Inspire, Winter 2003

28 Winter 2003 Amy Wood ’02 shares how the Lord has led her to dream big dreams for the people of South Africa. God placed a dream within me at the age of 16 when I dedicated my life to missions at one of my church’s annual missions conferences. Dr. Wendell Kempton, then president of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE), spoke about reaching the lost. I was struck by his passion and knew I wanted God to use me as a missionary to spread the gospel to those who have never heard. My Cedarville University experience was a great influence on my dream of becoming a missionary. What a joy to receive a Christian education among some of the finest professors! Rather than merely telling me what to think, my social work professors, especially Cindy Sutter-Tkel, challenged me to really think for myself. I also learned to approach social work from a Christian worldview. George Huff was a great spiritual mentor to me and had a tremendous heart not only for us students, but also for the people with whom we were working. He had a tremendous impact on my life and gave us a hands-on education of working with people. The daily chapel speakers were also a highlight of my experience. I was especially affected by Jim Cymbala, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, when he came to speak at one of our annual missions conferences. While at Cedarville, I also had the opportunity to travel with a team of students and staff to a small village near Pretoria, South Africa, where Evangelical Baptist Missions has an AIDS orphanage. For one month in the summer of 2001, we cared for orphaned children while their full-time caretakers took a much-needed vacation. These children had special physical needs because many of them had contracted AIDS from their deceased parents. By the year 2010, there will be more than 2 million South African children orphaned by AIDS with no place to go. We also worked closely with Temba Baptist Church, the only church in the area. We led vacation Bible school for children and teens. We saw God work in incredible ways as many accepted Christ. The most devastating part of the trip was learning about the effect AIDS was having. We saw death taking its toll in the orphanage, as well as in the small village of Temba, as church members gave testimony of family members, young people, and parents who had died of AIDS. I took pictures at the local graveyard, which we visited on two occasions. On each visit, we saw that dozens of new graves had been dug. My heart became deeply burdened for these lives cut so short by AIDS. Even more than that, though, I was burdened by the need for Christ, the only one who can heal hearts from sin. I used my last year at Cedarville to pray about how I might play a part in spreading the gospel to these people. After graduating from Cedarville in 2002, ABWE appointed me as a career missionary to Durban, South Africa. In April 2003, I traveled to Durban to spend time with the missionary team and the members of the various church plants. They are a tremendous group of people. The team has planted seven churches in Durban and the surrounding areas, and their goal is to have a new church built every year. I was excited to see how the Lord is working to meet that goal! The team has also started Baptist Bible College of Natal, patterned after Baptist Bible College (BBC) in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. Some professors from BBC have joined the Durban team and are planting churches and teaching at the college. One of the highlights of my trip was visiting a church plant among the Zulu people. There are more than 100,000 Zulu people in the area surrounding the church, and there is no other evangelical witness. Three came to know Christ Dreams for Durban B y A m y W o o d ’ 0 2 It is amazing how ready these people are to accept Christ — they just need to hear!