The Grahamstown Festival Outreach this year was a great success!
With six team members witnessing during the 11-day festival and two more of us joining for the last weekend, there was no shortage of energy, testimonies, answered prayers, and miracles!

We don’t know the far reaching effects of the outreach or what the Lord will do in each heart and life, but here are some statistics we can share with you.

• -Over 17000 Gospel tracts distributed
• -170 people accepted Jesus as their personal Saviour
• -Over 400 Activated magazines were left with individuals ministered to
• -Over 250 Gospel of John and Bibles given out
• -Many subscriptions to the Activated magazine
• – Lots of people prayed for, encouraged, and taught more about Jesus.

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support! You helped make this possible! Please see some testimonies below.

 

• (Shelly) We met Patrick three years ago and we have been giving him tracts, Activated and Gospel of Johns for his school in Port Alfred. Last year we prayed together for various requests. He came with his six year old son Litha who prayed with us to receive Jesus. This year being our fourth at the Arts Festival we were able to meet again. We again were able to share Gospel of Johns, Activated magazines and new comic tracts. He was so grateful and thanked us again on behalf of himself and his wife, he explained what a blessing the literature had been. We then discussed various challenges he was facing in his life and family and we encouraged him and promised to keep them in prayer.

• I met a young woman from P.E., she said that she would like to receive the Activated magazine and would subscribe when she returned home. I reconnected with her a couple days later and she said that her father had passed away unexpectedly the night before. And what made it most difficult for her is that he wasn’t saved.
  We chatted some more over whatsapp. I encouraged her that I believe that God is a loving Father who wants as many people as possible to come to Heaven and I believe that God is merciful. I shared the verse that says:….He is not willing that any should perish (2Peter 3:9). She said that she believes the same. She still writes thanking us for the prayers and Gospel material.

• One day I had been meeting a lot of people and distributing a lot of tracts, but hadn’t felt like I was making much impact. So I prayed for the Lord to help me find just the person that needed encouragement. A few minutes later I handed a student a tract and asked if she needed prayer. She burst into tears and was apologizing for the tears especially since we were strangers to each other. She said she was feeling so overwhelmed in so many areas of her life. I found a park bench for us to sit on and she went on to explain her points of stress: exams are coming up, she would like to begin working this year and not have to wait till the new year, needs finances, her and her boyfriend would like to marry soon and she wants to make her parents proud of her. She felt like she wasn’t making headway in any particular point and felt like there isn’t much that she can do. So we prayed together and promised to keep in touch. She was so much happier after talking and  committing her requests to Jesus. Praise the Lord!

•  (Ester) I met a man who looked at the tract “only 2religions”  and stopped me to ask who the artist was. I told him about Anthony and how he was a full time missionary, he loved it and asked for more, I gave him “cut out the middle man” and “imitation salvation blues” and he said “man, this guy’s so good” he said he wasn’t a Christian but he knows that we as Christians can help so many people with Jesus. We left on friendly terms and he said he’d visit the anttracts.com website.

• I gave a man the tract “let’s cut out the middle man” and he asked me “what is this” and I told him it was a message from Jesus so he opened it and starts reading out loud “are you tired of being shown Bible verses that mean more to someone else than they do to you?” He looked at me and said ” I will read this!” A foot in the door is all it takes!

• (Chris) I met X (a lawyer that had received Jesus with me two years ago) again with Ester and we had a very good conversation. He introduced me to his friend as ” a very good and close friend of mine”.. what an honour. Another amazing thing is he said he could feel me praying for him last year when he had some very difficult and major cases to deal with and I phoned him. I had promised to pray for him, and did. He said he felt the effects and saw situations wonderfully resolve! We talked about his work and life in general and he was very friendly, happy to see us, and you could tell it meant a lot to him.

• I sat down in the middle of the campus field with a guy who was there social media-ing on his new phone. We started talking and praise the Lord before long I was able to work it around and gave him an tract. He looked through the Imitation Salvation Tract. (chuckling as he went) After sitting quietly for a bit, I explained the simplicity of salvation and the wonderful blessing of having Jesus with us every day, 24-7…not just in eternity but now too! Also spoke about Revelation 3:20.
  Eventually he looked at me and said, ” so you’re saying that I can just say ” come in” to Jesus and he will come into my life? That easy?” I said “yes, that’s the bottom line.” He said, ” I just don’t know what to say to Him” so I told him he could repeat after me and he agreed, so we prayed! Afterwards I asked him ” do you feel that?” And he said ” yes! It feels so peaceful!” Praise the Lord! We talked more and I gave him a Gospel of John and an Activated magazine. He is a filmmaker, director, actor, and choreographer. He said he will be in Cape Town in a few weeks so we swopped details and hope to meet up again soon!

• Met a lady who said she grew up in a Christian home but she was nervous about praying right there to receive the Lord. She really gets the gravity of it. So I showed her the prayer on the tract (Something Missing) and she gave me her number and said to contact her tomorrow…that she will pray it at home. I told her when I call I look forward to good news!

  I phoned her the next morning and she said yes she prayed the prayer last night and that she was busy but would like to talk later.
  Then she called me in the evening evening to ask for prayer – some family issues and because of the resulting stress she can’t sleep. I prayed with her on the phone and she thanked me over and over. I told her to start reading her Bible more and she asked me to please sms her some references of good places to start reading so I did. Then the next morning she smsed to say that she slept very well and thanking me for the prayers. Praise God!

• I started talking to four young guys and the Lord led me to address most of the witness to two of them. (As it went on it seemed that these two were more or less the “leaders” of the group. They listened very respectfully and I was able to tell them a little of my testimony and also impress the need for a faith based personal connection with Jesus as the awesome Creator. They seemed to gel with that and eventually I offered to pray with them and said ” look, if you pray with me now you’ll have the eternal assurance of your place in Heaven, plus all the benefits of having Jesus by your side through life. The one guy kinda looked at his friend and then said, ” so guys, I think we should do this, right?” Everyone affirmed, ha, and when I took off my beanie they all took off their hats, beanies, etc in respect and they all received the Lord! I gave them each my contact details, a Gospel of John, and an Activated magazine.

• (Hajni) Two of us were witnessing on the street outside a pub. A girl came walking by who looked really down. We handed her the “Is something missing?” tract. She stopped and said “ wow. What is this all about?” We explained that we were missionaries there to tell people about Jesus. She was already saved but said “ I think this meeting was meant to be cause everything is going wrong for me at the moment.” She had lost the keys to her flat twice in the past two days and didn’t want to call her landlady to ask for another one. Her ppt got stolen at the beginning of the year, she replaced it, but now with the new visa laws its getting really hard to apply and she was feeling so overwhelmed by everything, that she decided to just roam the streets, when she literally bumped into us. We prayed for her situations to be resolved and for the Lord to give her peace. When she opened her eyes, she said “ Wow. I just know everything is going to be alright. This meeting was meant to be I can feel it.” We called her two days later and her key problem had been sorted out. Praise the Lord!

• (Angie) Yesterday, a man stopped me on the street where I was witnessing. He was selling handmade jewellery and his friend sold handmade Africanized purses. So he stops to ask me if I am advertising for church or what. I explained what we are doing. Solomon asked me for help as he has terrible dreams and screams the whole night long. At this point Abbas, his friend, came over and said it was so terrible that he cannot sleep either. They wanted us to pray over them for good sleep but said to come back later when it wasn’t so busy. We did at 6 p.m but he was still busy so Shelly and I prayed claiming the verse ” I will both lay me down in peace and sleep for thou o lord only makes me dwell in safety.

  Today we went to see how they were, both men were smiling. Solomon said “I slept the whole night beautifully. I put the paper (tract) you gave me under my pillow and I slept like a baby. You are very powerful people. That paper is powerful!” I said, “We are not powerful. Jesus is powerful. He is the one who gives good sleep. Jesus helped you.” They were so excited about it and asked us to give them more.

•   A young man was sitting on the street curb. He glanced up as I was walking down the road so I offered him a tract. We started conversing and as it turned out he had heard about Jesus but had never prayed to ask Jesus into his heart. “But I feel like now is the right time,” he said. We prayed together and afterwards I said, “Now that you have Jesus in your heart, he will never leave or forsake you. When something good happens, you must say ‘Thank you Jesus.’ and when something bad happens you say, ‘Thank you Jesus for keeping me.,”He nodded very seriously and ran up to meet a man returning to his car. (He was a car guard)I continued on my way but hadn’t gone far when a shout stopped me. I turned to see the young man with whom I had just been conversing, running down the street waving a R10 note over his head. “Look! Look at this!” he exclaimed.” Normally they give a one or two rand. But I pray to Jesus and Look! Ten rand.” I joined him in laughter but reminded him, “ You have to thank Jesus!”“Yes! Yes!” He shouted waving the money over his head. “Thank you! Thank you, Jesus!”Later in the day he met two other members of our team and told them the testimony of how Jesus helped him. How sweet of Jesus to do that extra bit to show a young man that He indeed knew his needs and cared enough to provide.

• Gavin was loitering about by the Rat and Parrot waiting for a friend, when I handed him a tract. He was a little surprised but took it and asked me why I was there in the evening. As soon as I said missionary, he sorted of nodded and took a step back. But then instead of leaving he began to talk about his life. He said he didn’t know why he was in Grahamstown. He lives in Kimberly and just had this idea to come to see the festival for the weekend. After three and a half years of marriage, things were not going well between him and his wife. Although he was saved, he didn’t have a relationship with the Lord, and felt very far from Him. This gave me such a wonderful opportunity to tell him the truth about Jesus and his love for us, how it never leaves or changes, even if we feel we have strayed. Gavin
  While I was talking, I had a terrible fit of coughing, so much so that it was hard to speak. Every time I started to say something, I would cough and even choke. I knew then that it was really important that I pray with Gavin as the Enemy was fighting so hard to shut me up. So I croaked “Can I pray for you and your marriage?” He eagerly agreed. I prayed for him, asking the Lord to heal the rift in their marriage, and fill the empty places with peace, love and unity. When we parted ways, he was smiling with a spring in his step and hope in his heart. PTL!

• (John) I met a lady a couple years ago and she wasn’t really that interested. But, through following up on the phone and sms/whatsapp etc, (she started getting out weekly devotional over whatsapp, she began to change. Then in the beginning of this year (2014) she phoned me to say she gave her life to the Lord! Wow!

  This year at Grahamstown we were able to meet and she was so happy to see me. She apologized for not making time and being difficult the previous years. She testified how the Lord has really changed her and how different things are becoming. Also how much she is enjoying the devotionals and how she wants to stay more in touch now.

  She is a teacher in an underprivileged community and she is using everything she knows and that we send her to try and reach out to the kids and youth. I encouraged her to take it one step at a time and the Lord would help do the rest. What a change and what a miracle!

• (Mike) Yesterday we met a guy who was sitting and waiting for someone and then I went to speak to him and he got saved. A few minutes later his friend who is a Christian a born again came along and was supper excited because she had been praying for him for a long time. That was an answer to her prayers because she has been witnessing to him for some time. But he was not open to the idea previously. We met him again today and he said we can meet with him to share the Word of God!
  

• On the very first day witnessing we met a man who stepped outside his office for a quick break. After giving him an Activated magazine, tract, and telling him about Jesus, he was very positive about our work. He wanted to know more about who we are, and what we do. After listening intently he shook our hands, wished us well, and we continued on our way. A couple of days later, I got a check and decided to pop by his office to see how he was. He was really happy to see me, and invited me into the boardroom. We talked about many things, one of which was how the Lord has always been a part of him, and how he could see God’s Hand in and throughout his life. He attended many churches in the past, and had even tried starting up a cell group. But it didn’t really go according to plan. Everyone wanted to be the leader, arguing about who should lead the group. In the end it all broke up. I showed him how he could receive our monthly magazine online, as well as get our weekly audio, fax of life, and inspirational blog posts. He was so turned on that he excitedly said: “I would like them all!” Later that afternoon, I received an SMS from him: “Hey Mike, how are you doing? I just need to let you know that you are doing your work man. You met me at a very bad space in my life, and you prayed with me. I felt better. Today you visited and we talked. I feel that it is by divine intervention that we met. It won’t be easy but I pray that you make the same difference in others lives. God bless you.” Praise the Lord! Of course, I’ll be continuing to follow-up on him, as well as send him material to read and keep his spirits high.

• (Aphelele) We met a beggar guy who was sitting on the street and we came to him. In fact we were speaking to his friend. And his friend was already born again and his friend already believed in Jesus but had a bad experience and he wanted nothing to do with Church. So some of the beggars in town about 20 began their own Church to worship God as their Saviour together. They didn’t have a Bible so we gave one to him and they were super excited and they invited us to meet with them the next day cause they wanted to hear more about God. After we left him he was just asking the Lord who are these people and if we were sent by God so he asked God for a sign and immediately while he was saying that to God someone called him from across the street called him and gave him a job. And so that was his sign and that is how we were invited to share more of Jesus with them. They don’t have anyone to teach them the Word so I encouraged them that the spirit of the Lord is with them now and that they must read the Bible mostly the New Testament and God will teach them.

•  More Reactions:
• On the last day of outreach right after we came out of the van to begin witnessing a man who was passing by, turned around and said “Are you the Jesus people?”. I said “Yes!”. He then asked if he could have more varieties of gospel tracts.
  Then a few minutes later I heard a car hooting and this guy was hanging out of the car window shouting: Jesus loves you. We received various joyful exclamations such as these which really encouraged us!
• A group of girls walked by and we gave them some Imitation Salvation and Good Advice tracts. As they walked away we could hear them laughing and showing the tracts to each other.
• So many people asked for more tracts to give to their friends or for another tract that they hadn’t gotten yet! The reactions were amazing!