About 10 mins in our phone rang, which is fairly out of the norm at that time of night, especially when you only really have 1 week worth of connections in a place. On the other end was a Xhosa accent saying “Dude, its time” so I replied in my best british accent, “pardon”, “Dude its Nkosnat, its that time time” to which I shouted “Veliswa is in Labour!?” Rachel got excited and our adrenaline started to kick in! In the back of my mind I was also thinking, hmmm going into Masi is normally not the best idea as things gets pretty rowdy and most of the violent crime that takes place does so at night.

Considering that there was a woman in labour within that labyrinth of shacks though gave a little buzz of action-movie “do what you have to do” and we grabbed a towel (forgive, its a rental car and I really don’t know how I would explain the stain on the back seat!) and went down the hill and into Masi. This was a fairly big deal as we have never really gone as far back as this at night and since we have been back we have been really wrestling with attack in the area of fear and anxiety which whilst we recognise as attack and defeat it, we definately are still wrestling with. To our surprise the streets were dead, we comepletely uneventful get to their shack, looking back we definately see some divine protection in making normally pretty wild streets completely dead quiet for us at 10.30 at night!

So we piled 3 people in the back of the little fiat palio and sped off to the hospital! I asked Veliswa if I could pray for them as we drove and in the middle of what seemed like either a big old contraction or the baby coming she said “Its OK for you to pray”, so I sent up a slightly urgent but calm prayer that they would know Gods closeness as they go through this, it wasn’t eloquent, but I think God got the picture. As we navigated the back streets of fish hoek (the local larger town) we got to the lift barrier and a security guard came out of a little box room, so I rolled down the window and in my excitement didn’t quite construct a sentence and just shouted “BABY!” and pointed in the back of the car, to which the guard replied, a little surprised herself “Oh OK you can sign the form later” so we got straight to the door and out went Veliswa and south africas version of ER clicked into play.

After convincing Nkosnat that he should be with Veliswa (he was pretty nervous…to the amusement of the rest of the waiting room) he shot up after her, but then quickly returned saying the Docs were only allowing one other (Veliswa’s mum) in the delivery room. So Nkosnat returned to us in the waiting, with crying babies, abnoxiously loud late night south african TV and a broken drinks machine. We talked about his son coming, what it meant for him and his commitment to her (90% of mothers in Masi are single mothers), then onto what football strip he would wear and how Nkosnat wanted to take him to pre school on his first day, it was a good time.

After about an hour someone called Nkosnats name and we came out of the waiting room. It was Veliswa!! aparently the baby was so big it had been turning into the birth position and caused a lot of pain but it wasn’t imminent so she had to go home, she is going back in this morning to book a C-section appointment. We’ll let you know how the rest of the story unfolds!

UPDATE: We took Veliswa into False Bay Hospital, her blood pressure was high and the babies heart rate was higher than normal.Veliswa turned out to be dehydrated, so they put her on oxygen and a drip. Veliswa sent Nkosnat out to ask for Rachel, a little bemused Rachel went in and Veliswa asked if she would pray with her as she was so scared.

UPDATE 2: Veliswa got transferred to Cape Town Hospital for a C-section, we popped in and got Nkosnat some lunch, we weren’t able to see her but she was in a better condition and sleeping.

UPDATE 3: When we got home we heard she was booked for a C-Section at 10.30pm, Nkosnat will see the baby after that and then we will go into Cape Town and pick him up as he has to work tomorrow!

A few weeks ago we posted a video to give an insight into All Nations the organisation we will be working with in South Africa. As part of  working with All Nations we will be involved in a CPx from Feb-Jun 2011, which stands for Church Planting eXperience.

We have just received the curriculum for this and thought we’d share it with you. If you’d like to get involved with this area by either attending or partnering with us through meeting some of the costs of this program we’d love to hear from you.

The Date is set!

As many of you know, the last month has been a whirlwind of preparations, specifically the visa drama (read more), but also looking for shipping quotes, medical insurances, and support raising and so we are relieved to say we have FINALLY BOOKED OUR FLIGHTS!

We will leave the UK on the 13th of September!

Our return flights aren’t until July 2011, and we have committed the next 3 years to working with All Nations in South Africa so this is a big step for us.

Thankyou to everyone who followed and prayed with us through the excitement of the last month. God has been so faithful to us!

• What will we be doing in South Africa?
• Support
• You are Invited…

Rather than send you a lengthy email, we have re-written our website with videos and stories that detail the work we will be doing in South Africa with All Nations – to look through it all go towww.liamandrachel.com or click on the images below to go straight to the projects you are interested in:

Baby Safe, an access ministry to church planting that Rachel will help run, originally started as a response to the crisis of baby dumping in the Western Cape of South Africa.  The practise of abandoning babies in places there are unlikely to be found was not being engaged by any government agency or organisations, therefore Baby Safe was set up to be a extension of God’s heart to both the babies involved and the mother’s who found themselves in such desperation…READ MORE

Liam will be working with 2 others in discipling kingdom principles in a generation of new small business owners throughout Masiphumelele & other local impoverished communities. This will be done through a program called STEPS which addresses the multiple levels of poverty which exist in lives, spiritual poverty, material poverty and social poverty, READ MORE.

The natural out working of people coming to know Jesus through the two previously mentioned ministries, is to gather them in discipleship communities, this is why All Nations is committed to simple church planting. In particular we are focused on making disciples and sending out trained leaders to start simple, reproducing, Jesus focused churches. READ MORE

As we prepare to return to South Africa the most valuable way in which you can support us is through prayer.
We will be regularly updating liamandrachel.com to give you more information on what we have been doing and hope that you would join us in praying for both our own needs and those of the people we will be working with.

At the moment the main point for prayer is that the specific financial needs which we face would be met. We are still in need of just over £700 ($1000) a month to cover the ministry and living costs, which in this area of South Africa are comparable with the UK. Although food costs are cheaper we will have to pay quite a substantial amount each month for medical insurance and accommodation.

Other important needs are that we would be able to fund a few basic the relocation costs (such as a rental deposit, moving costs, etc) which will be in the region of £1,250 and also that we would be able to get a second hand car. This is particularly important given the levels of crime in the  area as we need to ensure that Rachel can travel safely to and from thebaby safe project. Unfortunately the second hand market is hugely inflated compared to the UK (see Cape Town Ads) and whilst we are hoping to generate around £3000 from the sale of our own car in the UK it is likely that we will need to raise an additional £2000 on top of the other relocation costs in order to be able to buy something reliable.

We thank you for your prayers for these matters and although we now only have a month left before we leave, we know without a doubt that God has called us to do what we are doing and are confident that he will provide in these areas. If any of you do feel called to partner in what we do by supporting this work financially please see the details below on how to give, otherwise we are grateful for your support in bringing these needs before God.

How to Give
In the UK – you can give through our charity partner Stewardship by calling 020 8502 5600 and quoting our account number: 20108438 or by downloading forms on our website. This helps us hugely as we can claim an extra 25% on giving through tax.

International – The easiest way to give for those outside the UK is through paypal on our website. You can donate using the button below or alternatively set up a recurring payment to support us regularly.

We would love the chance to share with everyone the work we are doing
in South Africa, so we are planning to run an event on the:

27th August 2010

The Venue is yet to be confirmed, but will be in Aberdeenshire. We will be sharing stories from our last 4 months in South Africa, explaining what it is exactly that we will be doing day to day for the next 3 years, it will also be a great opportunity to see everyone before we leave! Please RSVP by reply to this email, as we’ll also have some food and drinks!

We are hoping to do something similar in Cornwall before we leave, so watch this space…

Liam & Rachel

The Waiting Game..
Well we wanted to give everyone a quick update as we had talked about this big issue for the last couple of months and asked so many of you to pray. We went to the South African Embassy yesterday morning, queueing in the great british fashion from 8am til opening at 8.45am, we were the first in line. Everything was going well, we were called up and the documents that we have been preparing for the last 2 months were handed over, constituting x-ray reports, trips to the doctor, police checks worth about £600 in admin fees not including this trip to London, a lot was riding on this visa application.

The lady looked down at some paper work and spoke the dreaded words, “No, they won’t accept this!”. She pointed to the sponsoring letter from our missions organisation “All Nations”, “It hasn’t been signed”. So you’ll need to go and get it signed (immediately my mind began running, thinking of a way to get a signed letter from South Africa within the few days we had prepared to be in London). As I looked back at her trying to hide my shock, she said “You’ll need that, and you’ll need to bring back £600 (around $900) per person back with you for the ‘repatriation fee’ (should anything happen, the South African govt. aren’t keen on flying our coffins home unless we’ve paid for the ticket!). Finally she said, “If you can get that back to me by 10.30 (it now being around 9.15) we can take it today”

So frantically we ran to the nearest Internet Cafe and tried to call the office in South Africa that wrote our letter…the lady who had written it was overseas, and the letter had been on her computer! After an agonizing 40mins we printed the letters and ran to the bank, which didn’t open til 10AM!!!! With money in hand we sprinted back through trafalgar sq to Whitehall and handed in everything in disbelief we’d made it in time.

Our soon-made friend across the counter took our details and said, “OK, you’ll have to come back on the 28th”, confused thinking we would get a reply that day “we live 900 miles away in Scotland!” we said, so they allowed us to have the visa’s posted back to us. So here we are, not quite relieved from our anticipation of visa decisions, but we’ve done what we can and will hear in the next 7 days supposedly.

Please continue to pray for the process and we’ll let you know as soon as we do.

Thanks for all your support as we go through the ‘dramatic’ preparations for heading back to South Africa.

All Nations is a family of communities, working together across Africa, partnering with the Holy Spirit to pioneer simple Jesus-centered communities in homes, businesses or anywhere Jesus is not worshiped. – All Nations Southern Africa

Human Trafficking

The US State Dept and UN agencies were estimating that around 30,000-100,000 people would be trafficked into South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. This was one of the most shocking discoveries as we researched and prayed into South Africa for our DTS Outreach. Human Trafficking is basically modern-day slavery, people are tricked and trapped into extorting employment with oppressive conditions and unjust wages, if any.

Along with this reality we found that although statistics range considerably, all authorities in this area agree that more people are caught in modern day slavery/human trafficking than at any other time in human history! Further research showed us that much of the trafficking of people into South Africa was for the purposes of sexual slavery.

God began to give us a burden for these faceless and voiceless people, and through prayer convinced us we had some part to play in combatting this during our time in South Africa. As we prayed about this, it was clear much of the battle was in the form of the international demand for prostitution which had been created by the World Cup.

As clearly, there is no reasonable expectation that people won’t travel to attend the world cup and that prostitution is far too wide an issue to address within such a short period. So God began to give a vision to us of revealing the person behind the prostitution to those who attended the World Cup.We hope that by revealing God’s image and his worth in the women involved in prostitution in a form which would be understood by those in the target group of men would be impacting enough to dissuade them from engaging in prostitution.

Originally the plan was to use a presentation or article on the planes which would bring the huge number of visitors to South Africa for the world cup, but after a number of closed doors and the scale of the task, we prayed about it and used some creativity to scale the concept of the project.

We came up with an idea that had been used in the UK of printing beer mats (coasters) which feature an eye catching design which replicates an advertisement for prostitution, and then a short sentence of information about sexual slavery on the back.

Within a week or so we managed to secure full funding for the project through JusticeACTS, a not-for-profit YWAM organisation working in this area, we discovered that there was high demand for coasters from South African Brewery’s and therefore an open door for the materials. We really feel like God opened so many doors for us in this venture, within a few weeks we had created a design, found funding, an affordable printing process, and finally an open door for the materials to be delivered. All this resulted in thousands of beer mats (coasters) being distributed in the FIFA main venues of every stadium city that was hosting a world cup game in South Africa. We were amazed!

We titled the awareness campaign after its UK counter-part “The Truth Isn’t Sexy” Here was the design on the back.

Back of Coaster Story

The Truth Isnt Sexy - FIFA 2010 World Cup Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign

Liam and Rachel are working as missionaries/development strategists/followers of Jesus amongst the Xhosa people in Masiphuemele, South Africa. Click here to help us by praying with us, follow us on our blog or you can sign up to receive our email updates. You can communicate our story to your local Church or housegroup and we would also hugely appreciate anyone prayerfully considering financially supporting the work we do in South Africa on a regular basis, you can find more about that here.

Please introduce yourselves, and tell us about what you are doing in South Africa just now?

We are a newly married couple in our early twenties with a sneaking suspicion that Jesus has an amazing plan to see the World made new, humans brought back to relationship with himself and each other, and that the place we should be doing that right now is in Southern Africa. More formally though, Rachel grew up in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and has been serving Church plants, loving her nieces and nephews, and loves culture. I (Liam) grew up in Cornwall near England (that’s a South-West joke) studying Theology in Aberdeen with a background in Politics and Economics and until 4 months ago was working in the oil Industry.

We are working in South Africa helping facilitate locally led, home based simple churches/bible studies, giving people the tools and education to lift themselves out of oppressive poverty, teaching people the skills to have life giving family life and care for Children.

How did you get involved with/what inspired you to work with YWAM?

YWAM just happened to turn up at the right time really. We love YWAM’s core values and have some great friends who are involved in it. YWAM is also releasing and broad enough that you can pretty much work in any sphere under their banner.

All that being said although we are relationally connected with YWAM we don’t have any long term commitment as of yet, but their DTS* program (which we are currently involved in) seemed like a good intro to our more long term plans in South Africa. We are very much of the mind that we want to build a Kingdom not an empire, so as long as being involved with YWAM serves that we will probably stay connected with YWAM.

*DTS = Discipleship Training School

What is 2010 shaping up to look like for your work with YWAM?

Well from January to March we will be in South Africa continuing to scope out the land and make arrangements for our more long-term return later in the year. As part of the DTS program we are doing we have to go back to our sending YWAM base Kona for a little while, after that we are hoping to visit a few churches and friends in mainland USA for a couple of weeks up until end of April. Then from May to July we will be back in the UK to visit Churches, family and find some short-term employment to help towards our return to South Africa in August.

What is your favourite thing about the work you are doing?

We get to see people all day and we get the opportunity make a real difference to help them out of poverty.

Spiritual poverty: the sense that they don’t matter to God or have anywhere to take their burdens.

Financial poverty: helping people realise they can really step out of poverty and that it is something that is on God’s heart for them.

Relational poverty: networking them with people who care about them and want to engage in community with them.

All those areas are something that we are passionate about and so being able to work with people in those areas can be very enjoyable.

What is the most challenging thing about the work you are doing?

Situations that feel hopeless have been challenging, we are working in a community of 30,000 in a 2sq mile area – there is more depravity, poverty, and brokenness than I ever thought imaginable. We often see heart breaking injustice: an alcoholic mother who neglects her baby to the point of serious malnutrition; a refugee working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for not enough money to pay rent.

There is so much need, as soon as one problem seems to be solved; a new one comes to the fore. It just reminds us that this community needs more than just initiatives, programs or even money; it needs Jesus-centered restoration in every category.

Who do you have supporting you? How do they support you?

Our families particularly have been incredibly supportive; Rachel’s parents are even currently visiting with us. We have lots of faithful friends who pray for us regularly as well as keep in regular contact (which is actually more of a support than you would realise!). The Church I grew up in, in Cornwall has committed to pray for us as a church, and our house group and great friends in Banchory from the Aberdeen Vineyard Church really support us as our home community.

In relation to financial support, Rachel and I saved for around a year – I did some web design projects on the side back in the UK to raise money. We also asked people to gift us money for our wedding instead of the normal gift registries. A number of friends and family gave us generous one off gifts, a couple others have committed to giving to us monthly which has been of huge help but is less than 20% of our current monthly outgoings. Financial support is one of the main reasons we have to return to the UK for a few months this year.

Do you partner with any other organisations?

Yes, we love to in fact. We are working closely with All Nations, a local organisation focused on planting small simple churches in peoples houses. We are working with them to integrate a business training initiative we’ve been working on for some Zimbabwean refugees who can’t find work into a more advanced program that All Nations run. We are also working on a policy and advocacy level with Justice Acts/IOM, a part of the Counter Trafficking Coalition, on a human trafficking and prostitution prevention project for the World Cup later this year.

What piece of advice would you give to anyone that is thinking about doing mission/charity work overseas?

1) Do your research – cultivate a cultural, historical and spiritual understanding of the country, understand the main difference in the culture you are coming from and the one you are entering. Find out what groups are already at work there, and understand how you want to partner with them. Learn some of the language.

2) Create Community – lack of support is the number one reason people leave missionary work, whether it be an organisation you are working with, a home church, a house group, your family, friends, a society, find a group of people who will partner with you, believe in you and what you are working for, a support team is really integral to any long term sustainability in missions.

3) Love God, Love Others – Missions work, especially in developing nations can be relationally, emotionally and physically exhausting, if you are not rooted in an understanding of the Love of God for you, and for the people in the World it must be entirely unsustainable. Relational conflict amongst missionaries is another major reason people leave missions work, get ready to be humble, submit to each other in love, you will likely come with cultural baggage and other westerners will more likely rub you up the wrong way than the local population. Bonhoeffer said in his book on living in Christians Community called Life Together – “If you love the vision you have for community, you will destroy community. If you love the people around you, you will create community.” There is no integrity in showing the love of God to a local community if you can’t practice it between other people working to the same end.

How can others engage with you and support you in the work you are doing with YWAM?

I think I’ve already been too long winded so I’ll direct you to our website for that! -

Click here to help us by praying with us, follow us on our blog or you can sign up to receive our email updates. You can communicate our story to your local Church or housegroup and we would also hugely appreciate anyone prayerfully considering financially supporting the work we do in South Africa on a regular basis, you can find more about that here.

To Read the article in its original context and leave a comment click here.

If people would like to pray for you, what would you have them talk to God about on your behalf?

1. Safety – Everyday we are working in a community with a shockingly high violent crime and murder rate and sometimes getting involved in difficult social and family situations, we haven’t had any issues so far but we certainly need God’s continued protection as we seek to be light in the darkness here.

2. Wisdom – We could get involved and see meaningful transformation in almost every sphere of society if we were to give our time to it, so please pray that we would work in strategic areas to help bring about the radical transformation Jesus announced when he was on earth.

3. Marriage – We consider a strong and loving marriage to be one of our most compelling witnesses in a community with so much unfaithfulness and broken families, please pray that we would continue to grow in our love for each other and commitment to each other.

Thank you so much for sharing with us Liam & Rachel! We will be praying for you as you prepare to get settled long-term in South Africa.

To keep up to date with what Liam and Rachel are up to, and to find out more about the different ways people can support them go to their website & blog at www.liamandrachel.com

There is so much to say, too much than we could really convey just in words, but to give you an idea of our first few weeks we made this short video below, enjoy!

We Have Arrived in South Africa from Liam Byrnes on Vimeo.