Stefan and Marie Dell

21 Years!

We are safely back in Orlando after a wonderful visit in South Africa and have nearly acclimatised.

This year we celebrate 21 years as full-time missionaries. It has been 21 amazing years and we are so grateful that you have journeyed with us. As we look back to serving in Cape Town, Durban, the South African National Office, the Southern and Eastern Africa Area Office and now the Global Head Office, here are a few lessons we keep learning:

Our partners – those who pray, give, encourage, work alongside, provide tools or resources have become dear friends. We are rich in relationships.
We plant gospel seeds, but only God can draw people to Himself and cause growth.
In our pain and disappointments God teaches us about Himself and ourselves.
Leadership is hard, but a privilege.
People disappoint people, but forgiveness is a gift we received from God and each other that we can also pass on to others.
Different cultures add a richness to life, and doing things differently is not wrong, just different. South Africans with their many cross-cultural experiences, make wonderful missionaries.
God is at work all around the world, even in the darkest, unreached areas. And He allows us to take part in some of it.

Thank you for your partnership with us as we look forward to the next 21 years!

P.S. Stefan is traveling to New Zealand on Thursday to join our Global Operations leaders from the different areas for their annual collaboration time. Your prayers would be appreciated!

Pic’s From The Past

Furlough Fun

We have two more weeks left of our wonderful furlough. Sweet reunions with family and friends were a highlight but it was also great to be part of the hustle and bustle of South African culture, having braais, biltong and enjoying South African humor.

We have had many opportunities to speak at church groups and to reflect on God’s hand over us the past two years and to tell stories of what God is doing around the world. We were thrilled to hear many testimonies of God’s work in the lives of our faithful supporters and how He is using them here in South Africa.

On 17 August we depart for Orlando. Please pray for a good flight and for us to settle back into our American lives smoothly. Also pray for our children who will start their new school year on 24 August.

We appreciate the assurance of your support as we start a new term as missionaries in Orlando.

Here are a few pictures of our visit here:

Bunny Chow in Durban

Famous South African BraaiWith Ouma and our youngest cousins

When Can We See You?

We arrived safely in South Africa and have already been spoiled with delicious bobotie, potjiekos, biltong, a nice braai, malva pudding and koeksisters! Needless to say, all the Dells are smiling from ear to ear!

We would love to see you! To make sure we do not miss out on catching up with you, we arranged a few “hang-out” opportunities for us to connect.

BLOEMFONTEIN

Thursday- 18 June @ 15:30, Noorderbloem Aftree Oord, Oliewenlaan 11. Join us for cake and tea (and a few American treats). RSVP

PRETORIA

Saturday – 20 June @ 15:00, Campus Crusade for Christ National Office, 398 Rigel Avenue, Erasmus Rand, 0181. Join us for cake and tea (and a few American treats). RSVP

Sunday – 5 July @ 15:30, Campus Crusade for Christ National Office, 398 Rigel Avenue, Erasmus Rand, 0181. Join us for cake and tea (and a few American treats). RSVP

JOHANNESBURG

Saturday – 4th of July @ 12:00, Rosebank Union Church, Corner of St. Andrews street and William Nicol, Hurlingham. Join us for an American Independence Day Picnic with hot dogs and lemonade (minus the fire-works). RSVP

SASOLBURG

Sunday – 19 July @ 15:30, N.G. Fontein Gemeente, Van Wouw Street, Sasolburg. Join us for cake and tea (and a few American treats). RSVP

DURBAN

Sunday – 2 August, after church services, Westville Baptist Church

CAPE TOWN

Sunday – 9 August @ 15:30, 14 Gardenia Road, Ridgeworth, Belville, 7530. Join us for cake and tea (and a few American treats). RSVP

OUR CONTACT NUMBERS WHILE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Stefan – 079 130 6423
Marie – 076 361 4980

Less Than One Week…..

Passports – Check Winter clothes – Check Excitement – Check, Check

Less than one week to our departure for South Africa on 3 June, and we can’t wait!

Please continue to pray for our furlough preparation, and especially our emotional readiness. A lot has changed in our lives and in the lives of our family and friends over these two years. Pray that despite the changes, we would be able to reconnect with everyone.

Stories like the one below fill us with joy! Thank you for playing your part.

African Woman Shares Faith Against All Odds

[Collecting “changed life” stories like this one is a way Marie’s Team support the global leaders of CCC. We find and edit stories that show multiplying disciples as we try to illustrate and document our progress toward the goal of 10 million multiplying disciples by 2020. This greatly encourages others to keep sharing the gospel and making disciples (Matt. 28), and helps our national leaders continue to press on toward the goal of 10 million multiplying disciples.]

Growing up in an African nation where Christians face persecution for their beliefs, Teresa felt isolated as a new follower of Jesus. Her community has no churches. Believers who meet together must do so discreetly. Despite challenges, Teresa felt called to grow in her walk with Christ and to share the love of Jesus with her community.

It’s unsafe to discuss such topics openly, so Teresa turned to the internet for answers and found HabeshaStudent.com, the Amharic version of EveryStudent.com. She began emailing volunteers and staff who provide support to the website. Her primary concern? How to share the gospel without access to a printed Bible.

Efram, a volunteer with HabeshaStudent, introduced her to an Amharic Bible app for feature phones that he developed during an Indigitous event in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She now uses this app to share the gospel with her friends and family.

Teresa is especially concerned about helping family members know Jesus. “If I don’t share the gospel with them, who will?” she asked. Upon her urging, Teresa’s family has started reading one chapter of the Bible every time they meet.

Though unsafe to meet in groups larger than three or four, Teresa leads a Bible study out of her home. She’s passionate about evangelism, knowing what is at stake. “Whenever I think about eternity, I get shivers,” she says.“It is not good that our brothers and sisters will go to eternal death as a result of not knowing the truth.”

Because of Campus Crusade’s digital strategies ministry, Teresa now has the evangelistic materials that fit her context and that she couldn’t get locally. “Nobody around me was able to give me advice on how I could serve and do ministry, but even if you are 1,000 kilometers from me, God used you ( Digital Strategies) to equip me for this work.”

30 Sleeps Left

Thirty sleeps left. Excitement is building as we count down to our South Africa visit. Yes, we are coming for June and July to see our ministry partners (that’s you, our family and friends)!

Please pray for us as we put things in place for progress to be made on various projects while we are away. Operationally and on the Communications side of our ministry, there are many exciting developments to make the gospel known to unbelievers, but also to empower millions of believers with tools and training to help them become disciples of Christ who make disciples. We call people like this multiplying disciples. Our goal is to see 10 million multiplying disciples by 2020, empowered so that everyone on this earth will know someone who truly follows Jesus. Won’t you pray with us for this?

Here is one such tool:

“If you can use your phone, you can share your faith.”

GodTools (godtoolsapp.com) now includes 32 language versions of the Four Spiritual Laws evangelistic tract, as well as other tools, to help any follower of Jesus communicate the gospel clearly and simply. Since the tool was updated six months ago, it has been opened in 179 nations, daily usage has increased 500%, and each witnessing opportunity lasts a little over three minutes.

In one particular Middle Eastern nation, where it is illegal to follow Jesus, the app is being used about 100 times per month for twice as long — 6 minutes — per session. Only God knows the names of the faithful disciples who are sharing their faith there. We currently have no known missionaries in this nation.

You can check it out and use it as well!

We are thanking the Lord for you, and we hope to see you when we are in South Africa!

Accidents happen

Pack. Unpack. Pack. Unpack.

This characterized Stefan’s past four weeks. He traveled to Turkey, the Middle East, Thailand and Singapore.

While visiting, helping and learning from our different teams of co-workers, he also had the privilege of hearing stories about what God is doing. For example: One campus team in East Asia discovered there were 67 universities in their city. Their hearts broke for all the unengaged students outside their current reach. So by faith, they broadened their scope.

The team went out and bought several motorbikes, and divided up the city: each team member took responsibility for around 10 campuses. They began zooming around town, exploring campuses, sharing the gospel, and praying the Lord would raise up key volunteers on every campus.

By the end of the first year, they’d personally visited 55 campuses. They surfaced 24 key volunteers who began to share their faith and follow up others until nearly 180 students across the city were involved….and none of those 180 had ever met the original team!

Family News:

Marie was in a car accident, and though the vehicle was written off, we are grateful that she escaped with only bruises and burns from the airbags. Our church family and co-workers stepped in to help while Stefan was away and we felt loved and cared for.

Prayer Requests:

Thank the Lord for Stefan’s traveling mercies and for protecting Marie during the car accident.
Pray for wisdom and creativity as we work on different projects that will help our co-workers in their service to the Lord.
Pray for Stefan as he hosts a Global Technology Leaders’ Conference in South Africa from 5-11 March. Pray for the safety of the 50 participants that will join him there.
Pray for a good second-hand vehicle at a reasonable price to replace our destroyed one.

Thank you for enabling us to be involved in serving our missionaries around the globe!

Some Recent photo’s

Dell Highlights and Lowlights of 2014

We are grateful to the Lord and you our faithful partners for another year of service in His harvest field. Thank you!

Highlights of 2014

Kenneth and Monica are doing very well at school.
40 young people from a multitude of countries, who work at Disney, attended our American “Thanksgiving” outreach. 28 indicated that they would like to have further spiritual conversations after hearing the Gospel.
One of our neighbours accepted Jesus and we are building relationships with several others. Many are from other countries and despite some language barriers, it has been an exciting adventure.
The impact of our work on the lives of our missionaries as they use tools and resources our teams develop.
Your faithful prayer and financial support that enable us to see lives changed around the world.
Marie’s mom spend the month of November with us – what a treat!

Lowlights of 2014

We miss “our” people and country, despite many great visits.
The death of our neighbour across the street. We found him unconscious and did CPR until the paramedics arrived. The whole “911” experience was hard but bonded us with the widow.
Four of our South African missionary friends died as martyrs this year (they were serving with other organizations).
Feeling the urgency of a ripe harvest, and insufficient harvesters and resources to collect it.

May you be touched by the significance of the birth of Jesus this Christmas.

We are praying that during 2015 you will experience the Lord in new ways and will be very aware of His guidance, presence and peace.

Merry Christmas!
The Dells

Meeting Vladimir in Greece

Building capacity and sharing the gospel in Kyrgyzstan

“I encourage my team to share about Jesus Christ with anyone they meet. If you spend more than 5 minutes with someone, you have an opportunity to share the gospel.”

Vladimir & Erik Butz (Global Operations Leader) — Vladimir and Erik Butz (Global Operations Leader)

This was the testimony of Vladimir, from Kyrgyzstan. He has the heart of an evangelist, a passion to share Jesus Christ with others. The exceptional thing is that Vladimir leads the national operations team, not a field ministry team. This is a team of accountants, tech experts, office managers and administrators. Their primary calling is to provide support systems for our field teams in Kyrgyzstan. At the same time they are also living out a ministry of evangelism and discipleship as a way of life.

Even more amazing is that Vladimir’s team serve in a country that is nearly 90% Muslim. They take the initiative to boldly share the love of Christ daily. Vladimir shared with excitement about his teams evangelistic outreach. That week his operations team shared the gospel with more people than the students ministry team!

We love being a part of developing leaders like Vladimir, who are skilled at building operations capacity for the ministry, filled with the Holy Spirit and passionate about sharing the love of Jesus Christ.

Our time in Greece with Vladimir and other operations leaders was an encouragement and also a time to collaborate and trust God for greater impact. Thank you for your prayers for us and our children that stayed at home.

Please join us in praying for:

Greater impact & wisdom for our operations teams around the world as they work “behind-the-scenes”.
Stefan’s travel to Korea (18-25 October) to attend our East Asia staff conference.
Wisdom as our ministry trusts God for greater digital maturity and simplification of our global communication.
Marie’s Mom, who will be visiting us in November, for safe travels and a wonderful time together.
Irene, a Norwegian neighbour that prayed to receive Christ with Marie. Pray for her spiritual growth and her sons to know Jesus.

Click here to see some photo’s from Greece

Operational Force

How can we help to accelerate the spread of the gospel?

The Global Operations leaders of Campus Crusade for Christ will gather in Greece from 25-30 September to again wrestle with our part of this question. We meet every two years , for a time of collaboration, brainstorming, training and strategic planning that has helped tremendously to expand the impact of our organisation around the world. We call this the Operations Leaders Connection and had our first meeting in 2006.

Pray for the following:

Traveling mercies – Stefan travels via London to attend a meeting about “data protection” laws around the world.
Stefan will facilitate the Technology Leaders tract & Marie the Communications Leaders tract in Greece. Pray for sensitivity to the Holy Spirit’s leading and good interaction.
Safety for all our leaders traveling from around the world.
Keith & Kay Seabourn will stay with our children. Pray for stamina and strength for them.
Kenneth, Monica and Moonshadow to enjoy the time with their American “grandparents”.

We are grateful for your prayers and support!

Jesus Appears in a Dream

Eleven weeks of school holiday flew past in a jiffy and our children started school again. Not being the new kid on the block made a big difference to Monica but Kenneth had to repeat the experience as he started Middle school (for Grade 6 – 8). You can pray for him as he settles and stands strong against the temptations that comes with this age group.

One of Marie’s joys is to collect stories from around the world of what God is doing through Campus Crusade. Here is just one of the stories – this one from our colleagues in North Africa:

“Anna is a teenager living in North Africa and had been repeatedly sexually abused as she was growing up—even by supposedly devout men of her religion. She sought advice and comfort from a religious leader of her faith but received no satisfying answers.

About that time she passed by a house with a small sign which said, “Jesus is love.” Shortly after that, Anna failed a critical test at school and had thoughts of suicide. With nowhere else to turn she cried out, “Reveal yourself to me, ‘Jesus of love.’

Well, Jesus did appear to her in a dream and said to Anna: “Accept Me as your Lord and Savior.”

She immediately went back to the home with the sign about Jesus. They gave her a DVD called “Magdalena”—a version of Campus Crusade’s the JESUS film on the life of Christ. “Magdalena” presents the story of Jesus as seen through the lenses of women. Anna watched it three times, responded to Christ, and couldn’t stop crying for two days.

Transformed, she led her mother and sister to the Lord. She played the DVD for her fellow students, and in just one week 25 students came to Christ.

She is now a first-year student in university and leads a group of 30 women on her campus. These women are boldly telling others that Jesus is love.”

In the midst of all the reports of evil in our world, it is great to hear how God is working. Praise Him for His life-changing power. Continue to pray for mighty breakthroughs as our staff and disciples minister all across the world and thank Him for your part in it.

P.S. See our latest photos here.