What a big moment it was when Laurie Smit boarded the plane for Guinea, West Africa on June 18! Our very first South African student missionary trained and sent by AFM South Africa! Laurie was sad to be leaving her church family in Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal, but she was eager to answer the call to missions that God had placed on her heart. On the Sabbath before she left, I asked her if she was nervous about going to Guinea, which is currently experiencing an Ebola outbreak. With her trademark smile, she replied firmly, “I know that the Lord will protect me in every way, and that His holy angels will be there with me.” Laurie is now staying with the Coker family and taking French lessons. Her early blog posts tell of her thrill at befriending a Muslim Susu lady.
Laurie learned much from the missionary training in Dundee in January and February. AFM trainers, Laurence Burn and Dale Goodson, took the students through a life-changing curriculum to prepare them for service.
On 16 July, our second student missionary, Maryke Reynhardt, launched to Cambodia to join the Greenfield family and serve as an English teacher, accountant and program developer. Maryke grew up in Bloemfontein, Free State, and she has a heart burden to bring the love of Jesus to unreached peoples. She can’t to start with the new school in Cambodia. She is an enthusiastic young lady with a firm will, a former member of the Abundant Life Group. We wish her all the best and pray that God will use her in a mighty way.
Since June 2012, when AFM SAT started in South Africa, we have faced lots of challenges. First, we had to work through the steps of registering as a nonprofit organization. With the help of God we are just about there! Some of our student missionaries struggled to find sponsors, but God came through for them with miracle after a miracle. Awareness of our mission is spreading as we visit many camp meetings, youth camps and churches, and enthusiasm is building in South Africa. Pushing through the challenges, we aim to make AFM known all over South Africa.
We are hoping soon to recruit our first career missionaries, and more student missionaries continue to apply. Like the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 1:21, “for [us] to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

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