By Jozien Koelewijn
Matatiele is a small town in the Eastern Cape where I have lived for about 2 years now. It is a place where everyone from the countryside comes to do their shopping. Unfortunately, it is difficult to really feel at home in a church here, as the choice is very small and sometimes even depends on your skin colour.
In the community where we work and at our project, people are much more open to pray and worship together. Faith is an active part of life. Dependence on God is high, perhaps even more so because life and death often go hand in hand.
Other than that, things went a bit differently for me than for most people going out. I had been working as a missionary worker through YWAM in South Africa for 12 years. Missions, in the way I went, with your own constituency and living off donations, was not that well known yet and it took time to grow together. It was a big and quite scary step of faith for me to go anyway and go on a journey. First and foremost from God's call for me personally, but also the journey God had, through the work in South Africa and the role of the church.
Living in dependence on God's provision, both financially and in everything that happened in South Africa, taught me how God provided every time and protected us in special ways. With all the challenges and often dangers in this country, especially for women and children, I really learned to put my life in His hand and not make it all up myself. Handing it over and trusting Him is something that has become much more concrete here and 'a way of life', so to speak.
Precisely by just going anyway, keeping in touch with the congregation and being patient, God worked on both sides. We are all grateful that I could still be sent out at the end of 2022 by the CGK in Bunschoten and it was precisely after years, extra special and confirmation. It showed me God's faithfulness and provision, which may be a tremendously beautiful testimony for myself and the congregation.
It has been a lot of letting go and leaving behind. It has brought me a deeper relationship with God. I have learnt to live more by the day with 'manna for 1 day'. After years of working in a large township near Durban, we were able to set up our own NPO called Ikhaya Lothando= beloved home, which we now get to build on in the Eastern Cape, where we have a beautiful home where children can just be children. It is pioneering and we still have to build it further and that too is not automatic.
But I know that by now. Nothing comes easy or naturally here, and if you want to do some good, you are thwarted on all sides. Patience, perseverance, being strong and courageous is how we carry on. And when I see the growing need around me, the abuse towards women and children, the men who have lost their role in the family ... Alcohol and drug abuse, HIV/AIDS ... Then I know that God's heart is just that much needed. It certainly makes one despondent at times, that is very normal and human. But God's calling and the love He has put in my heart for these people and children, which has been tested over the years, makes me pray to keep it beating for a while longer, because the world needs it so badly just now!
I myself am not married and share my life with the people here. We share joys and sorrows and in this way I hear and see things that another person will never hear. I have become part of life here. That is beautiful, but also sometimes very difficult. I am still a Dutch Jozien, who grew up differently, sometimes sees things differently and emotionally processes things differently. I have one leg in South Africa and one in the Netherlands. That makes me rich, but when it comes down to it and things happen that I cannot explain, because they are too bad and too African and no one in the Netherlands can understand them, then you are alone. But I have learned that precisely that valley and that struggle can be carried by prayer, even if you don't fully understand each other. I am therefore incredibly grateful for all the prayer warriors from the church and beyond, who then carry me and so cross borders!
And is it a good thing that this is there, because I will never quite fit back into the Netherlands. Through all the deep experiences, I have become different. In the world but not of the world. That's that bit of letting go and leaving behind and accepting that it's okay. God is there too!
I would say that from the Netherlands, prayer is really the engine. The (spiritual) struggle is really there and the more God works, the more the devil doesn't want it. But from prayer the rest follows and then the testimony may be shared!
