Brandon & Julianna Jones

The Norman Transcript published a wonderful article about Brandon and I's work last Friday. I thought I'd post a link to it here so that you can read it as well. It is a pretty good summary of our time over the past six months and our thoughts about it.

Challenges so far:

I think we're finally over jet lag, but it took about 6 days for our
bodies to start feeling normal. I feel bad for Josh and Laura, who
came over to see us the first night we were back. I was like a zombie,
and finally had to tell them that I just had to go to bed because I
couldn't stay awake any longer. It was 9:30 p.m.

Rich American food has taken a toll on our stomachs. We didn't realize
it, but we've been eating much fresher, healthier foods in Cape Town.
When we got back to Oklahoma, we immediately wanted to have all the
stuff we couldn't get easily in Cape Town: burgers, Mexican food, ice
cream, root beer, etc. We've decided to ease up, and are sticking
mainly with salads when we go out to eat.

Delights so far:

People, people, people! We have been able to spend LOTS of quality
time with friends and family here. We were kind of afraid we would get
back and no one would want to meet with us or hear about what we were
doing. Not true! In addition to great hangout time with friends and
fam, we've had a lot of important time with people sharing about what
we are doing in Cape Town. God has answered our prayers (and yours!)
that he would lead us to just the right people with whom to share our
vision. We've had lots of meetings this week and everyone has
responded very positively. We've had about five new people tell us
they want to support us financially monthly, and others that are still
considering. We've also had a lot of people commit to partner with us
in prayer.

So things are going well for us. Please continue to lift us up in
prayer as we are in the States. We are going at a pretty fast pace and
spending a lot of time with people, which can be really tiring after a
while. But God has been so faithful to provide us times of refreshment
and encouragement each day. It's amazing to see how people all around
the world have a mutual desire to see Africa empowered and uplifted!

Because we're coming back to the States for about two months, I had to say a (temporary) goodbye to many of my new friends here. With one woman named Hope, who we've written about here, we had an especially poignant goodbye. She said she'll never forget how Brandon and I pursued her. She was surprised when we walked through Masi in the pouring rain to visit her at her shack. It was then that she knew that we really cared about her. It surprised her, because she never had thought she was anything special, but this act showed her she must be.

I was reading the beginning of the book of John this morning, and I was struck anew by the idea of the incarnation. It says "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory…." One translation (I think it's the Message, because it's the one Brandon always uses when talking to people in Masi) says that Jesus "moved into our neighborhood." And then it goes on to say that "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known."

How incredible that in order to show us who God is, God came to us in our own form!

I've been thinking about this a lot, because essentially that's what Brandon and I are trying to do here in Cape Town. We're trying to incarnate who God is to the people we meet here. We walk around in the rain and come into people's homes because we want to show that God cares about the people of Masi. That's a (very) small picture of what Jesus did. God didn't make us come to him (he knew we'd never make it!), instead he came to us.

So we're going to the people here. We're going to the poor, the refugees, the foreigners, the neglected. And we're saying, "God sees you! He loves you, and he sent us all the way from America to tell you this!"

We told that to one man who we met in Masi. He was the epitome of broken: homeless, jobless, the black sheep of his family, and drunk. But when we told him he was special and God loved him, he broke down in tears. He said he had never felt loved by anyone in his life. But that love made all the difference to him. He looks like a completely different person now! And it's nothing that Brandon and I did, except that we were there. And God used our presence in Masi to reach into a man's life and change it from the inside out.