Hi. It’s been 7 weeks since I arrived in South Afirca and God has blessed me with a great time and good health here 🙂 Unfortunately, two weeks ago the Covid-19 virus started to affect us and the entire Mission Descipleship Training here on the base in Pretoria.

Regardless the situation in RSA is much better than back home in the CZR, the local government has stopped any unnecessary travelling and bigger meetings. The whole SRA has almost 1200 infected people (info from 29. 3. 2020). Myself and the whole team are all alright and nobody has registered any symptoms of being infected by the virus. The base environment is very safe. Coming back home wouldn’t make any sense as far as travelling by plane is too high of a risk, so I don’t plan coming back early. The base is a private area with electric fence and none of us leave (except of food buying trips) and no one external is entering. We keep precaution rules, like no hugging, social distance 😀 washing hands often, disinfecting common surfaces and areas etc. Last week, the president of SRA announced a 21 day lockdown (from 26. 3. to 16. 4. ) making the general precautions even more strict. You can watch the annoucment below.

All of this means, that we had to temporarily stop all of our ministries outside the base = no afterschool for children, no evangelisations at campus and no ministry to the drug addicted in Pretoria. No visiting local churches on Sundays. Last week of the training was devoted to MMT (Mission Mobilisation Training), we learned how to invite other believers to get involved into missions and also learned a lot about closed countries that are in need of the Gospel, but are dangerous for Christians. The MMT was to host a lot of external participants as well as speakers, but no one external could come because of the virus situation. So the lectures are also affected.

Despite all of this, I am grateful for the situation as it is. They could have also sent us all home… We are praying for the issue locally and internationally and we try to focus on the advantages that the lockdown brings to us, not what it takes away. We have more time for studying, praying and fasting, we can go deeper with our relationships, encouraging one another and building unity among the MDT team.

Thank you for messages and encouragement. 🙂

Be at peace and healthy! Pája