by Allen Adriaanse and Donovan Grigg
God inspires, provides and blesses His people in active outreach to the community. In this month’s local church feature we hear how God is leading, providing and blessing His people in Greyton in practical outreach to their local community. Br Allen Adriaanse from Greyton SDA Church shares the testimony with us this month.
Early in 2022, we started attending church services at Greyton church after relocating to Genadendal, having served at Claremont church for about 20 years and having retired from my employer after 22 years.
We were impressed to start a program of serving meals to the community closest to the church as a Sabbath outreach effort.
When we set out on this project we naturally appealed for any donations from our "home church," from immediate family and from friends. This was accompanied by much prayer and the response was truly an indication that God was with us in this outreach to the local community. The support financially and materially was absolutely unexpected and overwhelming.
This ministry has been functional since June 2022 and, by God’s grace, we serve at least 100 meals on a Sabbath after Divine Service. This is managed by my wife who plans the menu, purchases and distributes the ingredients to three sisters at our church, who together with her prepare the meals at their respective homes on a Friday and bring it along to church on a Sabbath morning.
We have been encouraging the recipients from the community to join us in church for Divine Service but only a few individuals have accepted thus far.
Our pastor is very supportive of this initiative and is actively seeking financial support as we envisage building a Centre of Influence on our church grounds.
Recently, acting on inspiration by the Holy Spirit, we decided to reschedule the day on which we serve meals from Sabbath to Tuesday. The reason for this change is we are encouraging the folks from the community to come at 13h00 to join us in the church before the meal with the intention of establishing personal relationships with them. The plan is to commence these meetings with prayer and a short devotional.
As we continue in this vein, we wish to introduce them to the VOP Bible lessons, thus allowing the Holy Spirit to germinate the seeds sown and allowing God to use us as instruments in winning souls for the kingdom. We also plan to run cooking demos, mini health expos and workshops. We have also collected donations of clothing and household utensils etc., which we will be distributing to the attendees.
Please keep this project in your prayers as God continues to surprise us with His intervention and providential provision.
We hope you’ve been inspired by this month’s testimony from Br Allen Adriaanse of Greyton SDA Church. We invite you to please share your local church testimonies and outreach initiatives with us at WRNews@cc.adventist.org!