The cold winters, the hours of isolation, the endless pap. The Extreme TIMO team has been in the mountains of Lesotho for over 18 months. It has been a tough time, with little visible fruit, but that has started to change. Team leader Sam Williamson shares the latest exciting news.
We couldn’t wish to bring any better news than this: four shepherds in the last few weeks have given their lives to Christ! (One of whom – Thabile, is pictured above!)
“…four shepherds in the last few weeks have given their lives to Christ!”
The team have been using a recently-developed gospel presentation, aimed specifically at the shepherds, that effectively communicates the gospel truths in a context that shepherds understand readily: ‘The Two Kingdoms’. Much like the ‘Two Ways to Live’ presentation it leaves the hearer, who engages in dialogue during the process, with two choices: to live in the kingdom of light and submit their lives to Jesus, or to remain in the kingdom of darkness.
Some shepherds have, as we sadly expect when the gospel is told, rejected the truth, some lost interest and didn’t concentrate on the truth, but four (Thabile, Semora, Chaile and Pele-pele) have responded in faith!
The boost it has given the team, who have laboured so sacrificially for 18 months with little sign of fruit, is huge. God has been enormously gracious in allowing us to see these shepherd friends become brothers in Christ, and he has used our weak language skills, our weak understanding of shepherd culture and our weak faith, to save four of the most marginalised people in Lesotho. All glory (and we mean it) must go to God!
Some fruit in their lives has already started to show, with a desire to learn more from the Bible, requests to pray with our team members, and decisions to change their lifestyle because they want to please Jesus and not themselves.
The party in heaven may have taken place, but a battle now lies ahead for these young men. They face opposition from their families and ostracism from their community as they stop partaking in ancestral feasts and initiation ceremonies. They will struggle to grow in faith in a country with so few Bible-believing churches. Our encouragement, and the encouragement we will be sharing with them is from Romans 8:35-39:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
