While this morning's snapshot of Karen looks like she's going on a trip, she's not. However, the stuffed duffel bag is going all the way to South Africa.
This story goes back twenty-three years from when Holger & Maria came through apprenticeship at MMS Aviation. They've served in South Africa ever since and are now focused on youth outreach in a in town and in nearby remote villages. Maria is a gifted potter and Holger, besides being a top-rated missionary aircraft mechanic, is also a very skilled artist in wood. Along with their musical skills, Holger and Maria use their artistic abilities and their love of Jesus to create transformational opportunities for youth in need. And one of the needs for the young ladies are quality sewn dresses. That's where Karen comes in.
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We've posted about Karen's sewing ministry before but this is the largest shipment of dresses yet. When Karen talked with Maria earlier in the year Maria was so excited and shared what a blessing new dresses would be for the girls. The challenge is how to get dresses from Graham, NC to Holger and Maria in South Africa when there isn't any reliable mail service between here and there. When there's no mail, missionaries usually rely on visitors coming over to personally deliver the goods in person, quite often as luggage. Hmm...who do we know with connections in South Africa?
The next part of the story goes back ten years when we arrived in North Carolina. I leased an office downtown and my "neighbor" in the office next door turned out to be a young man, Jensen, dating a young woman from South Africa, Mtende. Fast forward, Jensen and Mtende are now married and, even though we no longer share office space, we've remained in touch as friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. Every couple of years Jensen and Mtende return to South Africa for Christmas.
We had a duffle bag full of dresses that needed to get carried to South Africa and weren't sure how to get it there when God connected relational Kingdom dots (from 2013 and 1997 to today) as we connected Jensen and Mtende with Holger and Maria. Ta Da! The dresses are on their way to South Africa.
What a crazy story. You can't make this stuff up. We'll post photos of the girls with the dresses after they've been distributed. THANK YOU you for being part of this story and we praise God for how He connects his people to accomplish his purposes in ways only He can do.
With me a surfer from Southern California and Karen a nurse from Pennsylvania. Go figure!
