I'm sitting in the home of our GRN Southern Africa base leader Dalene Joubert. Dalene has served with GRN first as a recordist and for the past few years as base leader for GRN Southern Africa. Michael Ropp has recently joined her as a recordist seconded from Wycliffe Associates.
Dalene is an amazing lady. She has networks established throughout southern Africa and many ministry partners. She is relieved to have Michael joining her. He was trained in Australia last year and has already been on two recording trips: Namibia and Zambia. He has made recordings in six different languages already.
As we discuss the work, it is clear that there is far too much work for the two of them. Michael can be fully utilised recording for the rest of his working life. Dalene is effectively working to see GRN materials recorded and used in many different languages and many different countries.
For example John Leach of Waymaker's is working in Chavuma, Zambia. He has recently trained young men from a local church in evangelism. An integral part of this training was to equip them with an audio player and GRN flipcharts and to train them in how to use them. These young men are now working as evangelists in their local area and using GRN materials to help them. Dalene has many such partners all over southern Africa.
Dalene works with ministry partners Good News Media, Megavoice and Davar to supply audio players and flipcharts to these ministry partners. She is currently looking for funds to supply players to 60 pastors in Zimbabwe. She has many other projects just waiting for the funds to make them a reality, and you can see some of them on the website: globalrecordings.net/en/zaprojects.
Dalene is very keen to see that our materials are being well used. She finds it distressing if the materials are not being used effectively as it affects her reputation and the reputation of GRN. I'm looking forward to going on a trip to Malawi next week to see how the materials are being used there.
As we consider the work being done in southern Africa it is very clear that GRN is doing some good work here and exciting things are happening as our materials are being used. It would be good to encourage the church in South Africa by letting them know what God is doing through southern Africa and showing the church here how they can use our materials. It would be good if the South African church could take responsibility for supporting the work here financially. A new staff member is needed to do that as it's too much for Dalene and Michael to do effectively.
Dalene feels that she'd like to step down from the leadership responsibilities so she can concentrate on the work she does best. It could well be that a new leader would also be responsible for the promotions.
Please Pray . . .
- Dalene and Michael as they work in southern Africa,
- God's provision of a leader,
- someone who can inform the Church of South Africa of GRN's work,
- God's continued provision for the ministry here.