Eat. Pray. Save

These three area’s the Lord has been highlighting in our lives. Let us explain…

1. Eat

Our desire is to one day {when we get jobs} eat completely organic and local foods. Did you know that a family went on a 100 day challenge to eat organically and many health related problems went away and their good cholesterol increased by 50%?? We see many benefits and have recently watched a movie called “Food Inc” that has unveiled the secrets of where our food comes from. It’s actually scary, so if you are willing to take a risk to change: watch this movie!

2. Pray

We are in search for an organic church. What’s this you may ask?

“I mean a non-traditional church that is born out of spiritual life instead of being constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic church life is a grass roots experience that is marked by face-to-face community, every member functioning, open-participatory meetings (opposed to pastor-to-pew services), non-hierarchical leadership, and the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ as the functional Leader and Head of the gatherings. Put another way, organic church life is the experience of the Body of Christ. In its purest form, it’s the fellowship of the Triune God brought to earth and experienced by human beings.” –Frank Viola

We haven’t got it all figured out, but the more we study the New Testament and read books about church history, we have come to a mark of decision. We are hungry for unique, genuine, authentic fellowship that we read about in the New Testament, and somehow it’s missing today.

3. Save

God has put a high standard of faithfulness and integrity. As we transition into the “real world” we find ourselves trying to figure out how to operate in the American culture. A real question that was on our hearts was simply, “Do we rent?” – “Do we buy?” We came up with two conclusions: 1- Renting seems to be a waste of money. 2- We don’t have money to buy! But we can borrow! So that left us with big question marks… the more we’ve wrestled through it all we came to the realization that in life there are steps. We can’t have it all at once. Sometimes we think we can. Debt is not to be an option. We are going to try to go against playing the game some American’s play… get what you want when you want it and pay it off later. We want to be faithful with what we have and work for what we think we need. If we can’t buy it now, perhaps it’s not a priority?

The Next Chapter

For those of you who haven’t heard, we have left our organization ‘Youth With A Mission’. This is something that God has been stirring in us for about a year. We have been praying since then and around Christmas/New Year we felt like the time was coming. Our plan was to end after our trip to Africa… but even that looked different than what we thought. We both have a heart for long-term missions and wanted to move overseas. God has been transforming our view on things and we believe that God wants to equip us for the future. It is a time to learn new things, meet new people, to grow in our relationship with others, together, and with God. We don’t know what all of this looks like, but we have a peace knowing that the first act of faith was to leave YWAM. We seek God on where to live, where to work, and where to fellowship….

Latest Readings

We have read a book that has enlightened us on the past of the Church. It is very interesting to think about why we do things the way we do in Church meetings. Many of the ideas come from pagan roots and were never practiced in the early Church meetings. Not all of these things are bad but some are not Biblical...
This has lead us to read another book that is written to give the reader a better understanding about what is happening in the New Testament. The letters are in order from longest to shortest not in chronological order, and we only have one side to the letters that Paul wrote to the Churches. Because of this it is not easy to understand what is going on while reading through the New Testament. The book is written to show historical locations and situations and to mirror the letters to show what the other side of the story probably looks like. So, while reading this book the story of the New Testament comes to life and makes more sense.

Greetings from Zambia!

Hi Everyone,
We made it to Zambia last Sunday.

UPDATE FROM A WEEK AGO
We finished a week of the SBS.We learned about Genesis. The students read the book about 4 times in 3 days, and we finished it once. We like it here because we can walk down the street on break and sit at the beach for a bit or grab a bite to eat at a hamburger stand for cheap. We also like that there are about 15 nations represented in the SBS class, and many more on the whole base.
Once as we were walking to the beach to go read Genesis, a homeless woman stopped us and asked us to buy a Bible concordance. She thought we were probably from YWAM and needed help spiritually, emotionally, and financially. She was pregnant and her husband couldn't get a job. She had a very rough family life growing up and I(dewayne) got to share a little about the things I learned in class concerning the fall and how men became sinful and how it's was never Gods heart for this to happen and the only way to fix it is Christ. After hearing more of her sad story Tara prayed with her and we gave her some soup packets and bought the Concordance to help them. Her name is Christin if you would like to pray for her. She is due any day and her husband is looking for a job.
We went to a township nearby with the DTS and talked to the coloreds and blacks. I kinda felt like the rich whitey that was there to comfort them, but later I heard that they would rather listen to us than their family or neighbors that live there with them. We got to talk and pray with people and hear some more sad stories. It's hard to know if you should expect God to heal or if they just need to change things in their life. I don't doubt that God can heal but I also know we cant do whatever we want all the time and expect God to rescue us. Pray for us to know how to speak and pray into their situations.

CURRENT UPDATE

Our time in Zambia has been good. We got to take a mini honeymoon add on from our one in Savannah. We visited Victoria Falls which was amazingly beautiful. This was a moment I (Tara) have been waiting for for 2 years! It was a perfect visit and we walked around the park for 4 hours seeing the falls from many angles. We also went to stay in a village and stayed in a hut for the first time. We got a tour, ate local food, and DeWayne got taught some language by a drunk guy!

We next traveled to the capitol of Zambia- Lusaka to visit a fellow student (Stephanie) of one of our training schools. It's been great visiting with her. We will meet up with her later in the trip to see the ministries she has been involved with and start debriefing her from her time in Zambia.
Tomorrow we will be traveling to another city to visit Elizabeth, a Zambian teacher I (Tara) used to work with at the orphanage a few years ago.

That's all for now! Thanks for bearing such a long email! We appreciate your prayers!

The Bunchs

Tour of Cape Town

Today we went to Cape Town with Sarah and she showed us around the area that we have not seen being here at the base in Muizenburg. There is a lot of rich folk and plenty of European type development. The view in this part of South Africa is amazing!


We stopped by a beach near by and saw penguins.












We took a wrong turn into a subdivision and saw baboons on the side of the street chillin. One was eating yogurt until the dogs came and chased them onto the roofs.

Week one Muizenberg

We made it in at about 10pm. We had an amazing trip. The flights were smooth and no lost luggage! Sarah and James (Sarah used to be on staff in Nashville) picked us up from the airport and showed us the base and our room. Today they took us to eat fish and chips at the beach (there were seals swimming in the water) and we asked questions about South Africa, the Muizenberg base, School of Biblical Studies, and a local church planting ministry. Sarah walked us around the neighborhood and showed us the ropes a bit.

The weather is warm but very windy. It is supposed to get to 90 this week. We are surrounded by mountains and the ocean. It seems very modern here and there is a good mixture of people. Many rich and many poor. Over all it feels more like Europe in this part of South Africa.

We are going to sit in on class (School of Biblical Studies) this week starting Monday.

Since Last Week

We are down to six days before we leave for South Africa. We have been planning more details of the trip and are noticing all the little things we have overlooked. This week we got our vaccinations, bought travelers insurance, and did a lot of research on bus/train stations in South Africa and Zambia. YWAM Nashville will pray us out Wednesday, and our flight is Thursday afternoon. Please keep us in your prayers.