Prayer

I just wanted to send off a couple prayer requests. Presently the team is experiencing some hard things that need a great deal of prayer. Please join with us. Thank you. 

• Please pray for the movements at University of Pretoria, University of Johannesburg, and the University of Kwazulu-Natal. There is just over a week remaining to work on campus before students write their exams and head home for Spring break. Please pray that the Lord will use this short time to bring students closer to him. So many exciting things are happening on the three campuses. U.J. will hopefully have its first weekly meeting of the year! Please join us in praying for these exciting new things! 
• The Durban Team is still pursuing the Lord for direction and guidance in who to partner with in the community. Please pray for our team as we sort through where He wants us for our 8 months in Durban. We hope to develop a partnership similar to the one we share with Beam Africa, in Pretoria. We would love to work with children, but also know that God could ask us to go anywhere. We so deeply desire to serve and are simply waiting for the Lord to tell us where to go. Please pray for direction and for patience as we wait. 
• Please pray for our teammates health. One of our mates has been sick for almost two months now. He has visited 3 different doctors, and has had 7 separate doctors appointments. He has experienced some uncomfortable digestive problems, and unfortunately, they cannot figure out what is going on. Pray for healing and for a renewed spirit as he works through this. Also, please pray for wisdom for the doctors. The sooner they figure out what is going on, the sooner our teammate can feel better. 
• There are 3 separate summer project teams traveling to South Africa this summer to work on all three campuses. There are teams traveling to Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Durban. How exciting is that? God has raised up faithful students who want to share their faith in Jesus with students across the globe. I traveled to South Africa in the summer of 2007 on a summer project. It was on this summer project that the Lord ask me to come on STINT! These projects are wonderful. For more information on summer projects please visit, www.gosummerproject.com. Please pray for these students as they raise support to come on project, and pray for their time in South Africa. We are so stoked to work with the summer project coming to Durban. 

Thank you for praying with my teammates and me. I can feel your prayers, and am experiencing the Lord through them! I can’t stop thanking God for the joys He has given me in all of you. Thank you for your love and support. I can’t wait to hear how I can be praying for all of you. 

If you have any questions or would like to hear more specific details on anything, please send me a quick email. I would love it!

Thanks! 

MEET THE MUFFIN LADY!

At the start of this month the Durban team traveled back to Pretoria for an evaluation period. It was wonderful to spend time together as a team of nine. I missed everyone back in Pretoria, and was so excited to share all that God had done in our time away. We exchanged stories with each other, and praised God for all He had done in our time apart. The Spirit led us to split and serve in two additional locations, and the fruit we’ve seen is incredible. After sharing our experiences we made the decision to continue with the split for the remainder of the year. After sorting through some important details and spending some great time together as a team, the Durban team hopped into a car and drove across South Africa, back to Durban for good! We had no place to live and actually no details for building a life in Durban. Ryan planned to stay with the Price family for a short period of time, until he found more permanent housing. Ali and me had plans to stay with a family Gary introduced us to. We arrived just over a week ago, and we are blown away by this family’s hospitality! 

The life God is building for our team here in Durban is humbling and exciting! This life in Durban wouldn’t be what it is without the Slabbert Family! Mandy and her husband Sean have invited the three of us into their home and treated us like family. They have opened their rooms up to Ali and me, and have been so generous with all that the Lord has given them. I’ve honestly never met a family that is more hospitable and generous with complete strangers. They have loved us with everything the Lord has given them. I am deeply moved by their faith in our God, and by the love He is pouring out of them. We share a meal with Mandy, Sean and their daughter Catherine every night. They have assisted us in finding permanent accommodations (just up the rode from them ) and they have helped us furnish our new flat. They have gone out of their way to care for our team spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally. I am so thankful that I know these friends, and that I can even call them family! 

Mandy is most well known as the Muffin Lady, because of the unique way that her and her family came to know Jesus! Please read a brief article telling their story. The link to the article that is featured in Campus Crusade for Christ Worldwide Challenge Magazine is posted below. Please read their story. The Lord works in such creative ways and there is much to celebrate in this family's story! (Once you've opened the link scroll down the page to where it reads "Body and Soul, South Africa")

The Muffin Lady

Please pray for the Slabbert family. They have been so kind and loving to our team. They have certainly made our time in South Africa joyful! Please pray that we can be as much a blessing to them, as they have been to us.  

Just a quick update...

Hello All!

I apologize for not updating you sooner, but life has just been go, go, go for our team. March has come and gone! I can’t believe that we are preparing for April already! I wanted to take a little time to update you in what has happened recently. 

Great News! We are moving back to Durban for the remainder of the year! I am finishing my March Prayer Letter just now. Everyone will receive an email shortly with a nice little attachment! My Prayer letter has more specific details on the movements at U.J., U.P., and UKZN, as well as a brief description of our evaluation period. I am excited to share everything that is happened in the ministry here in Durban, and in the movements across all of South Africa! 

If you have not been receiving my emails or have not seen my February prayer letter at this point, please let me know and I will get that to you ASAP! 

I have one last request… it is a request I make often and so appreciate your help in it. I would love to know how I can be praying for all of you. Please send me an email with some prayer requests. I love talking to God about the family and friends He’s blessed me with back home! Thanks so much for updating me on everything God is doing in your lives! I appreciate all of you so much. Thank you for loving me and sending me! 

Amanda

Photo actions round #2

Hope you enjoy some of my favorites!

Video from Durban!

Last Thursday the Durban team left for Pretoria for an evaluation period with the other six team members. To help our teammates get a good picture of what life and ministry look like in Durban, we decided to make a short video to share with all of them. My teammate Ali did a phenomenal job presenting our last month in Durban. I hope you enjoy meeting our students and experiencing all that God is doing in and through them on campus! It is so exciting to watch the Lord work in this city!

Pray with me...

Please pray with the team and me as we approach some exciting changes, and as we celebrate what the Lord is already doing here in South Africa!

• Last week God really blessed our time on campus. Ali and I met some amazing women and had some great conversations about faith with them. These three women don’t know the Lord but have had some great questions about him. Nicole, Yugashree, and Cleo are curious about who Jesus is and what it means to have a relationship with him. Please pray for them as they walk through some hard questions about faith. Pray that we would have opportunities to work through these questions with them. Also, that we would get more time with these women so that we can get to know them better and love them well.
• This week we are the Durban team is flying back to Pretoria to evaluate our last month in Durban. The STINTer STINT to Durban and Johannesburg was intended to go for a month, and now that the month is up it is evaluation time. The nine of us will meet with our National Campus Director Jacqueline evaluating the split and its effectiveness. Basically we are going to see if splitting up for the remainder of the year is what’s best. Please be praying for our week together as we sort through some important details that could result in some changes over the year.
• Please pray that in our time together as a team, the nine of us would be able to connect and lift one another up. Please pray this time would be refining and encouraging for all of us. The Lord sent the nine of us here to chase after him together. I hope we can do that whether we are with one another or in different locations across the country. Please pray that we can connect and love one another well in our short time together next week.
• If at the end of next week the team decides to send our little team of three back to Durban, there are some important settling-in stuff that will need to happen. Housing and a car being the most important. Please pray that the Lord will show us where he wants us to live and how he wants us to travel while living in Durban. He has been so faithful to provide for our team, and we know that he will provide for our needs if he sends us back.
• One last thing. If we are sent back to Durban we most definitely want to partner with an organization that we can serve with on a weekly basis. We desire to develop a partnership here in Durban that is like the one we currently have with Beam Africa in Pretoria. Please pray that the Lord would lead us where people need us most. We are earnestly seeking the Lord and asking him to use us wherever he desires. I am excited to see where he leads us!

Thank you for all of your prayers. I am truly blessed to be a part of what Jesus is doing here in South Africa. Thank you for sending me, and praying for our team. It means so much to me to have all of you here with me. As always, I would love to know how I could be lifting you up in prayer. If you get a chance, please email me at Amanda.Arias@uscm.org, and let me know how I can be specifically praying for you. Thank you!   

Sli and Zethu!

Last week we had our first bible study with some girls on campus. It was so great to sit down with these women and get to know them. The week before we met Zethu and Sli at the Crusade weekly meeting. These two women are serving on leadership and are currently the only women involved with the ministry at UKZN. Everything is so new on this campus, so it's exciting to have two women who are committed to meeting with us and learning about Jesus together.

Sli, Zethu, Ali my teammate, and myself spent our time together just getting to know each other. It was so encouraging to watch these two women open up their hearts and share their desires for the Lord with us. We had a couple questions for them to think about during our time, to help cast some vision for our year together in bible study. I was so encouraged by their responses, that I have to share them with all of you. 

One of the questions we asked was, how do you want to be known on campus, and what do you want your identity to be? With no hesitation Sli responded with,“ I want to be known as a true child of God!” She told us that she wants people to know that she knows Jesus by the way she lives out her faith in her daily life. How awesome is that? Another question we asked was, what do you expect from this bible study? Zethu's answers excited me and motivated me. With a huge smile on her face she said, “I want to share my faith with other students on this campus, and I want 1/3 of the campus to know about Jesus by the end of the year”. Isn't that awesome? These two women are so excited to live out their faith and love others like Jesus has loved them. The Lord has truly blessed both Ali and me with these two amazing women. It is such a privilege to study the Word with them, and be a part of what Jesus is doing on their campus alongside them.

These two women are stoked to learn about the Lord and grow in their relationship with Him! Please join me in praying for our little bible study. We know the Lord is going to use Sli and Zethu in great ways this year. They have already blessed us deeply with their excitement for the gospel and deep love for our Savior! Pray that these women would continue to draw closer to Jesus and deepen their faith in Him. We plan to meet with Sli and Zethu every week. Please pray that our times together would be encouraging and motivating. It is exciting to be a part of what God is doing in their lives! Thanks for thinking of them and praying for our times together.