[Sonlifeafrica-newsletter] April 2006 Update

["Mark Tittley" <mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The last few months have been a real roller coaster ride.

The Anaconda roller coaster at Gold Reef city outside of Johannesburg is 
quite capable of scaring the life out of even the most adventurous type. My 
twelve year old son said that he was literally reduced to tears on the ride!
I stood watching the ride with a pastor from Kenya that I was hosting and 
was trying to encourage him to take the ride - to be honest when he turned 
me down with these words, "that machine will scramble your brain", I was 
relieved - that meant I did not have to take the ride myself.  I am not sure 
if it is old age creeping up on me or just a lack of the extreme personality 
type in my makeup.
Or maybe it is a feeling that I am living on a roller coaster - as I look 
back over the first four months of this year, I recall walking around the 
pyramids at Giza in Cairo, Egypt when I was there for the African Cup of 
Nations to train church leaders in new convert follow-up.
I recall spending ten days in February in Singapore and Malaysia attending 
the Global Youth Initiative meetings - a network of organisations around the 
world that have been impacted by the strategy of Jesus-style ministry. It 
was great to travel with two of my African regional directors, Gary Howell 
and Edgar Ramsami. The paper I presented on Performance Management is now 
online at the GYI website (incidentally, I am responsible for managing the 
website for Dann Spader the president of GYI). The website is: 
http://www.globalyouthinitiative.com and the papers are listed under the 
link to ARTICLES on the left column on the main page. A direct link is: 
http://www.globalyouthinitiative.com/article.asp?article_id=32
In March it was our privilege to host a missionary retreat for the Christian 
and Missionary Alliance folk from Central Africa. The CMA have released Gary 
and Sharon Howell to expand Sonlife in Central Africa so it was only fitting 
to be able to set up and host a spiritual retreat for the missionary 
families over a two week period. It was a special privilege to lead the 
missionaries in a guided spiritual retreat and also get to share with Edgar 
Ramsami our history of growing up in South Africa and how God led us to 
develop the ministry of Sonlife in both South Africa and across the 
continent.
During this period I also hosted a pastor from Kenya who has been on the 
receiving end of two of our levels of training and will be helping us with 
co-ordinating our ministry expansion in the Eastern part of Kenya. We took 
time out to explore ministries around Johannesburg, including the Refilwe 
Children's Home.
On the home front we still are awaiting the final adoption order for Drew 
Nguvu to come through and are hopeful that we will have good news by the end 
of April. Our family based home cell is literally bursting at the seams and 
as soon as we finish our ten week series on Simplicity and Justice we will 
be looking to multiply.
Lord willing, I will return to Kenya during the last ten days of May to 
present our third level of training in Nairobi and the second level in Homa 
Bay. We have also had news of funding that has been allocated to make a 
return trip to Sierra Leone - sometime in June or July this year.
We find ourselves as a movement in Africa in something of a critical funding 
position, and while I praise God for the level of personal funding that is 
faithfully been sown into our ministry each month, I know that I cannot rest 
on my laurels in two respects - I need to expand the amount of person 
support that I am raising and also to continue pursuing funding for the 
ministries that we are developing across the continent of Africa.
I give God all the glory for what he is accomplishing in and through us as 
we seek to develop leaders across the continent of Africa.
Mark Tittley
Director, Sonlife Africa