Unearthed spent about 2 months in South Africa this summer working to document the problems & needs of one of the most sexually broken nations in the world. This clip is a brief synopsis of what we’ll expound on in our full-length film about the roots of human sex trafficking (scheduled for release in 2012)

South Africa’s Pandemic from Unearthed Pictures on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago we posted a video to give an insight into All Nations the organisation we will be working with in South Africa. As part of  working with All Nations we will be involved in a CPx from Feb-Jun 2011, which stands for Church Planting eXperience.

We have just received the curriculum for this and thought we’d share it with you. If you’d like to get involved with this area by either attending or partnering with us through meeting some of the costs of this program we’d love to hear from you.

The Date is set!

As many of you know, the last month has been a whirlwind of preparations, specifically the visa drama (read more), but also looking for shipping quotes, medical insurances, and support raising and so we are relieved to say we have FINALLY BOOKED OUR FLIGHTS!

We will leave the UK on the 13th of September!

Our return flights aren’t until July 2011, and we have committed the next 3 years to working with All Nations in South Africa so this is a big step for us.

Thankyou to everyone who followed and prayed with us through the excitement of the last month. God has been so faithful to us!

• What will we be doing in South Africa?
• Support
• You are Invited…

Rather than send you a lengthy email, we have re-written our website with videos and stories that detail the work we will be doing in South Africa with All Nations – to look through it all go towww.liamandrachel.com or click on the images below to go straight to the projects you are interested in:

Baby Safe, an access ministry to church planting that Rachel will help run, originally started as a response to the crisis of baby dumping in the Western Cape of South Africa.  The practise of abandoning babies in places there are unlikely to be found was not being engaged by any government agency or organisations, therefore Baby Safe was set up to be a extension of God’s heart to both the babies involved and the mother’s who found themselves in such desperation…READ MORE

Liam will be working with 2 others in discipling kingdom principles in a generation of new small business owners throughout Masiphumelele & other local impoverished communities. This will be done through a program called STEPS which addresses the multiple levels of poverty which exist in lives, spiritual poverty, material poverty and social poverty, READ MORE.

The natural out working of people coming to know Jesus through the two previously mentioned ministries, is to gather them in discipleship communities, this is why All Nations is committed to simple church planting. In particular we are focused on making disciples and sending out trained leaders to start simple, reproducing, Jesus focused churches. READ MORE

As we prepare to return to South Africa the most valuable way in which you can support us is through prayer.
We will be regularly updating liamandrachel.com to give you more information on what we have been doing and hope that you would join us in praying for both our own needs and those of the people we will be working with.

At the moment the main point for prayer is that the specific financial needs which we face would be met. We are still in need of just over £700 ($1000) a month to cover the ministry and living costs, which in this area of South Africa are comparable with the UK. Although food costs are cheaper we will have to pay quite a substantial amount each month for medical insurance and accommodation.

Other important needs are that we would be able to fund a few basic the relocation costs (such as a rental deposit, moving costs, etc) which will be in the region of £1,250 and also that we would be able to get a second hand car. This is particularly important given the levels of crime in the  area as we need to ensure that Rachel can travel safely to and from thebaby safe project. Unfortunately the second hand market is hugely inflated compared to the UK (see Cape Town Ads) and whilst we are hoping to generate around £3000 from the sale of our own car in the UK it is likely that we will need to raise an additional £2000 on top of the other relocation costs in order to be able to buy something reliable.

We thank you for your prayers for these matters and although we now only have a month left before we leave, we know without a doubt that God has called us to do what we are doing and are confident that he will provide in these areas. If any of you do feel called to partner in what we do by supporting this work financially please see the details below on how to give, otherwise we are grateful for your support in bringing these needs before God.

How to Give
In the UK – you can give through our charity partner Stewardship by calling 020 8502 5600 and quoting our account number: 20108438 or by downloading forms on our website. This helps us hugely as we can claim an extra 25% on giving through tax.

International – The easiest way to give for those outside the UK is through paypal on our website. You can donate using the button below or alternatively set up a recurring payment to support us regularly.

We would love the chance to share with everyone the work we are doing
in South Africa, so we are planning to run an event on the:

27th August 2010

The Venue is yet to be confirmed, but will be in Aberdeenshire. We will be sharing stories from our last 4 months in South Africa, explaining what it is exactly that we will be doing day to day for the next 3 years, it will also be a great opportunity to see everyone before we leave! Please RSVP by reply to this email, as we’ll also have some food and drinks!

We are hoping to do something similar in Cornwall before we leave, so watch this space…

Liam & Rachel

The Waiting Game..
Well we wanted to give everyone a quick update as we had talked about this big issue for the last couple of months and asked so many of you to pray. We went to the South African Embassy yesterday morning, queueing in the great british fashion from 8am til opening at 8.45am, we were the first in line. Everything was going well, we were called up and the documents that we have been preparing for the last 2 months were handed over, constituting x-ray reports, trips to the doctor, police checks worth about £600 in admin fees not including this trip to London, a lot was riding on this visa application.

The lady looked down at some paper work and spoke the dreaded words, “No, they won’t accept this!”. She pointed to the sponsoring letter from our missions organisation “All Nations”, “It hasn’t been signed”. So you’ll need to go and get it signed (immediately my mind began running, thinking of a way to get a signed letter from South Africa within the few days we had prepared to be in London). As I looked back at her trying to hide my shock, she said “You’ll need that, and you’ll need to bring back £600 (around $900) per person back with you for the ‘repatriation fee’ (should anything happen, the South African govt. aren’t keen on flying our coffins home unless we’ve paid for the ticket!). Finally she said, “If you can get that back to me by 10.30 (it now being around 9.15) we can take it today”

So frantically we ran to the nearest Internet Cafe and tried to call the office in South Africa that wrote our letter…the lady who had written it was overseas, and the letter had been on her computer! After an agonizing 40mins we printed the letters and ran to the bank, which didn’t open til 10AM!!!! With money in hand we sprinted back through trafalgar sq to Whitehall and handed in everything in disbelief we’d made it in time.

Our soon-made friend across the counter took our details and said, “OK, you’ll have to come back on the 28th”, confused thinking we would get a reply that day “we live 900 miles away in Scotland!” we said, so they allowed us to have the visa’s posted back to us. So here we are, not quite relieved from our anticipation of visa decisions, but we’ve done what we can and will hear in the next 7 days supposedly.

Please continue to pray for the process and we’ll let you know as soon as we do.

Thanks for all your support as we go through the ‘dramatic’ preparations for heading back to South Africa.

All Nations is a family of communities, working together across Africa, partnering with the Holy Spirit to pioneer simple Jesus-centered communities in homes, businesses or anywhere Jesus is not worshiped. – All Nations Southern Africa

Human Trafficking

The US State Dept and UN agencies were estimating that around 30,000-100,000 people would be trafficked into South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. This was one of the most shocking discoveries as we researched and prayed into South Africa for our DTS Outreach. Human Trafficking is basically modern-day slavery, people are tricked and trapped into extorting employment with oppressive conditions and unjust wages, if any.

Along with this reality we found that although statistics range considerably, all authorities in this area agree that more people are caught in modern day slavery/human trafficking than at any other time in human history! Further research showed us that much of the trafficking of people into South Africa was for the purposes of sexual slavery.

God began to give us a burden for these faceless and voiceless people, and through prayer convinced us we had some part to play in combatting this during our time in South Africa. As we prayed about this, it was clear much of the battle was in the form of the international demand for prostitution which had been created by the World Cup.

As clearly, there is no reasonable expectation that people won’t travel to attend the world cup and that prostitution is far too wide an issue to address within such a short period. So God began to give a vision to us of revealing the person behind the prostitution to those who attended the World Cup.We hope that by revealing God’s image and his worth in the women involved in prostitution in a form which would be understood by those in the target group of men would be impacting enough to dissuade them from engaging in prostitution.

Originally the plan was to use a presentation or article on the planes which would bring the huge number of visitors to South Africa for the world cup, but after a number of closed doors and the scale of the task, we prayed about it and used some creativity to scale the concept of the project.

We came up with an idea that had been used in the UK of printing beer mats (coasters) which feature an eye catching design which replicates an advertisement for prostitution, and then a short sentence of information about sexual slavery on the back.

Within a week or so we managed to secure full funding for the project through JusticeACTS, a not-for-profit YWAM organisation working in this area, we discovered that there was high demand for coasters from South African Brewery’s and therefore an open door for the materials. We really feel like God opened so many doors for us in this venture, within a few weeks we had created a design, found funding, an affordable printing process, and finally an open door for the materials to be delivered. All this resulted in thousands of beer mats (coasters) being distributed in the FIFA main venues of every stadium city that was hosting a world cup game in South Africa. We were amazed!

We titled the awareness campaign after its UK counter-part “The Truth Isn’t Sexy” Here was the design on the back.

Back of Coaster Story

The Truth Isnt Sexy - FIFA 2010 World Cup Human Trafficking Awareness Campaign

Liam and Rachel are working as missionaries/development strategists/followers of Jesus amongst the Xhosa people in Masiphuemele, South Africa. Click here to help us by praying with us, follow us on our blog or you can sign up to receive our email updates. You can communicate our story to your local Church or housegroup and we would also hugely appreciate anyone prayerfully considering financially supporting the work we do in South Africa on a regular basis, you can find more about that here.

Rest is Worship

I’ve been reflecting on the things I’ve learnt in the last 6 months, thinking of the things that have really impacted my life, changed the way I think, the way I act, because those are the true indicators of if we believe something.

Something I have come to believe, is that rest in many senses can be worship. It sounds a little too good to be true like those embarrassingly misleading ads that tell us we can eat whatever we want and lose weight, that one isn’t true if you’re wondering. But it is true that rest in the context of a life given over to live for the kingdom of God to come on earth can be worship.

I was asked a few months ago if I could know one thing about someone as soon as I met them, anything at all, what it would be. My answer was that, I would choose to know how aware they were of the love of God over them. This is because I’ve come to think that on a basic level we are either working, living, speaking, relating out of a place of knowing we are fully loved as the bible promises us, or we are living out of a place that strives, competes and is jealous to be loved.

The two people described above are entirely different to be around. One is relaxed, freely gives and freely recieves all that they have, they are aware that they have recieved the ‘pearl of great price’ and therefore nothing else is of worth to them, they give encouragement, affirmation, gifts, time freely, they give life to the people around them. The other person embodies the opposite, they offer doubled edged measured encouragements, they are exclusivist about how they spend time and resources on the people around them, and they can rob the joy and enthusiasm of the people around them, I, unfortunately, have often operated in the latter.

As we spend time focussing on Jesus, realizing his worth, through meditating on scripture, praying for increased revelation of this person Jesus, we realize that he is fully sufficient for us, he has fully accepted us and even more embraced us in love whilst we were still in the stench of our own self-righteousness, our own competitiveness, that prefers ourselves over others. We are fully loved by the creator of the universe, we can quit striving for the affirmation of others, and of God and enjoy a father child affirming relationship, a bride and bridegroom intimacy, and a Leader and King who has conquered, and will reign over his creation.

It is from this place that we are relieved of our striving, even as we are relieved from our very lives. Lives that we lived for ourselves and to please others. As we come alive in our salvation, in our baptism in water and spirit, and in his healing prescence we can sigh, the weight of our responsibilities can be an easy yoke as we realize that God is fully committed to bringing himself glory through our lives more than we think we are committed to that task. As we focus on him, the perfector of our faith, we are released in joyful servanthood, where we can begin to run a race, not for our own crown but for the day when he wil return and we will lay our crowns before him in our awe over his beauty and grace.

God is beautiful when we see him for who he is, and it gives us permission to be freed from the idolatry of our own personal strivings, in order that we can realize God is really in control and is calling us to live from a revelation of being fully known yet fully loved, so that we are working From love not For love.

This realisation can really set us free,

- free from thinking we have to fix it all

- free from thinking we have to make it happen

- free from thinking WE have to bring someone we know to salvation

- free from striving to make enough money to survive

- free from striving to feel OK through what we DO instead who we have been made to BE.

Now that I’ve said it, BE instead of DO, is a good frame of reference for what I feel like I have learnt. As we live and worship the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, we have reached our full potential as humans, we have fulfilled the first and foremost commandment, everything we do after that is from Grace and to him. We achieve our greatest success when we worship him, it is what we were made for, and when we engage in it with all that we are, we are realising our highest calling, higher even that the vocations of being, lovers of our spouse, parents to our children, workers for the Kingdom. All those things are able to be done fuller and more healthily when we have ordered our allegiances behind Jesus.

Try resting today, and do it for the Glory of God.

Acknowledgments: Lindy Conant for worshipping in spirit an truth in the UofN prayer room in Kona as I wrote this on my iPod, Andy Byrd for highlighting the distinction between working for and from love back in October 09

Liam and Rachel are working as missionaries/development strategists/followers of Jesus amongst the Xhosa people in Masiphuemele, South Africa. Click here to help us by praying with us, follow us on our blog or you can sign up to receive our email updates. You can communicate our story to your local Church or housegroup and we would also hugely appreciate anyone prayerfully considering financially supporting the work we do in South Africa on a regular basis, you can find more about that here.