Southbridge and Mahafaly Leadership

We recently got back from a bush trip chock full of exciting stuff! We had a team from our church Southbridge Fellowship in Raleigh come and teach on true worship, community development, and host a medical clinic. It was amazing to watch how God had put Tessa and I (Chyella too!) in place to be the bridge between the Mahafaly and this team of people God has richly gifted in unique ways . As far as I see it, both this week and always, fulfilling God’s mission to reach the world is the only way you can really understand yourself and be fulfilled yourself.

We also got to watch the Mahafaly host their own leadership meeting. Grant Waller has been meeting with church leadership for the past few years but this was the first time the Mahafaly were solely in charge of hosting and leading the meeting. There was a lot of crawling, stumbling, and face planting, but we saw the Mahafaly leaders taking the first baby steps toward being independent and leading themselves. We will continually modeling what leadership means, assisting them as they try, watching them lead and providing critical feedback. The end goal is for these leaders to be self-sufficient and be able to lead and teach others without leaning on us. There may still be some hand holding now, but very soon the Mahafaly church will be walking on its own.

It was a great trip and we are very blessed to be here. We are reminded that God is not changing to world to meet our needs, but he is at work changing us to meet the needs of the world! He is changing the Mahafaly for that same purpose.