Children – Stefan and Marie Dell

You Helped Monica

Marie has been humming the “Pomp and Circumstance” graduation march for the last few days, not surprisingly with two graduation ceremonies for Monica this month.

Here, in a USA high school, some students can enroll at a university to do some of the basic courses that count toward a two-year Associate’s degree. Monica was one of those students, and on 7 May, she graduated with her Associate’s degree from Valencia College. It was a spectacular experience.

On 24 May, Monica graduated from high school with 739 fellow students. She worked hard and did exceptionally well to finish in the top 5 of her school.

Earlier in May, Monica’s prom provided a bit of fun amid her end-of-year exams.

Monica writes, “Thank you so much for your prayers for me, especially over the last few months as I made a decision about my future. I ultimately decided to go to Brandeis University, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts!

I’m looking forward to starting there at the end of August, but I appreciate your continued prayers. Pray for a smooth transition into university, wisdom as I pick my major, and God’s provision for the finances. Thank you!”

Left to Right: Monica’s college graduation, her prom and her school graducation.

Prayer Requests:

Praise for God’s guidance related to Monica’s university choice.
Pray for Kenneth, as he has an internship with a surveying group for the next three months. Thankfully it is here in Orlando, so he is with us for this time.
Stefan will travel to Spain and Central Asia to encourage and train church planters. Pray for significant interactions and safety.

Monica On Mission

Chapman’s Peak (not even the howling wind could stop us from admiring the view).

Greetings from South Africa!

We travelled the Garden Route to show our children the Cape coast’s beautiful sights and connect with some of you. We love catching up with people, hearing what God is doing in your lives, and sharing what we have seen God do in our lives and around the world. We are having a wonderful time. It is good for our souls to be back!

Monica is excited to join a youth mission trip with our Johannesburg church, Rosebank Union, this Sunday, 26 June – 3 July. They will travel to the Thembalethu Nkomazi Centre in Jeppes Reef, Mpumalanga, where they will host a children’s bible club and sports clinic and do maintenance projects around the centre.

Prayer Requests:

Pray for the group’s safe travels and that the Lord will prepare the hearts of those they minister to next week.
Pray that each participant will get to know and love Jesus more.
Pray that Monica will bond quickly with the group and make good friends with her fellow participants.

We recently heard this inspiring story from one of our elderly church planters in North Africa – he had preached at a church in the countryside where many people received Christ. As he headed home, the civil resistance group met him and accused him of being a traitor, working for the military. They were armed and forced him to walk 18 hours over mountains to their village, with no water till his feet were blistered and bleeding. On arriving there, he was thrown into prison. The other inmates asked him to preach, and many accepted Christ!

After his release, he praises God: “I had to walk 18 hours for those prisoners to hear the Gospel!”

May we all have the same attitude as this dear man!

Thank you for your partnership with us.

Looking Back on 2021

Merry Christmas!

We celebrate the birth of our Saviour and want to thank the Lord for what He has done in 2021. There were hardships and some great things that happened this year. Here are a few:

Highlights:

Kenneth completed his school career and was accepted at the top university in Florida.
Stefan and Monica had an opportunity to travel to South Africa and visit our families.
Marie started a new role as the Global Communications Director.
In the last three months, Stefan has traveled to meet face-to-face with several of our church planters around the world. These times together has been a blessing.
Over 3.4 million personal gospel presentations were made through our ministry despite the pandemic, leading to over 435,500 personal decisions. Some of these occurred in some of the most challenging parts of the world to reach with the gospel.

Lowlights:

The death of dear friends and co-workers to Covid and cancer.
Continued restrictions due to the Covid pandemic and also the economic impact on our beloved South Africa.

Your partnership with us enabled us to continue to serve the Lord as missionaries. We do not take the privilege lightly.

We are praying that you and your loved ones have a special Christmas. We celebrate that “the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). What a privilege we have to tell others about His grace and truth!

Merry Christmas!

A Special Graduation

We are now the proud parents of a high school graduate!

Kenneth finished his school career with pomp and ceremony during his graduation on 17 May. The event was hosted at the indoor sports arena here in Orlando. With over 700 Seniors (Matrics) in the class, it was a big day, celebrated with gusto. Fireworks rounded off the event with “oohs” and “aahs” from students and parents alike.

Kenneth starts at the University of Florida on 28 June. The university is in Gainesville, two hours north of Orlando. They receive 50,000 first-year applications every year and only accept around 7,000 students, so we are proud of him for making the cut. His dream is to become an anesthetist or anesthesiologist, as it is called in the US. It is a long road ahead for him, and much can still change.

Thank you for all the prayers for Kenneth during his school career. We are grateful that he has come this far and we thank you for your ongoing prayers for him and Monica.

Stefan and Monica will be in South Africa in June for a brief visit to check in on family. Stefan can be reached on email or with WhatApp on his US number.

800 New Churches a Day!

During 2020, the JESUS Film team projected that an estimated 30 million people indicated their decision for Christ. That’s one person almost every second!

The JESUS Film is now available in more than 1,870 different languages. Ministry partners who use JESUS played a crucial role in planting upwards of 293,000 churches. That’s 800 every day!

Even during the pandemic, virtual translation workshops aided new script creation, but remotely. Ministry partners like YWAM and Renew World Outreach took on an even greater role to translate JESUS for smaller language groups. In 2020, 105 new translation projects were completed.

A missionary in Southeast Asia who serves as the television broadcast coordinator shares: “Due to the pandemic, we have such a captive audience at home, so many people are tuning in and watching {satellite broadcasts}. What draws them more than anything is the fact that they can watch these programs, the JESUS film, in their ethnic heart language. We get confirmation all the time when we ask, ‘How did you find out about Jesus?’ And they say, ‘We saw Him on TV, and we love it because it’s in our own language.’ Someday we will see people from every nation and tribe and language gathered around the throne, worshipping our Savior and Lord, all because we partnered together and we stood in the gap for such a time as this.”

Hearing these stories always remind us of the privilege of serving the Lord and how grateful we are for your support that enables us to do this.

Reverend Dell:

Stefan was invited by one of our partner groups to be ordained as a minister. We are required to complete a certain number of theological courses throughout our staff career, which we have done, but we were not seeking ordination. In light of Stefan’s work worldwide as a church-planter, having the title “Reverend” makes it easier for him.

What made the ordination ceremony special was that our good friends, Marnus and Mariette van Niekerk were in America for business at the time, and they joined us. Due to Covid restrictions, we were only 11 people at the ceremony, but it was very intimate and meaningful.

Prayer Requests:

This month our ministry is celebrating the impact of what God has done through all of us over the past decade. It culminates in a three-day online celebration event on 24-26 February. Marie is part of the design team for the event and will appreciate your prayers.
Kenneth is waiting for responses from the universities where he has applied. Pray that it will be clear which university will be best for him. For us as parents, navigating the USA college system is intimidating.

How A Disaster Turned into Success

The dress-rehearsal was a disaster! And we were three days from the actual event! Emotions were running high in Stefan’s team as they were trying to find solutions for all the technical difficulties.

The dream was to have a Zoom conference for all our church planters and partners around the world. The content would be short 10 minutes slots delivered by different speakers, break-out groups of 6 people to discuss the content, and apply it to their context. For this, we had to ensure that people end up in discussion groups with people who spoke their language. We had to stream the conference in 8 languages.

This meant lots of things could go wrong. And with the dress-rehearsal, it did!

However, God heard our cries for help. On Tuesday, 14 July 2020, the Bold Moves 3 conference kicked off with a bang!

People from 116 countries joined the conference using 1,309 devices. Many of the devices had more than one person watching. We are so grateful for the good participation. The technical issues were minimal, and some things worked that we have no explanation of why it worked. We can only say that God did it!

One of many Zoom screens – this one has Spanish speakers

Thank you so much for your prayers!

Since this worked so well, we will do it again on the first Tuesday of every month till the end of the year. The topic for August is to explore partnerships in urban church planting efforts.

Kenneth managing the Spanish stream and Monica the 3rd English stream

Watch one of the short stories from Moldova told at the conference to inspire others to think creatively in reaching people with the gospel.

Hear how Kenneth and Monica are surviving

Kenneth and Monica successfully survived their eighth week at home due to COVID-19. We asked them to give you an update about their lives.

Monica:

“Wow, none of us suspected that 12 March would be our last day at school for our 2019/2020 academic year. All our schoolwork is now online and even though we are not seeing our teachers, we are required to check in with each subject weekly. We will hopefully return to school when our new academic year starts in August.

I love experimenting in the kitchen and I now finally have the time to use all the exotic ingredients I make my Dad bring for me from his international travels. I especially love the spices from India.

Another new skill I’m developing is helping my Mom’s team with one of their projects called her.Bible. They are creating the first free audio Bible read by women. My job is to create pronunciations for difficult names. For example the word, Eglath-shelishiyah(E GLATH shel eesh ee uh) from Jeremiah 48:34. I had to learn a lot about the correct pronunciation of all kinds of names. Just for fun – the book of Isaiah has 178 proper names that appear 666 times! You can go and listen to the New Testament on her.Bible It will also soon be available to download as an app.”

Kenneth:

“I had the opportunity to be part of a dual-enrollment program this year. It allows select high schoolers to also attend university courses at our local university. I attended a full school day, and then from Monday to Thursday, I also attended evening classes at the university from 6-10 pm. I also continued to be part of the school swimming and tennis team.

Needless to say, when we received the stay-at-home order, I was relieved. All my classes shifted online, and it was tough, but I had a bit more free time. Two weeks ago I finished my university courses and I’m happy to say I passed all seven of my courses with good marks.

Now I’m putting all my efforts into passing my Grade 11 classes well. Although I’m missing my sport and friends – I enjoy catching up on some video games.”

Prayer Request:

Thank the Lord that Kenneth and Monica can continue with their schooling and are set to finish the academic year well.
Pray for stamina – we continue to see an increased openness to spiritual things and we are working long hours to see the gospel go out.
Pray for many who have met Jesus in the last two months due to the COVID-19 situation, that they will grow in their faith and will find Christian communities to care for them.

Thank you for your partnership with us!

We Survived Our 1st Hurricane!

Thank you for your prayers!

We are grateful to the Lord for His protection over us and our property. We are still under a curfew till Saturday morning at 7 am but at least the tumble dryer has stopped. The incredibly strong winds have slowed down and even our cat bravely poked his nose out for a toilet stop.

Several co-workers lots electricity for a few hours, but we had power throughout the storms. We felt at peace and the Lord’s protection throughout the storm.

Here are the Kenneth and Monica with some of our plants, rescued from outside before the hurricane came.

Continue to pray for others that are still in the path of the hurricane.

A New Academic Year Starts

Today, 15 August, our 10-week school holiday ends. The children are reluctantly looking forward to the new school year as they start a new school and a new curriculum.

Here are a few snapshots from our summer:

Thank you for your prayers for our Global Leaders Conference (26 June- 1 July). Our meetings went well and our leaders left Orlando encouraged and better equipped to lead our missionaries in their quest to see the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

Marie had a wonderful visit in South Africa with her Mom and siblings. The last time they were all together was February 2013. What a treat to celebrate their Mom’s 70th birthday together.

While Marie was away, we joined co-workers at their cabin in North Carolina. It was a wonderful break from the Orlando heat and humidity. The lowlight was that Kenneth broke his leg by colliding into an unsuspecting tree from a rope swing. After getting a screw in his leg he is recovering well. Please pray for his complete healing.

We appreciate your prayers as we start the new academic year. After the slower pace of summer, we are back in full swing. We look forward to a fruitful year as we try to bring the Good News to a lost and hurting world.

Kenneth’s Leg Operation

Dear Friends

Could you please be praying for Kenneth. Over the weekend he broke his leg trying to stop a rope swing that was about to smash him into a tree. The break is such that he will be having an operation tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon Orlando time.

Marie is finishing her time in South Africa and returning to us next week. She has had a very productive time with her family. We have missed her very much, and look forward to having her back, especially the patient.

Thanks
Stefan, Kenneth and Monica
(surviving without Mom)