CrossTrainers

Date: May 12th 2010

Speaker: Gary Rosberg

Title: Focus on South Africa

Gary started with Trunk money videos

(I’m not sure what these had to do with the talk but they are hilarious – you can see them here Video 1, Video 2, Video 3 (the best one)

Our Time in South Africa

When they were in their early teens Peaceful and Promise became double orphans. In South Africa, when both parents die you become a double orphan.

Where we were in South Africa it wasn’t uncommon to have nine year old parenting a house hold. There were little kids and grandmothers, almost everyone in between was dying.

Even as we were teaching on purity many of these young women were on their way home to be raped by their uncles or grandfathers.

Promise and Peaceful were a couple of gals that I meant last time but didn’t get to really talk with them. This time I spent 2 hours talking through the six secrets with these two gals to see how these principles work in their cultural context. They were absolutely captivated by this time.

Promise and Peaceful have been a part of iThemba which means “place of hope.” 29 kids living in this program, all of them double orphans. They have been rescued from the streets and orphanages. This isn’t a foster home or orphanage. They are a family. When they turn 18 they aren’t booted out, they still come home to iThemba for Christmas and holidays even after they leave to be on their own.

Acts 1:8
When we were in SA recently I spent time with the CEO of iThemba and told him that he inspired me with this verse. This guy was the CEO of Focus on the Family Africa for 30 years. He decided to come home to his Jerusalem to start iThemba to focus on AIDS orphans.

Pastors -
Gary showed pictures from his time in Africa. Specifically talking about the Pastor’s conference that America’s Family Coaches presented.
Turn to your neighbor – Turn to a guy next to you and pray for the pastors and leaders of South Africa, this change isn’t going to come through public policy it is the turning of hearts.

Families –
We hosted the Great Marriage Experience at a church in Capetown that only held 700 people. When we got there there were people standing in the street with signs that said, “Sold out, no more room.” The guy we were with had them take the signs down and we packed the place out! Pray for us as we work to resource the pastors of this conference.
We then went to host the conference in Durban and packed out the church with 2400 people.
Turn to your neighbor – Turn to the guy next to you and pray for these families that attended these conference. That they would be a light to their communities and that they would remain strong in Christ.

Angus Buchan -
This guy is a farmer who has been anointed by God. He had a men’s conference on his farm and had 150,000 guys last time. This time 350,000 guys were on his farm field this time and we got to go! It is like a Christian woodstock, they go there for three days, camp out, grill. Tens of thousands of guys came to Christ during this event.

Turn to your neighbor – Turn to the guy next to you and pray for the men of South Africa. They are seeing what we saw with Promise Keepers and we know that this country and this continent will only be changed with the hearts of the men are changed.

iThemba -

www.focusonithemba.org

Click HERE for the Full Audio for this message.

(notes typed by PJ)