South Africa (MNN) — While on an e3 Partners mission trip in the town of Motherwell, South Africa, a group of Christians encountered one of the local healers.
Tony Svendsen tells the story. “We got to share the Gospel with her. She was very receptive to everything we said. We were talking about the God of creation, and we were talking about the brokenness of the world. But then the second we said the name Jesus Christ, she immediately stopped us and said, ‘You need to stop, and you need to leave right now.’”
Why this strong reaction?
Many people who practice South Africa’s traditional religions have been treated poorly by Christians. Svendsen says, “The exposure that they have to Christianity in that area is from men who decide they want to be a pastor because they like the authority. They like to receive gifts. And we heard quite a few stories of churches that required certain levels of giving.”
Traditional religions
Many people in the area still put poles in their front yards, mounting animal skulls on them. Svendsen says, ‘You’re kind of viewed as more devout if you have bigger and better skulls.”
Some Christians were involved in this practice as well, Svendsen says. “We had a chance to separate traditions from what the Scripture teaches, and they were very receptive to that. The people we talked to, a lot of them didn’t even know why they did some of the things that they did.”
Pray their love and care would show the heart of Jesus to the community of Motherwell.
e3 Partners mission trips
Svendsen works with Cypress Bible Church in Houston, Texas. The church has been involved with South Africa for years, but more recently, they began planning mission trips through e3 Partners.
Check out future e3 trips here.
The header photo shows plants used for traditional South African medicine. (Photo courtesy of Mycelium101 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
