The Website of Miah and Michelle Collins

Greetings from a frigid Johannesburg.

One of the main teaching tools we use at J-Life is called Strategy. It’s basically an in depth study of how Jesus “discipled” his disciples so that after 3 years of being with them he was able to leave them and let them carry on with His work. Recently Michelle and I taught this course to a group of surfers (the South African branch of Christian Surfers International). It turned out to be the most revitalizing weekend that we’ve had in a long time. Although we were trainers for the conference sometimes it felt like we were the ones who benefited the most from our time with them. We were able to hear their stories of ‘being Jesus’ to the surfing community of South Africa and the incredible passion they have to see board riders all along the coast coming to know God. I was shocked when I found out 2 days into the conference that most of the people there didn’t know each other before the conference. They all acted like they had been friends for years.
There was such a good vibe at the conference, whether they were sitting around sharing stories about tides, winds, swells, storms, sharks, reefs, beaches or point breaks around the country, or worshiping together, or paddling out at J-Bay’s famous surf spots. The other thing that really got me was how intergenerational surf ministry is. There were guys there as young as 15 and as old as 55, but it never seemed like the old guys were “too old” or the young guys (who they call “grommies”) “too young.”

After that trip we had a quick turnaround to fly out to Namibia, a vast desert country with only 2 million people. We were there to work with our country leader, Patrick, who is hoping to get their one-year J-Life program off the ground next year. Patrick recently quit his job as a pastor to raise his own support and work full time to start J-Life in Namibia. There are maybe a handful of “youth workers” in Namibia, most of them with other jobs to support their living expenses. But Patrick believes in the potential and the crucial importance of youth in the kingdom of God and He is pioneering this one-year program to encourage people to invest in the lives of youth. We spent some time visioning for next year as well as training some youth leaders in the capital, Windhoek.

Michelle and I have decided to help them out for a few months next year to get the one year program off the ground, provided they find at least 6 interns. We have been very prayerful as J-Life expands to other countries to make sure that we have a local leader who is ready and willing to springboard the movement in their country. Our job as outsiders will be to provide some experience with the program and transfer J-Life values to the Namibian context and then find other Namibian leaders to replace us for the next year of training. Please pray for us and for Patrick as we discuss details and continue working on our plans for next year.

I think J-Life will have a real role to play in Namibia, not just in training youth workers, but also in encouraging and bringing together the few people who are already involved in Christian youth work. The internship will happen in the coastal town called Walvis Bay, which will be a real different context than South Africa where we bring the guys out of the “real world” and onto the farm. I’m sure living in the desert will take some getting used to, but we are also really excited about the opportunity. Our Namibian hosts showed us some of the fun things to do, like dune driving, which is pretty unbelievable!

I hope this is all coming across somewhat clearly. It might be difficult to really picture what we are doing without a frame of reference. Hopefully, when we visit in November we will be able to explain things to you all a little better. We will also have a few new pictures in the photos section of our website. Enjoy.