The Potjiekos Challenge

Like we did, you are probably wondering what in the world is a Potjiekos Challenge. In a simple answer it is an evangelistic gathering for a meal using a little three-legged cast iron pot. Now for the more complicated explanation.



The Potjiekos Challenge is a gathering of churches around the Joburg area to the Sandton Bible Church’s property for a cooking contest. All over the premises, people find a spot to begin cooking their dish. Some even avail themselves of the corrugated metal for their cooking place. There are three ways to cook with the pot:
1) you can use charcoal
2) you can use wood (the traditional method)
3) you can use gas (the easier to control method)



Here Piet (who took third with an oxtail dish) is using the gas method. Whatever way you choose, everyone follows the same process. You begin by heating the cooking liquid and then you cook the meat. This is followed by whatever you are using for ingredients. In this process you rarely stir the dish.



As you can imagine there is a lot of down time during this 3-4 hour process so it is a great time to sit and visit with one another. It is at this point where the evangelism comes into play as you have the opportunity to talk with people in a casual atmosphere. Here Jacques (guy on the left), one of our CMI students, sits with some friends of his and enjoys the time together.



After the cooking comes the judging, and I was privileged this year to be one of the judges. We sampled 23 different dishes from oxtail to seafood to biltong (which is like beef jerky—delicious, taking second place). Not only did I immensely enjoy the sampling but I burned my tongue in the process as these dishes are piping hot.


After the judging the potjies are put on a table and people go through the line sampling the dishes. Susan and Skyler had a fun time waiting for their tasting opportunity.



After the meal, Chad (the guy I’m discipling) gave his testimony on how he came to Christ after being raised a Jehovah’s Witness. We had about 200 people there with probably 30 unsaved people.



If that time wasn't enjoyable enough, the Lord ended our time with another brilliant sunset. Listen if your tastebuds are watering and you have a hankering to taste these dishes come join us next year in mid-Feb for our annual Potjiekos Challenge.




If you want to learn more about this great cooking style you can visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potjiekos

The Swimming Pool

For Christmas we decided to give our children a rubberized pool. I know that may sound a bit odd as like you we are used to cold at Christmastime, but here the temperature is very warm and to get the kids outside in the warm weather, we needed a way to cool them off. The sprinkler works well for a little while but then everyone gets dirty as well, so the pool was the way out. As you can tell they greatly enjoy it. We put it in our center court where the big dog can’t get to it and put a hole in it, but it is shaded and so it stays quite cool. Let me tell you, it will wake you up if you are sleepy.

We decided to make a treasure hunt of it for the kids where they had Bible verses as clues to eventually find the pool. It is always a great thing to get kids into God’s Word.

Here is a picture of Leslie finding one of the clues about a stringed instrument.

Here is a picture of Kyle finding a clue in the wall.

It has been a great blessing to our family, except for maybe Joy, who has had to learn to swim.

The Meyers Family at the Turn of the 20th Century

I thought you'd enjoy seeing what we might have looked like at the turn of the 20th century.

We went to a place called Gold Reef City with our good friends the Bravery family. Rob and Bev are on the right with their son Daniel and newborn daughter Dana May. The funniest part was when the lady was choosing what we were to wear and which of the men was to carry the pipe. She said that the oldest had to hold the pipe and handed it to Rob. I'm about 3 years older than Rob but he has a lot more grey hair than me and she couldn't believe that I was older. Plus she put me with Bev and Susan with Rob, so needless to say we had her in quite a tizzy. Even though our expressions don't convey it, we had a lot of fun doing this. It is a family tradition for the Bravery's and we enjoyed joining in the experience.

New Elders at MountainView

On Feb. 4th I had the privilege of joining another man, Doug Steytler in being added to the eldership at MountainView. For a long time it was David Brown alone as an elder, and he wanted to share the burden, so God allowed me to join with these two men in this awesome responsibility. We were blessed by a group of believers from our sister church New South Baptist who came over to join with us for this exciting occasion. Also, Dan Willoughby, a visiting BMW missionary from Germany joined in the prayer of ordination. Dan is on the left and David is on the right. So please pray for me as I seek to be faithful to this calling.

Let me take a little time here to tell you about Doug. He is the international director for Voice of the Martyrs--an organization that helps out the persecuted church and was started by Richard Wurmbrand of Romania who himself spent 14 years in prison for preaching the Gospel. I know this fact because I met Richard when I was 12 and got to see his back and all the scars from the beatings he took in prison, and my goal at that age was just to live as long as he was in prison.

In this picture Doug has just returned from a trip to Southeast Asia where he was taking a firsthand look at what is occuring there. In his hand is a new Bible for the country of Myanmar (Burma) and he shared just a little about his experience. This next week he speaks in church and I'll have more details for you.

It is a humbling experience to serve alongside of Doug and Dave and yet one that I look forward to greatly, so keep praying for us as we seek to raise up a God-honoring church here in the south of Joburg.

Conflict Management Seminar

On March 17th I had the privilege of teaching a seminar on Conflict Management to a group of church leaders. As you know I enjoy the study of conflict, and so this was a rewarding time for me to finally put my understanding of the topic into a cohesive form that could be communicated and, Lord willing, would be profitable to the listeners. It took a lot of extra time to put this 4 hour seminar together, but God gave strength and now we’ll see how He uses this topic here in Johannesburg. Many people were praying for me during this time and I want to thank you so much for doing so.

In case you were wondering here are the 4 main points of the seminar:

1. Conflict is unavoidable
2. Since conflict is unavoidable, be prepared for when it is most likely to occur.
3. Understand that not all conflict will be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, so you can be left with unresolved conflict.
4. Then what is needed is for you and me to respond in a correct and biblical fashion to conflict.

Church Ministries Institute (CMI)

As we traveled around to churches across the USA we shared of our main responsibility here in RSA was to help develop CMI in the churches around the Joburg area. Well, I thought that you'd like to see some pictures of what is actually happening here. At our home church here, MountainView, we hold our OT CMI class at our home. We average about 30 people and have a wonderful time of learning as well as fellowship. Often the last person doesn't leave until 3 hours after we started the class. We are also doing things a little differently here as instead of me teaching the class our students who are taking the course for credit, are teaching the class to their peers. The week prior to the class they each receive a 10 page handout summarizing the material that they are to cover as well as an additional reading on some aspect of their lesson. (By the way the material was all developed by my teammate here David Brown, so they are not just teaching what they want to teach.) Then I visit each class to assess both their preparation for the class as well as the content of what their teaching. It has gone extremely well and in this process we are also giving experience to future teachers. The picture above is of Chad's class. Chad and his wife Bronwyn are one of the couples that Susan and I are discipling. Chad is the third guy from the left in the back.

This is Craig's class (the first guy on the left in back) and he is an ex-drug addict who is on fire for the Lord and along with his wife (who is next to him) is an incredible testimony to God's grace. His class wasn't all present for the picture but you get an idea of the challenge for him as he teaches Bronwyn (the lady in the middle at the table) who is 23 and Les, the guy next to her on the right, who is 74. You will hear more about Craig soon.

Wayne (the guy on the left) is an ex-firefighter who is now in the safety industry. He is another believer who is really growing in the Lord and benefiting from not only the material in the class but the challenge of teaching his peers. He has the international director of Voice of the Martyrs in his class (Doug was away on his trip when the picture was taken) and I'm sure that can be intimidating, but they have a great time together exploring God's Word in the OT.

I am also teaching a Bible Doctrines class up at the church in Sandton with about 20 students and I'm about to start teaching How to Study the Bible up at a church on the eastern side of Joburg. So the Lord is opening the door to not only impact students but also other churches and we are so excited for the opportunities that God is putting before us. So we hope this helps you to visualize what we're doing with CMI.