Our African Enterprise South Africa (AESA) team, under the leadership of Theuns Pauw, has hit the ground running this year with two new mission staff members that have joined. The team has a great dynamic and the members are skilled in the various areas of ministry, from conferencing and team building to community development and missions.
Charlene, Theuns’s wife, is making good headway with the AE Legacy project where she is helping Michael Cassidy with editing his books and content for the Michael Cassidy and Friends website.
The team is in full preparation for the 60th anniversary this year. They will be commemorating the anniversary with a gala dinner followed by the “Mission to Maritzburg” in partnership with the local churches. The Gospel will go out in every area of Pietermaritzburg and our founder, Michael Cassidy, will also be part of this exciting mission. Back to where it all started with the first “Mission to Maritzburg” in 1962.
The vibrant and energetic foxfire team has just finished their training and are ready and eagerly waiting to bring their unique and dynamic youth ministry to schools and churches as they proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This godly team is still busy with COVID-19 relief actions and has already distributed 160 food parcels this year.
Another focus for the year is the Ngezandla Zethu sewing project, which has been running since 2018. The AESA team are excited to announce that 2022 looks brighter and better as the project opened its doors for skills training to 30 participants enrolling this year, up from 20 when they started. By the Grace of God some of the graduates from this sewing and fashion design course have successfully formed Community Transformation groups. (CTG’s). The AESA team is hoping to form another two CTG groups for 2022.
“As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Joshua 1:5b
Please pray:
- for our Foxfire youth team as they conclude their initial training and prepare for their commissioning service and subsequent ministry
- for our 60th anniversary “Mission to Maritzburg” planned for 12-21 August, that we will be able to secure the funding and venues required, and that the training and ministry will have a great impact on our city
- for our community upliftment projects, especially the NgeZandla Zethu sewing project where 30 women has been enrolled this year.
- that the gospel may spread quickly during this time of uncertainty, bringing hope to the hopeless.
- that AESA will financially continue to sustain through the pandemic.
- that our documentary “The Threatened Miracle of South Africa’s Democracy” may reach multitudes through social media in South Africa and beyond.
- for our 60th anniversary preparations for this year and unity on the steering committee.
African Enterprise has continued to offer PTC training to pastors and Gospel ministers in Africa. This course which is offered both online and in person has remained a treasured program by many. It enables the Gospel ministers to acquire knowledge that would make them be more effective in ministry.
The students in Kenya continued with the online study in 2021. It was not possible to conduct the in person studies due to COVID-19 restrictions. There were 33 students that remained active by conducting studies on various course and benefiting from the program. The course has remained an important tool in their ministry and remain grateful to the sacrifice done by many in sponsoring the program. There are other 61 that enrolled but have not been very active. We have encouraged them to resume their studies in 2022.
We are resuming the in person trainings in 2022. As part of 60th anniversary, AE Kenya is conducting a citywide mission in Mombasa as from 2nd- 12th June 2022, the second largest city in Kenya. Over the last three years, AE Kenya has been reaching the city with the Gospel targeting different zones. Currently there have 51 students that have enrolled for the PTC course. This number may rise to almost 70 as there are more students interested in the course. We want 60 students as per our 60th anniversary. The incorporation of the PTC course to the citywide mission will greatly help in the mobilization of Churches that otherwise they could have not participated in the mission. There are students from Churches that are not part of the pastors’ fellowship but when they heard about the program they have enrolled and they have since joined the planning of the mission. The Churches will participate in the mission with clearer understanding of the Bible thus producing reliable evangelists during the mission. We can confidently report that the PTC is indeed helping to spread the Gospel in Africa. Our first course will be as from 4th- 9th April 2022.
We will continue to share more stories and testimonies from Kenya on this amazing program that is transforming lives.
“The Program has been of tremendous in helping on reaching out/sharing the gospel as it has helped me to study the scripture thus knowing it better. 
Throughout PTC I have gained the basics of bible interpretation, am able to dissect Scripture and preach the word contextually/accurately.
Through PTC I have been equipped in defending of the word, by Interpreting Scripture correctly am able to give an answer to some difficult bible related question/texts that the unbelievers misinterpret or are unable to decode.
I have grown as a believer In Christ reading the word is easier since my understanding is sharpened. I am truly grateful for the opportunity and more specifically to individuals who give directly to AE in support of PTC. We are forever grateful. I can’t wait to dig deeper into the course.” – Derrick Muriithi
We will continue to share more stories and testimonies from Kenya on this amazing program that is transforming lives.
African Enterprise supporter David Le Rossignol, first heard about us through a visiting speaker at his local church in Tasmania. It turned out that his father-in-law was also an avid AE supporter.
David’s own father was born in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, and his wife’s father was born in Kenya. This was another connection that sparked his interest in the work of AE.
David, his wife and their two daughters visited Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe in 1991. They travelled for four months, and their African adventure was the fulfillment of a life-long dream to visit this beautiful country.
David says he always looks forward to EA’s newsletters because they inspire him to be in ministry in his own community in Tasmania. “Just to follow what God is doing in His world is amazing!” he says. He also finds encouragement in listening to messages from AE founder, Michael Cassidy.
David’s grandfather is buried in the St John’s Methodist Cemetery in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, and David and his family are proud to honour their African heritage by continuing to support the transformational work of AE.
In the time and reign of Idi Amin in Uganda (1971 – 1979), the challenges to Bishop Festo Kivengere (AE East African Team Leader and Co- Leader with Michael of AE) and the churches other Bishops were immense and frightening. Amin became one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th Century and some 400 000 people were slaughtered during his reign. He started out looking like a benevolent dictator and Festo and the other Bishops sort of tolerated him but gradually he became more and more brutal and he made life cheaper and cheaper.
Those who opposed him were ruthlessly assassinated and multitudes “were disappeared”, as locals put it. So the major requirement in Festo, other Bishops and the Church as a whole was courage in facing the dictator’s threat. All of this raised very acutely the assorted issues relating to Church and State. And how long and how far the Church continues as per Romans 13:1, to “submit to the powers that be.” Clearly Festo could not sanction revolution or attempt to see the dictator overthrown violently, but clearly they had to figure out at what point the Church could no longer sanction submission to state brutality. Festo and his colleagues knew that Jesus had said “render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God’s.”(Mark 12:17) The challenge for Festo and others was to discern at what point Caesar was asking people to render to himself the things that were God’s. In early 1980 Archbishop Janani Luwum (who was also AE’s Ugandan chairman), Festo and the other Anglican Bishops drew up a very bold document challenging Amin about his behaviour and where he was taking the country. This infuriated Amin and he ordered the assassination of Lawum in cold blood. It was clear that Festo had now become no. 1 on Amin’s hit list and all the local Christian brethren urged Festo and Mera to flee at once. This they did through forest tracks leading to the base of the mountains separating Uganda from Rwanda. Festo and Mera courageously trekked up the mountainsides during the night till finally they crossed the border into Rwanda where they received a huge welcome.
Festo and Mera then went through to our office in Nairobi which they found flooded with Ugandan exiles and cries for help. The new challenge now was to Festo’s heart and conscience as to what his response would be to these exiles. Because Festo was so well known and so well loved these exiles turned to him and to AE rather than to major aid agencies. There and then effectively, Festo and AE Kenya / Unganda launched RETURN (Relief, Education and Training for Ugandan Refugees Now). In the end this program ran for several years and AE funded over 300 International University scholarships for Refugees who qualified. Some later ended up in new governments in Uganda and felt they owed much to AE.
Festo and Mera then travelled on via London to AE’s office in California. But in London Festo faced and awesome spiritual challenge in terms of his attitude as a Christian to Idi Amin who had terrorised his country, sought to kill him personally and driven him and his wife into exile. In a Good Friday service at John Stott’s All Souls Church, Langham Place , London, Festo and Mera attended a Good Friday service. Festo’s heart was filled with bitterness, almost hatred, towards Idi Amin but in the sermon Festo heard Jesus’s words from the cross: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Festo then heard the voice of the Lord saying to him: “My son, if Amin had been in that circle of soldiers crucifying me, would I have said ‘Father, forgive them all, except this big Ugandan below me.’” Festo’s response became determinative for the rest of his life as he responded to Jesus saying “Lord, I am here and now forgiving Idi Amin.” Immediately he felt a huge release in his soul and he was flooded with the joy and peace of the Lord.
For the rest of Festo’s days the message of forgiveness and reconciliation became even more central to his whole life and being and ministry. His new posture even led him into writing a small book called I love Idi Amin. A reporter in a press conference asked him how on earth he could write a book with this title. Replied Festo: “I may not like Idi Amin but if I am a Christian believer I am obliged to forgive him, love him with Christ’s love, and want the highest and best for his life.”
Another reporter asked: “If you were standing face to face with Amin, and someone gave you a revolver, what would you do?” “Well,” replied Festo, “I would hand the revolver back and say this is not my weapon. My weapon is love.”
The next big challenge Festo faced in conjunction with our USA board was to be practical and raise vast sums of money for the ever developing needs in Uganda. Warwick Olson, then director of AE, Australia, proceeded to launch and AE office first in Australia and then in UK though which these Ugandan monies could be channelled to the needs back in that country. Through these years of Festo’s exile from Uganda Michael travelled with him in many places ranging from USA and Canada through to Australia, several countries of Latin America, Egypt, Liberia (West Africa), and even South Africa. Festo’s message of love and forgiveness melted hearts everywhere and Michael felt ever after the immensity of the privilege he had had of ministering around the world with this great brother.
Festo died from Leukaemia in 1988 and he and Michael had a very poignant time together in their last meeting in a Nairobi hospital. Michael and most of the other team leaders and board chairs travelled in a chartered plane with Festo’s coffin back to Uganda for the funeral in Namirembe Cathedral where Michael was one of the main speakers.
15 December 2021
Dear Special Friends and Family,
I am overwhelmed with embarrassment at the very long time it has been since last I wrote to you all in this way. But life, waywardness, mental laziness and procrastination can all play havoc with one’s plans and intentions. Carol told me the other day not to procrastinate on something, and I replied to her: “Sweetheart, one must never put off till tomorrow what one can put off till next week!” Now with my feeble excuses over, let me give you some of my news for 2021.
Happiness
First of all I would have to say that it has been a good year, and one in which I have experienced a great measure of unusual happiness. And no wonder, because, as I think I said before, I have been locked up in a place I love, in a home I love, with the woman I love, and doing the thing I love, … which is writing.
I have also found enormous joy in just being with Carol for the kind of extended times which were not easily possible over all those years when I was in the full swing of ministry with so much travel. And never before has it been possible after supper, just to listen to the news and then perhaps some fun TV such as the series, When Calls the Heart. We have also got into Heartlands which, apart from some rather silly teenage romances, is all about horses, and I find this particularly enjoyable because I grew up on horses in old Basutoland, and riding was part of my daily life. After these sorts of indulgences, we can each do some letters or general reading. What more could one ask for?
As to general reading, for some years when I was very weakened in health, I did not have good energy for serious reading, but that has now returned and I have been reading history, biography, ethics, and cosmology. At bedtime, after Carol and I have prayed together, I used simply to read my devotional book and then go to sleep. But now I find myself eager to put in a further half hour or forty five minutes of general reading. Then at the end, I do the devotional book, and go to sleep quickly, praise God, with the Lord and His Word in my heart.
All of this adds up to a very rich time for which I cannot thank the Lord enough. Perhaps on top of this I should add that I am increasingly blessed by Nature and Carol’s truly lovely garden. One of my very favourite verses is: “Day to day pours forth speech” (Psalm 19:2).
I find when I look at the garden that I feel the Lord and experience afresh the revelation of His Supernatural Creativity. Orville Dewey, a devotional writer of yesteryear, once wrote: “A new day rose upon me. It was as if another sun had risen into the sky; the earth fairer; and that day has gone on brightening to the present hour. I have known other joys of life, I suppose, as much as most men; I have known friendship and love and family ties; but it is certain that till we see God in the world – God in the bright and boundless universe – we never know the highest joy.”
Family news
Carol is well and in good shape. We walk every day to keep our blood oxygen up and I am fed on a very healthy diet by this great girl. We also try to have one dinner date out per week where we can observe Covid protocols. Carol is incredible the way she does all of our family admin from finances and bills through to funerals and wills!! We find it quite a battle to know to whom we should leave our family plastic, or our coffee mugs, or our two silver teaspoons! Carol still does flowers regularly for our local church and these lovely arrangements we are able to see in the excellent online YouTube services we receive from our Church of the Ascension. Carol has not been able, because of Covid protocols, to keep up her Bonginkosi work in Sweetwaters, a nearby township, amongst the poorest of the poor. Her garden is her particular delight and this year I think it excels all other preceding years.
Thankfully, we are also able to be in touch by phone daily with our kids and Cathy rings very faithfully from the States every day. The Scott family in Chattanooga are in quite a few transitions. Jonathan has a new job, and Cathy gets increasing responsibilities as CEO of the parachurch ministry The Bible in Schools. This involves raising money for salaries of Bible teachers where the government won’t fund the activity. Cathy has turned into a remarkable fundraiser and this year her budget is three million US Dollars. Andrew, now 21, is training to be a pilot, and Cameron moving towards the end of his high school years.
Gary and Debs lead very full lives, with Gary still having cricket coaching jobs and Debs having an ever expanding ministry, along with Jackie Moll, into the lives of women, and especially young mums. This is called Strongest Story (Writing a Stronger Story with Your Life). More info at www.strongeststory.com/. The big thing in that family is that Joshua has come up here to Michaelhouse for his last two years of school. We are delighted that he is a school prefect for next year, and Vice-Captain of the First Eleven Cricket and its opening bowler. We love going to watch him play and having him for weekends.
Martin and Sam press on merrily with their lives in Johannesburg, Sam teaching, and Martin being CEO of a rubber factory with some 250 workers. Very demanding. Martin has become a class act game photographer and they relish in regular visits to his father-in-law’s game farm up near Kruger. Their three kids are all excelling and bless us with messages saying, “We love you to the moon and back!” I said to Samantha the other day, “It’s not fair for one family to have two future Miss South Africa’s!”
My sisters, Olave and Judy, are still in good health, and likewise their families. This is a mercy indeed.
On the work front
I am thankful that I have finished my two Lockdown books; Deep Waters of the Disciple and Great is Thy Faithfulness. These will both, Lord willing, be published next year and please pray with me that they will touch many people. We are also republishing my book A Witness Forever about the South African ’94 elections and this will be out in a few weeks’ time. This is intended especially for supplementary reading along with our new documentary, The Threatened Miracle of South Africa’s Democracy which is based on the book.
This documentary was launched on September 24th, South Africa’s Heritage Day, and coincidently my 85th birthday when Theuns and Charlene Pauw and AESA gave me a truly marvellous day. Martin and his two girls, Jessica and Emma, came down, but Sam stayed in Johannesburg to support Mattie who was playing for a regional team in a big cricket tournament. Coming back to the documentary, the mantra at the end of it is “DO YOUR BIT.” This is the film’s strong challenge to all South Africans to become involved, each person, in seeking to make a contribution to the rescue and healing of South Africa at this rather perilous time. We would profoundly appreciate it if you would be willing share the YouTube link for this documentary with your family, friends, church groups, and spheres of influence.
The vision for this 90 minute film came from Charlene Pauw, wife of SA Team Leader Theuns, and the Producer was Frans Cronje, brother of the late Hansie, and Producer of Angus Buchan’s Faith Like Potatoes, who has done a really marvellous job. In fact, the film has been placed among the award finalists of International Christian Visual Media. The awards will be announced at a ceremony in Nashville, Tennessee, in February next year. This is a feather in the caps of both Frans and Charlene.
I have also been privileged with a few others to launch a South African Christian Leaders Forum (for discussion and action) and a Christian Leaders Fellowship (for dialogue, interaction and prayer for one another and the country). We meet monthly with growing numbers and I think this has the potential to be a very useful and relevant contribution to the needs of both church and nation at this time.
On the wider Pan African front, Stephen Mbogo, our International Team Leader, is most admirably leading the work forward. In fact, AE has launched two new teams, the first in Southern Sudan, a desperately needy country under Rev Alex Aggrey. The team is focussing into evangelism among Members of Parliament and trauma healing among students. The second is in Zambia under Dr Lubasi who is now serving also as Southern African Regional Team Leader, and securing strategic cooperation between the teams in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia itself. Their reach will also extend to Angola, Mozambique and Botswana.
The team in East Africa also coordinated, just this last week, a three-day virtual evangelism training conference drawing in some 31 countries, including South Africa which was represented by AESA Team Leader, Theuns Pauw. And I will be happier still, Lord willing, to see next August, first in South Africa, and then in Zambia, our 60th anniversary celebrations of the first mission to Pietermaritzburg. There is huge planning going on for this and in South Africa it will include another Mission to Maritzurg, and in Zambia, another mission to Lusaka. How good is our God! All of this I find gratifying and it makes my heart happy and ready for a nunc dimittis.
Health
I guess some of you out there may be wondering how we are going with our health. Carol’s, as I said, is remarkably good, and I feel pretty okay most of the time. Sadly I do still struggle with shingles (two and a half years now), or perhaps what I should call its aftermath in Post-Herpetic Neuralgia, otherwise called Neuro-Pathic Neuralgia. This is a trial indeed, and I long to be delivered from it. I do rattle the Lord’s cage on it a bit, but I know He has His own purposes in leaving me with this struggle. My leukaemia is stable and non-aggressive and every four months I go for two days to the hospital for Polygam Immunotherapy. My little congregation of nurses in the hospital all seem to be doing quite well and greet me like a long-lost pastor when I go there! My Myasthenia Gravis (Google will help you!) is kept under control by medication I take every six hours every day. I continue to see the medical fraternity as God’s special agents in the world for His healing and loving care.
Heaven and Home
I suppose being 85 it is not surprising that I think a lot about Heaven. And I must say it excites me tremendously and fills my heart with glorious hope and anticipation. C S Lewis, one of my special spiritual friends, from whom I read a daily extract in a CSL anthology, writes: “Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next…. They all left their mark on Earth precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’. Aim at Earth and you will get neither.” So I am enjoying aiming at Heaven and finding Earth joyously thrown in!
In my new book Deep Waters of the Disciple, I have a final chapter on Heaven – At Last! This chapter opens: “I have to say that I am incredibly excited about Heaven. And I must agree with Peter Pan that ‘to die will be an awfully big adventure!’ And I must think of the unimaginable and inexpressible wonder of what is to come when I reflect again and again on Paul’s words ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has there entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9 KJV).
So if a student in a varsity mission ever said to me, and some did: “All you are into is this pie-in-the- sky stuff”, then my reply would be: “But suppose there IS pie in the sky?” The question is central, says my chapter, “to our life on Earth, bringing us, as it does, a world-view of breath-taking significance: telling us that this life is just a preliminary, a prelude, the cover and title page, and that that there is more to come, as C S Lewis says in ‘The Great Story which goes on forever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before.’” And we will know that at last we are Home!
With all that said, I nevertheless do ask the Lord for extra-long life so that I can drink and fully drain the Cup of Marriage, knowing that in Heaven, “there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage”, something which I’m going to chat to the Lord about in a quiet moment when I’m not deafened by angels singing, and ask Him for a special plan for Carol and me!
And yes of course, I also have a very deep desire to keep ministering the Gospel of salvation and Christian life to as many as I can through writing and preaching, as the Lord enables.
Well, I guess that’s it. So if you haven’t gone to sleep, or hit the delete button half an hour ago, I’d like you to receive Carol’s and my warmest best wishes for a blessed and happy Christmas and a New Year full of joyful and fruitful Kingdom Exploits. After all, we have to “keep working while it is day because the night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4).
Much love….
Michael…and of course Carol
Cooper Kruize, an AE supporter, reflects on why he partners with AE and meeting Stephen Lungu.
I was a young man in high school searching for something to fill a hole in my life, God through Stephen and his story, showed me that it wasn’t popularity, influence, respect, or a good time that I was searching for, it was forgiveness and wholeness that only Jesus could bring.
In 2008 I was in year 8, a young man, just over a year into high school and although to all my friends and family on the outside I looked happy, I felt like I was far from it. Since immigrating to Australia in 2001 from South Africa, I have always been someone who has lived in the fast lane of life, chasing the next thing. Whether that be the next race, the next “life experience”, the next “well done” from my coaches”, the next friendship, what every it was, when I got it, it wasn’t enough, I needed more, although I didn’t know it. Until my mum took me along to hear Stephen Lungu’s story one night at Turramurra High School.
From the moment Steven got up from his seat in the front row and walked up the stairs on the side of the stage he had my undivided attention. As Stephen begun to share his story I was absorbed, my heart quickly opened-up and aligned with his, it wasn’t that I had the same life experiences as Stephen, in fact it couldn’t be further from it. Although I don’t think I could have articulated it back then, there was one thing that our stories unmistakably had in common – we had a God shaped hole in our lives and we were trying to fill it with things that could not fit, things that could never satisfy. It was through Stephens story my heart knew what it needed to be satisfied, I needed Jesus, I needed him to forgive me and fill me with life, so that I may live life truly to the full. After the event I went up to Stephen who laid hands on me and prayed for me. It was then that I broke down in tears, I don’t know why I was crying, but all I knew is that they were good tears, it was as if I was crying away the chains that I had been a slave to, I felt free.
It wasn’t till a few year later I was re-acquainted to the work that AE was doing all around the world. I was overjoyed to find out that I was not the only life that God had changed through this ministry. Every year through AE over a million people hear the good news that Jesus gives life, eternal life that our hearts desire. Giving to this ministry is the best investment that I have ever made, I can’t wait to meet all my brothers and sisters from Africa one day in heaven and hear how God used AE to bring them to eternal relationship and life with Jesus.
