surrounded by South Africa. While there, we had the privilege of working with Africa 4 Jesus, an organization focused around reaching unreached villages, sharing the Gospel, and building up local leaders and pastors who will then go back into their community to continue the spread of the Gospel.
This was an incredible month of both hard work and peaceful moments; a time of making an impact and peacefully connecting with the Lord. We did plenty of home visits to the surrounding villages as well as farming and multiple construction projects, some of which included helping build a house and a pig pen.
The highlight of the month was certainly hiking into an unreached village and sharing the Gospel there. Jack, Jacob, and I, as well as our ministry host Peter and ministry members Teboho and Paul, hiked up a mountain to the village of Ha Jobo where we spent a day doing home visits. We were fortunate enough to watch one man accept Christ into his life which was a really cool experience. The next day we hiked 3.5 hours through the mountains to the village of Motse-mocha. The village had been contacted once by Teboho and our ministry host’s son Jon, who had received permission from the chief to come back.
So there we were in Motse-mocha. The chief welcomed us in with open arms and even let us stay in one of the homes in the village, a mud hut with really good insulation (thank goodness). That night, we did what the ministry’s protocol is for unreached villages, and showed the Jesus Film in the Sesotho language. After the film, we talked with some of the locals about the life of Jesus and what that means for all of us; it was a really cool experience of getting to share the Gospel. We asked for permission to come back to set up a discipleship school and they agreed, which put Motse-mocha into the next step of the program. The steps of the program are as follows…
- Reach out to the unreached village to see if we can come back to show the Jesus Film
- Come back to the village and show the Jesus Film, then ask to set up a discipleship school in the village for a few days
- Set up the discipleship school and identify someone to come back to the ministry to do an extensive, more in depth discipleship training in the hopes that that person will become a local church leader
It was a really cool experience to be a part of, and I’m thankful to God and our ministry host for allowing us to be involved. That night we slept in the mud hut, and the next morning we left Motse-mocha for Ha Jobo, and then left the morning after for basecamp, where we did a kids event at a school which involved games, songs, and a lesson about the importance of needing Christ to reach God.
It was an incredible month in Lesotho, and I’m very thankful that I could be here for the penultimate month. The next and last country will be Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), where my entire squad of 24 people will be spending our time at a homestead. I’m not quite sure what ministry will look like there, but I’m excited to see what God has in store for the final month of the Race.
That’s it for now! I hope you are all doing well. God bless,
Colton
These are the men of manestry; Jacob (left), Jack (right), and Colton (bottom)
