The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

Hello everyone! Just in case you were confused by the title, it means Cameroon and News. We have been super busy these past weeks and wanted to send a little update on what God is doing down here in the S of A.

We just had a really great week with meetings all day for the past 6 days. We reviewed our material that we train and updated it and also made it more relevant and just improved it overall. We also outlined the training for the first 4 months of next year and how we wanted to change that. There’s so much involved with the training, and we literally discussed every activity, why we do it, and why we think we should keep doing it, change it, or do something different. Then we had a full day of interviews with young girls and guys who want to come for the training next year. We spend 2 hours interviewing each candidate on theological background, ministry background, spiritual background and personal background. So, it’s been an intense but very productive week and it got me really excited about next year.

The week before last, we were in Durban and Richard’s Bay encouraging and meeting with our teams doing ministry there. They have all matured so much in such a short period of time and we are extremely proud of the ministry they are doing, what they will leave behind them, and the lessons they have learned that have changed their lives for the better.

We are also planning a trip to Cameroun at the end of the month to work with our key lady there. We will be there for 3 weeks, and will be helping her with training, and networking with other pastors and then really trying to lay out plans for a prospective training center. This center is such a pivotal center for J-Life as a whole because it will mean a center that can specifically cater to French speaking African countries, and it will decentralize the one year training program to accomodate people who cannot afford to come all the way down to South Africa for the 4 months training we are currently doing.

Other exciting news is that J-Life has had a great meeting with the Anglican denominational head here in South Africa, and he really wants to send out leaders from all of their countries in Southern Africa, and in each regional leader from South Africa to do the four month training next year. This would mean a completely different training section for the Anglican guys and we would then do training Jan-April, and Aug- Dec. This is a huge movement from God and an answer to prayer because we are mostly working with Baptists and Methodists here in South Africa, but one of our key values to be an organization for all denominations.

So, we need a lot of prayer and praise. God is doing some great things in this ministry, but at times it seems to be growing faster than we can handle. So, we need God’s wisdom, and we really need direction on how to specifically accomodate all of these needs and interests.

We also are in great need of building more onto the training center that we have if we have a completely new session of training. The center we have now has one hall and one very small dining area that is used for our trainees during the four months and also for the tentmaking business we run at J-Life which is campsite ministry. More staff are joining us as we expand this ministry into all of Africa, and we are running out of places to house them. 

Mozambique and Zimbabwe

Over the past month or so Michelle and I have visited two of South Africa’s neighboring countries, Mozambique, a previously Portuguese colony, and Zimbabwe.

Mozambique was a holiday trip. We had two friends from Durban and a college friend of mine from the States join us in a road trip out to the east coast of Africa. We stayed on some beautiful beach campsites and ate lots of wonderful, cheap, fresh fish every night.

A highlight for me was connecting with an old friend of mine, Arnaldo, in the capital city of Maputo. He became a follower of Christ when I was there on a mission trip in 2003. This was the first time I was able to see him since then and its amazing to see what an incredible man he has become. He gave us such an awesome tour of the city that by the end we were encouraging him to become a tour guide. He also has a fiancée (they cannot be officially married until he comes up with about $1000 for the “Labola” or dowry) and a one year old son named baby Jesus! Yes, gotta love Portuguese culture!

After about a week back at home Michelle and I went out to visit a team we are overseeing in Tzaneen. Check out the picture of us with them at the giant Baobab tree.

From there we joined some other J-Life staff for the long trek out to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. We met with the J-Life national director, Tarisayi, who is doing some really great work there. In Harare, we helped him train 40 youth leaders in a course called Strategy, which looks at the process of making disciples based on Jesus’ life. We spent the next week checking out the country, meeting with pastors, and interviewing possible team members for next year. Due the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, none of the Zimbabwean interns will be able to raise the support they need and J-Life will have to find the funds for them. Finally, we drove to another city called Bulawayo for another weekend seminar with youth leaders.

I’m sure many of you have heard at least a bit about the political and economic turmoil in Zimbabwe. In the midst of such hardships the people are so calm and hopeful. In a way they seem almost passive and have resigned to riding out this wave of tyranny. Optimists would say this is because they are just great people. But another reason is that they have no choice. There is no freedom of speech in Zimbabwe. You could be detained for treason just for talking politics on the street and being heard by a supporter of the ruling party. Spies are sent to churches to make sure pastors also ignore the pressing issues facing Zimbabweans. There is an eerie calm in Zimbabwe which is hard to describe.

Everything is difficult in Zimbabwe. There is a cash crisis so that you are only able to draw about $3 a day from your bank account. To get this money you could wait as long as 6 hours at the bank. Despite it being illegal, trade is done primarily in foreign currency and you would not want to hold on to local currency because you could wake up the next morning with the price of groceries having doubled overnight. There are constant power cuts and water cuts, not due to a lack of water, but because they cannot buy the water treatments to make sure it is safe for drinking.

The grocery and department stores are nearly empty. And the stock they do have most people cannot afford (in one store they were selling cans of 7up for $15 each!). We met with a pastor at a restaurant but of course we had no intention of ordering a piece of chicken for $22. It was very depressing when the manager walked around greeting the people sitting at the tables, handing them the photocopied menu with the prices for the day, and not one person in the restaurant ordering anything the entire time we were there.

I could tell many more stories about the struggles in Zimbabwe but in reality it was a really great trip for us because of the great people we were able to meet and just how appreciative and excited they were about the training we did there. It was encouraging to see this movement really starting to take root in other countries. We are continuing to beg God to intervene on behalf of the Zimbabwean people and we ask you also to pray earnestly for the Church and the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Hello again from South Africa!

We hope you all are doing well and that you haven’t completely forgotten us over here in South Africa. We have had a great couple of weeks with J-life and we are excited about what God is doing.

Right now our main job is overseeing three teams that are out doing ministry in different churches in South Africa. We have a team in Durban working on setting up a youth ministry in a Baptist church, a team in Richard’s Bay working with another Baptist church, and a team in Tzaneen working with the Methodist, Anglican, and Baptist churches there. So, we keep in contact with them and make sure they are keeping themselves healthy while also focusing on the right strategic goals. I (Michelle) am now working to set up resources for our new website and I am also dealing with an issue of discipline for one of our teams, in which God has moved in my life in huge ways, teaching me how to rebuke in love and wisdom.  But speaking of the website, if anyone has any youth ministry resources that we could put up on our website for all our African youth ministers, I would greatly appreciate it.

Miah has just finished the second of the Intern weeks, where he facilitates and plans all the activities, exams and lecturers. Miah and Jann have also created a policy now for the interns and for the future of this program. They are making many improvements on keeping each student accountable and helping these African guys and girls to get seminary degrees while doing ministry part time (and some are working as well) which is a very difficult process. It was a good week and they got many things accomplished with the interns and have also created more unity among the group which is an incredible thing because they are all working in very different places racially, economically, and spiritually.

We are about to take our week of vacation for the year and go with some friends camping in Mozambique. Please pray that God will use this time for us to renew our joy, hope and passion for the people of Africa.