The Read Family

Yes, we do.
It is almost winter in the southern atmosphere and our children have all grown quite a bit since last winter. We need clothes for all the kids. We are also planning a trip to Scandinavia to go and encourage and be with the people we got to minister to over a year ago. We are in need of 6 plane tickets to Sweden/Norway which is currently $5400USD.

Thank you for your prayers and support. We love you all. If you feel led to give, you can do so here.

What I’m about to tell you may sound ridiculous and beyond imagination. It is a story of Biblical miracles and may be difficult for you to believe. I must tell you though, I personally have no doubt that it is 100% true. Fabio is not a man who lies, I’m not even sure if he understands the concept of lying.

My friend Fabio comes from a closed country. It’s the type of country that I’m not allowed to say the name of because he might get found due to it. It is under Muslim law.

He accepted Christ as his savior 7 years ago when a friend of mine went to visit that country. Fabio worked at a hotel my friend was staying at and overheard their conversation, that’s when the Lord spoke to his heart and said: “this is the truth you’ve been looking for.” He found my friend later that day and said he wanted what my friend had, got his full name and then my friend went back home.

Something had changed in Fabio though and people in the village noticed. Eventually it came out that Fabio had become a Christian, he was no longer Muslim. The problem is, it is illegal to change religions where he is from so he was imprisoned. He was put in a room and beaten. His torturers would ask him to say Allah is the only way and then to deny Christ. He wouldn’t do it and so they would pull machetes from a fire and cut him on his side, his back, and his calves. They would torture him up to the point of death and then put him in his prison cell. He never denied Christ. Here is a man who had never read the Bible, never been to church, didn’t have any Christian friends and really didn’t know what he truly believed in but he knew that Christ crucified is truth and he would not deny it, even if it cost him his life.

One day in prison, he was recovered and expecting the next torture session any day. He was allowed outside in the prison courtyard for 10 minutes each day and as he stepped outside that morning he felt something in him push him to run and jump over the 8 ft. barbed wire fence, so he did. He did it without a scratch on his body, the way he tells me this story, it sounds as though he physically jumped or was thrown over the fence by something outside of himself. I think this must be the case because none of the guards or inmates saw him jump the fence or heard the fence rattle. They were completely blinded of the event.

He ran through the jungle back to his village over the next 24 hours. He knew the police would be looking for him and so he shimmied up a 25ft. tall tree. When he was near the top of the tree, he reached out for a branch but it broke and he fell to the ground. There were no broken bones, he eventually tried to stand up but he couldn’t. He felt as though he had to urinate but all that came out was blood. He laid on the jungle floor for a while and then felt a voice tell him to crawl to the nearby road “now!” He slowly made his way to the road knowing that he would be caught and this time, more than likely, killed. As he got to the road, his best friend was just driving by. His best friend had also felt a voice say to go to that spot “now!” His friend put Fabio in the trunk and brought him to a location the police wouldn’t know about. He then took his sisters passport and dressed Fabio in one of his sisters full Muslim Burkas, purchased a plane ticket to a close country and sent Fabio away. Fabio walked like a woman – this is a very funny part of the story when he tells it – to trick the security and they allowed him through. He was on his way, though he was in an immense amount of pain. 48 hours after falling from the tree, he landed in an airport in a foreign country and went to a hospital where he had surgery for his internal bleeding and kidney failure.

As he lay in the hospital recovering, he felt a voice tell him to go to South Africa, an impossible task. But, he looked back over the past week and decided there had been so much he’d done that was impossible, why not. So he started the insane journey of attempting to pass through multiple borders without any documentation. Two times the customs agents looked at his passport and then handed it back to him, once a computer wasn’t working so he passed through, and the final time 4 men got arrested and were wreaking havoc so they waved the rest of the bus passengers through customs without looking at their documents. He had made it, after weeks of traveling and seeing provision for finances through multiple miracles (like waking up only to find that he was sleeping on top of a $20 bill)!

As he made his way to a township he felt he was to go to in the North of South Africa he met a man from his hometown. They were excited to see each other and he told his friend that he was looking for the man who had led him to the Lord some 7 years before, a white man named Kevin. This man from his village had actually just met a white man named Kevin in February and had his cell phone number!

Fabio called Kevin. Kevin lived many hours away but came and picked Fabio up and brought him to his house. He gave Fabio a Bible in one of the languages that Fabio speaks and Fabio disappeared into the room Kevin had prepared for him. Fabio began to read the Bible for the first time after 7 years of calling himself a Christian. He read it 14 hours a day for 6 weeks straight. He was hanging around me and my friends a lot but not really speaking much. Once we were in a conversation talking about how fighting is a murderous spirit and we turned to Fabio to explain and he told us: “I know, on page 143 column 2 article 4 the Bible says ‘thou shalt not murder’.” We had to explain to him that people use the books of the Bible and chapters and verses to reference because most people usually don’t have the Bible memorized well enough to know by page. INCREDIBLE.

Fabio decided he wanted to move into the township because there were many Muslims there that needed to know the truth. You see, Fabio was only granted 6 months of refugee status in South Africa and then has to re-approved every 3 months. South Africa can reject his status at any moment and send him back to his country where he would immediately be arrested, imprisoned and possibly killed. He lives under an urgency that the gospel must go forth! He sees Muslims everywhere and boldly proclaims the gospel to them. He knows persecution and doesn’t care what harm someone might do to him, Christ must be known. Fabio lives under the tyranny of the urgent only his priority of urgent is one that stirs me deep in my spirit. I want to be like Fabio.

When Fabio first moved into Masi, we began to be worried for him because he would tell us that a man was standing in his house in the middle of the night and would tell him things he needed to do that day. It happened several times and so we began to ask what the man looked like. His description: “He is very bright, white hair, I can’t look into his eyes but want to.”

Fabio lives in Masiphumelele and has people visiting his shack under the cover of darkness so as not to be seen or found out. He has led many Muslims to Christ and continues to be known in the township as the one who can explain the truth.

The picture below is of Fabio and his first of many, many converts. I blurred his face per his request.

Please pray for Fabio, pray for strength, provision and most of all – a South African passport.

Also, per Fabio’s request, pray that the Lord would give you an urgency to boldly proclaim the simple Gospel message to everyone you see. To God be the glory!

Join us please in praying that the Lord would release healing over this nation, over the people, over HIV. The people in this video are our friends, specifically the blonde woman about halfway through. We have worked with her to setup a safe house for women that just opened up. The shots of the township in the video are of Masiphumelele.

I walked the streets just a week ago and wept as I saw a young woman watching her 18 month old daughter playing in a courtyard. The girl was the same age as my daughter Adi. As she watched her daughter playing and talking the mother smiled then leaned against the house and closed her eyes. She was in such pain, she was nearing death, AIDS was in full swing and my guess was she would not live to see Christmas. My heart broke. The Lord can heal AIDS, when Christ was on earth he healed EVERY disease, yet my faith is not strong enough to walk up to this woman and command healing over her.

AIDS is a pandemic here, this video shows ONE of the major reasons why. There are other reasons that I will talk about later but they are just so offensive to my heart that it’s hard for me to talk about.

This article struck me deeply. Maybe it’s the language the journalist puts to the world I now live in, I don’t know, but I have been struck by how jealously I am loved and therefore how jealously I now love this nation.

Some quotes from the article:

South Africa, a nation of 50 million, is the richest country on the continent but has one of the world’s lowest levels of employment. Most of the jobless have never worked, and a third of the employed earn less than $150 a month. Whites, who make up 9 percent of the population, have an average income seven times that of blacks.

I spoke in an earlier newsletter about the xenophobia that hit in 2008. This is what I was weeping about when I sat with those men from Zimbabwe. They are hated, despised and always living in fear.

South Africa is the main terminus of the Zimbabwean diaspora, and some of its own poor despise these newcomers for accepting wages so meager that they bring down the pay scale for everyone. In May 2008, paroxysms of anti-immigrant violence erupted in one South African city after another. Farai and one of his brothers retreated to Mukukuzi until the bloodletting passed. At least 60 people, many of them Zimbabweans, were murdered by mobs. Some 35,000 foreigners were hounded from their homes.

I’ve talked about Maxwell and the “witchcraft” used here, this story discusses it as well:

For weeks, he had been afflicted with nightmares in which he and his brother Washington were fighting enemies they could not recognize. According to their traditional beliefs, these dreams meant that someone might be practicing sorcery to bring them misfortune. “Witchcraft” was the English word the brothers used in explaining this. They did not mean to suggest anything of the occult, but rather the everyday possibility that one person could employ medicines and charms against another.

Please pray for this nation. It is a nation filled with hopelessness where there once was hope. There has been a great revival that swept this nation in the days of Andrew Murray. There have been prophecies that, if you ask anybody here what the Lord has spoken they will all tell you that a great revival is on it’s way and it will start in the Cape Town area then sweep across the continent. Cry out with us for God’s mercy on this nation.

Lastly, I want to say this: Look at what you have been saved from. The human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). If left to our own devices, we may just do the same. We saw the horror of this reality when Katrina struck and left tens of thousands stranded in the superdome and murders and rapes were a regular occurrence.

There is hope for a nation, (for all nations!), though terrible times of the Lord’s wrath may be justly poured out, He is the righteous judge and He seeks a pure and spotless bride for our victorious warrior King. Listen to the prophecy He sent Isaiah to proclaim and see the hope:

And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive’
Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed”

Lord, have mercy. Let the nations see with their eyes, Let them hear with their ears, Let them understand with their hearts. Lord, Let the nations turn to you and be healed!

The past few weeks we have seen incredible things! My prayers have turned to sounding like:

God, you are the God of miracles. You parted the waters for Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha. You made an axe head float in a river. You empowered a boy to kill a giant, lions to become tame, you healed every disease and you defeated death. There has never been a hint of a scratch on your battle armor. You are the victorious one. Nothing can stand against the power of your name!

My faith has come to a new level, I pray yours has now too. Our God is a God of miracles, prepare yourself because I’m now going to testify to two.

Me with Maxwell in a hair salon.

First, a few weeks back I spoke of a man named Maxwell who had been cursed by the witch doctor and hasn’t been able to walk for seven years. His leg muscles have shrunk to nothing because of the lack of use. I spoke to him of confronting the demonic in prayer and breaking the chains this witch doctor had on his legs. Isaac and I prayed for him. Two weeks ago we were having a Barbecue to celebrate all the Lord had done and who came walking down the street… did you get that? WALKING down the street to the barbecue? That’s right, Maxwell. Since our prayer time, he decided to seek God again, so he attended a local church service. There the Lord showed him that he was more convinced of the power the witch doctor had than he was of the Lord and the Lord’s ability to heal and protect him from any curse. In that moment Maxwell’s life was changed. He asked God’s forgiveness through many tears and he felt the witch doctor’s power break off of him. He then knew he could walk, so he stood to his feet and praised the Lord. I’ve been watching his muscles come back to full strength over the past few weeks. It is miracle nothing short of biblical proportions and yet, it’s starting to happen daily here!

Some of the children in the wetlands of Masi

Okay, why we were having the celebratory barbecue in the first place?

When we first got here mid-May, I had asked a young man who lives in Masi, who is the worst man in the township? Who–if he turned to Jesus, the whole township would know and revival would come–so that we can pray for him. His answer was: a man named Smalls, the purveyor of drugs and prostitution here. So, just like many before us, we prayed. In mid-July we were walking past Smalls house (everybody knows Smalls house) and the Lord interrupted a man on our team, Isaac, with the thought: “We should ask him if we can rent his house”. Everyone had a good laugh and then got quiet, staring at him in anticipation. Stirred with faith, two young ladies on our team boldly went and knocked on the door. A rugged looking soul answered the door and Isaac asked to speak to Smalls. The man immediately called Smalls on his cell phone and within seconds, Isaac was asking him if we could rent his house. We were told to call back the next day. So again, we prayed and the Lord caused this man to move all of his belongings out of his house and rent it to our team. We signed the lease on the 28th of July and members of our team moved in August 1st!

The Masi House

So we celebrate. We are looking to the future with hope and expectation. Our God is a God of miracles. Despite the scariness of what the news agencies say, God is still in a good mood!

The Wetlands of Masi - a large majority of our friends live here

 

Next steps for our family

A lot of people have been asking us what our current needs are, where are we at financially, etc. You can always see how close we are to meeting our budget here at this page:http://thereadfamily.com/partners/

While seeing the extreme poverty in Masi on a daily basis and all of the injustices that go along with that, it is difficult for us to ask for financial help. That being said, we are still in need of a large enough vehicle for the six of us. We have also been purchasing homeschool curriculum for the kids and are in need of some winter clothes for the growing children (extreme growth spurts, it’s crazy!) and finally, Josh has been planning a trip to Chicago in October and was recently approached with an opportunity to go to Tokyo for a few days and visit the YWAM base there. All said and done, that is around ten thousand dollars that we do not have. We know God is a God of miracles and so we are fully believing He will provide. If you feel that He is laying it on your heart to give, we are still in need of monthly partners which you can sign up for here: http://thereadfamily.com/partners/ . If you want to give specifically to our current lump financial need, please reply back to this email and I will send you more information.

 

We had a barbecue for some friends we’ve made in the township. We’ve been doing this every friday night in celebration of what the Lord has done that week. Last night some of the women broke out in worship and I caught it on video.
Worship in Masiphumelele

I fled him when His grace pursued.
I did despite unto His name,
And delved me into sin so rude,
And therein forged my soul a chain.

When captive to my own desire,
When blue with guilt and unnamed shame,
His long arm reached into the mire
And plucked me out. Blest be His name!

Shall I leave others in their woe?
Shall I ignore their cries who sink?
Forbid it, Lord! I’ll rise and go
‘Twixt Thee and them a link!

Unwearied may I lift the load
Of those who stagger ‘neath sin’s spell.
Stab my poor heart with love’s strong goad
To battle the powers of earth and hell.

Earth’s little span is far too small
To barter for the Judgment Day
When powers and thrones and wealth and all
Forever shall have passed away.

Oh, Day of days, when I shall be
The cynosure of ten million eyes,
Oh, my Saviour say to me,
“Well done!” as my eternal prize.

When unsupported I shall stand
Before Thy. Blazing bema seat,
Give me, my Lord, to understand
I did the will of God complete.

- Leonard Ravenhill

As the previous updates show, we are about to move into our permanent rental home. We are $650 USD short of moving in. We have been pinching and saving every penny we have and so on Saturday we felt the Lord saying to give the kids a fun day out. We took out $100 USD from an ATM to get some much needed groceries and diapers and felt like the rest was to go buy a cheap dinner at a mall and see the matinee of Cars 2. We were stoked, the kids were stoked.

We went to the mall and sat in the food court. I ordered the food and it was gonna take a couple of minutes so I went to buy the tickets to the movie and Rebecca ended up getting up from the table to get the food when it was ready. While she stepped away, someone walked by the table that the kids were sitting at and stole Rebecca’s purse. Obviously, the kids really were unaware of what to do.

Wow. So difficult. When we realized what had happened it was crushing to Bec and I. Literally all the money that we had left was taken from us as well as all that was in Rebecca’s purse. Anger began to rise up in Bec and I, Frustration, Bitterness, all those emotions, then we turned and looked at our kids. Fear was rising up in them, anxiety, the question of “what’s gonna happen to us” etc. We had a choice to make and recognized that this was a major parenting moment.

We talked about what must have been going through that persons mind and the injustice that they have had to live under to have made a choice like that. We discussed with the kids how that person doesn’t know that God is totally for them and wants to bless them. Then we chose to forgive the person as a family.

Rebecca and I felt that we were to still go to the movie with joy and excitement, etc. After the movie we sang and just encouraged the kids that the Lord is totally for us as a family and He is our provider, not a job, not anybody just simply the Lord. My phone made the “email” noise and I checked it to see that a close friend had just given us $15. We celebrated!

It was hard. It was honestly difficult to make the choice to rejoice in our [very minor] suffering but we did it. We woke up this morning filled with more joy and ultimately feeling like we had “passed the test” if you will. Praise the Lord. A friend of mine re-posted a blog about parenting this morning, it is amazing and very much something we are trying to do with our children. Please read The Parenting Blog.