Daisy Ministries - News letter 13 of 7 March 2014 General Edition

General edition - Page 1 of 6

E-mail: [email protected] - [email protected] - Mobile: +263779934041/3 Banking details: Bank - ABSA, Code 632005, Acc. name - MJ Pitzer, Acc. no. - 4052235112 - ABSA

SWIFT CODE : ABSAZAJJ

Why do you keep talking to me if you do not believe in me?

Daisy Ministries 7 Clocolan Drive

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe Mobile: +236779934041/3

E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]

NEWS LETTER 13 - 07 March 2014 An Atheist, an outspoken and angry atheist was driving from Harare to Bulawayo. A long trip with time to think. To use his words, "I was my normal self, ranting and raving against GOD. If you were real, this would not have happened... that would not have happened... there is no GOD!" This was his life for many years. He comes from a Christian background, but due to circumstances and problems he concluded that there can not be a God. I met this man a while ago and we had some fiery discussions. We recently connected again and I was invited for breakfast to discuss an effort that we are involved in; the lifting of sanctions against Zimbabwe. We ordered and as we were waiting for the food he started to speak….. "Hey bud, GOD spoke to me, like I am speaking to you now. He asked me, Why do you keep talking to me if you do not believe in me?" and his emotion confirmed the event! He went on saying "You know that story of the single footsteps in the sand and that it was GOD carrying you; that is how He carried me the last few years". What an awesome privilege to witness a strong man openly admitting that GOD never left him! GENERAL It seems as if we are being trained and equipped to speak to leaders of different religions. It is interesting how GOD gave Dion a passion for the Mormons and me a passion for the Muslims, and how we are supporting one another. Our lives are being shaped by GOD. Dion, having left the business world, has lost an income which previously made life easy. Jaco Jr is leaving home to join a safari company and Heike is getting married. You sometimes feel persecuted while sharing with different people about their urgent need of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. How will we handle these changes? This may come across as negative but it is not, GOD is teaching us, He is upping the standard! MINISTRIES Market After nearly six months, Karin visited the market again. I thought to myself that it would be interesting to see the response as she met the ladies again. Jr took a video camera along and filmed the welcome. It is incredible to see the response from the ladies and I became aware of the fact that we, as Christians, are shining lights impacting the world around us in a very real way. (The clip is on our Daisy Ministries Facebook page.) May we reflect GOD in a way that will bring Him glory!




Muslims Our Muslim friend, the one mentioned in the previous newsletter that became a Christian and then reverted back to Islam has apparently left the country, and hence we have lost all contact with him and his family. The Bible teaches that "all things work for the better of those who love the Lord", and we do. True to GOD's nature then, and as a result of our "truth and reconciliation" meeting with the local Muslim leaders, Daisy Ministries seems to be a household name among the Muslim leaders of the province. The opinion is that we were truthful in representing the events. We ask that you continue to pray for this brother as this seems to be the only practical thing that we can do for him and his family at this time. We believe his conversion was real, and that our Loving Father will draw him back. We have had the privilege of meeting many different Muslim leaders over the past two months, including a Sheik who is an expert in apologetics and studied in Medina, all of them open to receive us and to chat. These Muslims, like us, do not hold back in defending their faith and neither the Muslims nor we are hiding the fact that it is about souls being "saved"! The greatest blessing to me was in meeting an elderly Sheik. I would regard him as the wisest of all the Muslims we have met. We visit him often and in him, respectfully, we met a Muslim scholar with incredible knowledge saying things the way they are. He is not into sweet-talking or impressing people, solid facts only. To get the average Muslim to admit that the Quran teaches Jihad, that you can kill the infidel, is almost impossible. Either they are ashamed of it or they do not know about it? In any event, this Sheik stated that if Zimbabwe was under Sharia Law, he would have killed me himself. He went on to explain that it is like committing treason against a nation and that capital punishment will be the result. In an Islamic country, Islam is a set of ideologies holding that "Islam should guide socio-political as well as personal life". Hence, if you come against Islam, you come against the state; you commit treason and can be killed as a result. (I must however make it clear that this Sheik would be the last man to kill me as we have a very good relationship.) We dream of the day that he and the other Muslims in the city surrender to our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ! On chatting to him, I told him that I love him. His response was that you cannot insult a person's god and then tell him you love him? Well, I am of the opinion that loving your enemy can happen; Jesus loved us whilst we hated Him! I appreciate being in Zimbabwe more and more and realise that I would never have learned so much in a Muslim country operating under Sharia Law! If I did, possibly my life insurance would have paid out by now... Mormons - The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints (LDS) As mentioned in the previous newsletter, we are engaging with Mormons on a weekly basis. We mentioned that we were invited to meet the local Bishop, which we did, however this meeting ended up being a normal teaching session. We did however manage to meet with the Regional President. What an impressive man! He is in charge of all the LDS churches in the southern part of Zimbabwe including Bulawayo, Harare and Mutare. We had a few coffees, (only me as they are not allowed to drink hot drinks; he had juice), and we discussed the fact that Mormonism regards a person with a dark skin as cursed of God. At best a dark skin is a historical reminder that those who sin will face consequences. I gave him a substantial amount of Bible verses showing that a dark skin cannot be regarded as a sign of a




curse. I am looking forward to his feedback! As we come to further conclusions on the differences between Christianity and Mormonism, we will update you!

Jehovah Witnesses As mentioned in earlier letters, the Witnesses in our area have been warned against us. Jaco Jr came up with a stroke of genius. He bumped into 9 Witnesses and told them that he knows of a guy who needs help; who is seeking... The whole bunch came, we chatted and discussed hell. For them, hell is being dead, forgotten, like an animal without a spirit. The main thing in JW hell is that you will be dead, really dead, no punishment, death is your punishment. I stated that it is then worthwhile to live like hell on earth if that is

the consequence. I prefer the hell described in the Bible, a hell that has to be conquered by a Saviour. What is the point of a Saviour if there is no hell? What are you saved from? We had a promise for a follow-up meeting. The meeting did not materialise and I doubt that they will return. At least we had opportunity to sow a seed! Who knows? Prisons Due to rain we had to speak to the inmates inside a cell. This was a first for us as we are not normally allowed in the cells. We were around 300 people in the cell with limited ventilation. Suffice to say that it was hot and humid inside. Fortunately GOD is not limited by adverse conditions and we saw His love for people in action once again as He touched people on a spiritual and physical level. It is interesting how one of the team will confirm the message brought by another. The same Spirit is in us all! There are currently 11 Ethiopian refugees that have now been in the prison for over 3 months. We are not sure what is taking so long for their repatriation as this is normally a fairly quick process. With no family members to assist, we have put out appeals to churches to meet their basic needs, toiletries and clothing. It was a great encouragement to see that the church we are currently running the evangelism training with managed to gain access to the Bulawayo prison this week to preach the word! This weekly outreach is an opportunity to share your heart with a captive audience. We go into the prison as part of an organisation called ZACRO (Zimbabwe Association for Crime prevention and Rehabilitation of Offenders). We learned recently that this is not actually a Christian organisation. It is only the Matabeleland section that uses Christian principles to achieve the objectives of the organisation. Please pray for this organisation, that Christian leaders be raised up countrywide to run the different sections, and that God provides funding so that it can be more effective, not just for going into the prisons to give the Word, but also for helping the inmates reconnecting and reconciling with families and people they have wronged in the past. 7 Clocolan House People are coming in. We had the team from Ellel Ministries in Pretoria visiting. They hosted a discipling and healing seminar in town. The guys staying with us are mature and strong Christians. We are being exposed to the cream of the crop. As mentioned earlier, we are being equipped! We are getting new high capacity gel batteries to replace the old ones. This is great as we can be less strict on electricity use at night. The generator will also be spared! Thanks family H!




Teaching and Training We have just finished training at Harvest House International and 42 of their evangelism team attended. They are a fantastic crowd of strong believers. It does seem however that their evangelism and witnessing is event based. Not that it is wrong, but it should be a way of life, everywhere and for everyone. Dion made an interesting comment; If we all made witnessing a way of life as taught in the scriptures, there would not be a need for missions... Makes you think! It was also nice to sit and watch Dion presenting the training in excellence, way better than me! You can see the teacher in him coming to the fore and I saw how the students made what we taught their own. Session two was the practical, equipping the people to go out knowing that God goes with them! This started with one of the ladies limping in after just having had a fall……..a need, we are told to go out and meet the needs of the people. So we prayed once, it was slightly better, prayed again, she said she felt a coolness in her foot, took a step and the pain was gone! Such a lesson in itself, you just want to send the people straight out onto the street after seeing God move like this! It was also a lesson in perseverance, if you fail first time, keep going and there will be a breakthrough! Leaders Meeting The team from Ellel Ministries joined the meeting, it was great that the leaders attending got to hear of the work they do. The original intention of these meetings was to get the different church leaders to meet and build relationships with one another to bring a greater unity within the churches, the body of Christ. With this well on its way, the body of Christ is meant to be Christ-like, meeting the needs of the community around them, and this starts first off at home. The local church needs to meet first and foremost the needs of the local community, and after that the nation, and then the world! Therefore, we invited the Founder of Precious Life Foundation to come and share with the group. Precious Life was birthed over ten years ago after the founder adopted a child that was abandoned as a result of a young girl falling into prostitution and ending up with an unwanted child. God put on the founders heart all the other girls out there falling into prostitution as a means of survival. Precious Life takes the girls off the streets, feeds them, homes some of them, shares the gospel and the love of Christ with them, teaches them a skill and then finds jobs for them in their new skill so that they do not have to go back to prostitution. It is not possible or practical for each church to have different missions all trying to do the same thing yet none of them doing it well because of a lack of resources. In many cases there are already believers out there carrying out many of these missions. So rather than trying to compete it is better to introduce these missions to the wider body of Christ so that the leaders can take the details back to their individual congregations to see if there are people in their congregations that have the same calling to help in these different areas, but had no idea how to practically do it. These people can be connected to make these different missions that are already working become more effective. Mighty Men's Conference Zimbabwe




We are on the verge of registering our trust. We have great men of GOD that will serve with us. We recently met with the President of the Zimbabwean AFM church. They are 2.3 million members strong. This is an incredibly humble man and he is excited with us to make it a success to the glory of GOD. A thing we see in Zimbabwe is the truly servant hearts of the leaders, the main servants. We can and are learning from these guys. Things are not happening as fast as we would have liked or expected, however, we understand that God’s timing is often different to ours, and also continue to thank Him that to date we have not had a single door closed on us regarding this event. Please continue to pray specifically for the funding for this event. WHAT ARE WE LEARNING - REALITY CHECK You get to know your strengths and weaknesses and adapt accordingly or you exercise and turn that weakness into a strength. We have learnt and appreciate the following:

Always go two x two. Have a support, a witness, a partner with you. Preferably a strong guy that can truly support.

Admit when you make a mistake and do not expect kindness in return. Not all people are equally open for the gospel!

We do not know the result of an outreach but GOD does. If it is up to Him, and it is, then there will always be people knocking on the hearts of men.

Persevere, persevere, persevere! Worry is not of God, it reveals a lack of trust, we have already been given the

measure of faith, we must learn how to exercise and use it to the full! Again, what was stated in the previous newsletter; it is mostly those running that will trip. Sloths rarely fall; they just turn over and lie down... FAMILY The Pitzers - Jaco and Karin By the time of the next newsletter, Karin and I will have a new title, In-laws! Heike is getting married to Charl early next month. We are happy for them. Just imagine, if we were Zimbabwean we could have been a few cattle richer... Jaco jr will leave to start the career of his dreams soon. He will be doing his apprenticeship as a Professional Hunter. Then it will only be Karin and I. The nest is empty and we will enter a new phase in our lives. The Greens – Dion and Sally Our oldest is in her last year of primary school, and has been elected Deputy Head Girl for which we are very pleased! This also means a leavers dance at the end of the year. Sally is a part of the moms committee for this; thankfully it is a Christian school where there are no pressures for the children to grow up before their time! Our youngest moved from the infant school to primary school, Grade 3 and is adapting well. We have received financial assistance towards our school fees for which we are very thankful! The Lord continues to show his faithful provision for those in his service. We have been struggling with the decision of which vehicles we practically need to be effective in all areas of the ministry. In the interim, I have had a problem with the door lock on the one car, it is faulty and can only lock electronically because of the fault, and sometimes it does not. The solution for the moment is to climb out the car, command it to lock in Jesus name!..........and it locks every time! It can be an ice-breaker in a car park when someone hears you!




NEEDS & PRAYER REQUESTS We thank GOD for our faithful supporters. GOD is in the business of using people in teams. What you read in our newsletters is the result of a team working together. THANK YOU!! Please pray for the following;

The Muslim and Mormon leaders in the community, that they will be open to receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

Pray that we will open our mouths boldly, that we will speak the word of GOD, that signs and wonders will flow through us and that we will preach Christ crucified in the power of the Holy Spirit. That GOD will confound the "wise" using us.

For the Green and Pitzer families as we step out into what we have been called to. For our marriages and relationships as we need one another.

Pray for the ministry as doors are opening up. That we will always represent our GOD well bringing honour to HIM.

Pray for the leaders of Bulawayo, for greater unity, that the churches will start to work together to meet the needs of the city.

GOD's style is to love and bless HIS children. Therefore we are expectantly looking forward to 2014! Stay blessed,

Daisy Ministries

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Daisy Ministries - News letter 13 of 7 March 2014 General Edition