OUR CURRENT VOCATION

For the first year and a half we spent living in South Africa, we served as project directors for pilot microfinance project that aims to empower young people, especially orphans, to start and run their own businesses. 

But in some ways, we still felt too limited in our efforts to meet community needs.  Offering basic business training and loans to youth is good, but it seemed to fall short for us in some ways.  Just as we were seeing our calling to do much more than focusing in on youth and loans, our previous organization returned to a clear and focused calling to youth and loans. 

After months of prayer and discussion, we determined that while we wish the microfinance organization well and support the strides microfinance has made in many places across the globe, it is no longer the entire role for us here.  We feel strongly that our purpose is to “Seek first the kingdom of God” and we’re excited to allow God to lead us in new ways.

So that’s what we’re looking for.  We try to live according to Jesus’ words that “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).  So in seeking God’s kingdom and his blessings in action, we have started by hanging out with the poor. 

In practice this means

• We grow in love and involvement with the bilingual Zulu-English church we attend.  Adam has preached there on occasion and Chrissy even sang in the choir once, but our aim is just to serve alongside the many gifted locals.
• We teach computer basics—a highly demanded skill—to young people.
• We plan to work with a team to develop an accredited training center to offer job skills such as graphic design, sewing, or woodworking.
• Adam serves on the board of directors for a local camp’s intensive leadership training program for high-school students. 
• Chrissy volunteers with the Zulu primary school near our home, teaching English and using whatever funds come our way to repair and improve the school.  After struggling for months over the choice of whether to send Phoebe to a more privileged school further away, we compromised to home-school Phoebe and invest in the nearby school.
• We plan to continue working with the loan clients who are either too old or beyond the geographic range of the microfinance project we had worked with.
• We both do freelance writing for magazines and newspapers.  Whenever possible, our hope is to challenge North Americans to see and learn from the challenges and heroes in the poorer two-thirds of the world. 
• As simple as it sounds, we visit our neighbors.  Both white and black.  Apartheid has ended, but friendship across racial lines has a long way to go.  As one white brother told us, we as outsiders are able to build bridges for local whites and blacks to cross.
• We love visitors.  We’re a long way and an expensive plane ticket away from North America, but we welcome anybody who’ll come. 
• We take time to be a family.  We take turns doing preschool home-school lessons and taking care of the kids, and we make sure life involves some rest.  Adam goes for long rides on his motorcycle, Chrissy gets her hands on the piano or muddy in the garden, and we all pick a lot of mulberries. 

And we fill in wherever else there’s need.  There are a bunch of development organizations and volunteers in our area, many of whom we meet with in a weekly Bible study.  Some train home-based care volunteers, market local crafts, help orphans access the welfare system, let us borrow their cars when ours breaks down, or invite people in tough situations into their own homes. 

Our intention is to be as much “sent” by the church we attend in South Africa as by any North American church.  We are not affiliated with any certain church denomination or organization.  Instead God has a way of drawing together a perfect hodgepodge of people making our work possible, whether it’s by introducing us to a Zulu lady down the street, donating money, or taking time for some long heart-feeding conversation. 

Jubilee Partners, a Christian community we volunteered with while in the U.S., handles financial donations toward our work.  They help us administratively in this way, and also provide guidance and accountability for our work.  To support our ministry, please mail checks to:

Jubilee Partners
c/o Jeskes
P.O. Box 68
Comer, GA 30629

Write checks out to JUBILEE PARTNERS
with JESKE in the memo line!