Information, Updates and Action Points
It’s a new year! 2022 is here and God is with us and we are excited about what is in store for us and you as we continue on this journey of loving God and making His love known to others.
For those of you that might not know, we are back in South Africa. For a number of reasons (which you can read here), we decided to return from the ship and start this season of home assignment a bit early. The purpose of home assignment (also known as furlough) is to spend time resting, reconnecting with friends, family and partners, and preparing for a coming season of ministry – this could include further partner-raising, education/training, visa applications etc.
Before we share some stories about the time back home so far, we wanted to share some of practical matters that are high on our to-do list for the next few months:
1. Vision Trip to Austria
A Vision Trip is essentially an extended job interview. Dané and I are planning to travel to Linz, Austria from 4 to 20 February, to spend some time with the leaders, teams and ministries of OM in Austria. We have been invited to people care, and church partnership & mobilisation work with OM Austria. While we feel confident that this is where God is leading us to serve, we want to make sure that we are listening as well as we can to His voice in this. We believe that a Vision Trip will help us better understand what it will mean to live and serve amongst not only the OM teams, but also the local people.
Prayer: We have a visa application appointment at 09:00 on Monday, 10 January. Please pray that this will be grated, particularly since travel from South Africa to Austria is currently very restricted.
Prayer: Please pray that our flights will not be cancelled or postponed and that all the COVID-related arrangements would happen as needed.
2. Accommodation – attention Durban peeps!
We expect to be in Durban for most of our home assignment while we investigate and prepare to possibly serve with OM in Austria. If you are able to help us with a vehicle or accommodation (preferably 2 separate rooms and we are willing to share a place with others) for any, part of, or all of the following dates 1 March – 30 April and 1 June – 31 July 2022, please email cindy@homeground.org.za
Prayer: We realise that most people are probably not able to help with a need like this, but you can still pray that God would provide not just accommodation, but the right accommodation at the right time.
3. More Partnership
We are incredibly grateful for everyone that has been journeying with us over the last 3 years – 1 year with YWAM and 2 years (and counting) with OM. We are particularly grateful for our Partners, who have been standing alongside us in the work we have been doing, giving financial support, encouragement, prayer, advice and helping us keep going through the highs and the lows.
As we continue on this journey we are going to need more Partners in order to follow God into the places He has for us to work and serve. We would love to invite you to consider intentionally partnering with us in one (or more) of these ways:
Prayer Partnership – While we know that ALL of us should be regularly communicating with God, both as part of our relationship with Him and on behalf of others and the world we live in, we also know that some people have specifically been given prayer as a ministry purpose. If prayer is in fact something that God has specifically given you to do we would love to have you partnering with us in prayer. We would love to have a dedicated, trustworthy group with which we can share high priority, and perhaps sometime sensitive prayer requests with, both related to our personal journey and ministry, but also from the broader work that OM is doing.
Financial Partnership – As Missionaries serving with OM, we are not paid a salary by our home church or the organisation, but instead we are required to raise our own gift-income support through once-off and monthly financial partnership. While this can be a daunting task at times, we are excited that it allows us to invite others to contribute financial towards the specific Kingdom work of caring for, encouraging and coaching Missionaries on the field in order to see vibrant communities of Jesus-followers amongst the least reached.
We anticipate that we will need between EUR 3500 and 4500 per month to cover the ongoing living and ministry expenses as we follow God’s leading to serve with OM in Austria. We are praying for Partners that will not only give financially, but will also give us advice, be a listening ear at times and keep us accountable to what God has called us to do.
We know that you might be thinking “but what I have to give seems like too little”, but we also know that every bit counts, and each of us can be a little more mobilised towards the task of every tribe and every nation knowing about Jesus. So even if you can only start with R50, €5, £5 or $5, we would love to connect with you if you feel God leading you to partner with us.
Prayer: That God would bring the right people, at the right time, giving in the right ways to stand alongside us in partnership.
Praise: For the myriad of ways that people have been obedient to God and partnered with us over the past 3 years – we would not have been able to do what we have done without each of them.
Family close, and from afar
Family is constant, even if location may change.
We have had the immense privilege to spend Christmas with John’s family and New Years with my parents, while being able to reconnect and catch up after nearly two years apart. The girls have absolutely loved being spoiled by their grandparents and aunts and uncles, and we have been able rest and go through re-entry within the safety of family support nearby.
While our location has changed, and the family we are physically present with is different, we have still been able to use technology to message, phone and video call with our family onboard Logos Hope, and provide a place for unloading and listening while they went through a really difficult time as a community. This feels both strange and familiar, as many things seem to be during our time of adjusting to life back ‘home’.
One of the biggest lessons we have learnt over the past 2 years is that family is not only restricted to biological connections, but that God calls us to love and serve the family of believers around us – the church, the body of Christ. We can choose to see the people around us as family, and love and care for them in the way God intended, and that not only benefits them, but also us. In a time where people all over the world are lonely and feeling isolated, physically restricted in terms of travel and COVID protocols, we can still choose to make family close, even if family is also far.
Prayer: Please pray particularly for the crew onboard Logos Hope as they are physically far from family, and that they would embrace the family of God in the form of the community around them.
Praise: Praise God that He provides people around us to be family, and for the ability to spend time with biological family in South Africa during this time.
The Benns 