Good News Across the Globe

Leslie: Marisa Badenhorst says God is doing exciting things in her home country of South Africa.

Marisa Badenhorst: We immediately started with the True Woman 101 Bible study. We got some ladies together, and the ladies were so excited. And since that time, we have grown to about twenty-four groups.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe, and the Truth That Sets Them Free. It’s Friday, November 25, 2016.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: What comes to mind when you hear the name South Africa? Well, if you’re old enough to remember the days of Apartheid, you may think of division, conflict, oppression, and unrest. Because of some recent events, when I hear the name South Africa, I think, God is at work.

Today I want to share some of what God is doing in the hearts of women in South Africa. There’s a group of sisters there who have a God-sized vision for their country. They’re praying that as women there come to know freedom and fullness and fruitfulness in Christ, hearts will change. And those changed hearts will lead to actions and attitudes changing, and that will lead to change in the whole society.

They’re praying that division, conflict, and unrest in the past will be healed, and communities in South Africa today will thrive thanks to the power of the gospel.

Now, there’s a group of women who traveled all the way from South Africa to Indianapolis this past September for the True Woman ’16 conference, that’s the conference Revive Our Hearts hosted just several weeks ago. And today, we’ll get to know some of that team better and find out some of the exciting things that God is doing in that part of the world.

Marissa: My name is Marisa Badenhorst. I’m from South Africa. I listened to a message of Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and then I started following Nancy and listening to her message. In that manner, I came across Revive Our Hearts.

In 2006 we moved from the rural areas in South Africa to the city. My husband is a pastor, so we were involved in a small congregation—not that small. Actually, in some terms, it was big. It was like a thousand-plus members. But then we moved to the city to a very big congregation, 15,000 members.

It was a difficult time for me, actually, going through loneliness. During this period, I realized that I should go into full-time work. But at the same time, I realized that there was a calling on my life for ministry. I had such a process with the Lord where I sought His face and tried to find out what He was asking of me. I told Him, “I have to go to work so that we can meet all the ends with the salaries.”

Then I attended a conference where a lady asked, “Do you love the Lord enough that you will put everything on the altar?”

That day I told Him, “I do love You enough.”

In the beginning of 2014, Retha [Revive Our Hearts South African Ambassador] met me at church. She said that she’s sensing in her heart that I should go with her to True Woman 2014.

I said, “Retha, I think that’s impossible.”

And she said, “Just pray about it.”

I said, “Okay, I will.” And I forgot about it because it was so way out of my mind.

She again met me at church, and she said, “Are you praying about the True Woman conference?”

I said, “I have to admit I haven’t, but I will.”

Then I started praying. I told the Lord if He wants me to go, He must really show me clearly because it is a lot of money for us to come here. He has to provide for me, or how I will do it? And then I prayed about it, and I had this burden, and I felt like, “Oh, I wish I could go.”

One day after church service that morning, a man came up to me, and he told me he knew about this. He wanted to tell me that he got a payback from his medical aid which he didn’t know about. He doesn’t know how it happened, but he got this amount of money, and he felt prompted that he should give that money to me to come to America to attend the conference. So he paid for my expenses in full.

I was so thankful. I came with Retha, and oh, I was fired up. I said, “Lord, yes, now it’s women’s ministry in this organization.” But I ended up just the same—all doing all, everything, except for women’s ministry.

And then 2015, in January, I told the Lord, “I have to have time out. This burden, this passion, this vision, it feels like it’s starting to die, and I don’t know where to go. I don’t know how to do this.”

During that time, Retha affirmed me. She said that she’d joined as ambassador, and asked if I would consider being a part of the board of ROHSA [Revive Our Hearts South Africa].

I said, “Yes, I would love to do that.”

But then she said, “And would you pray about joining me in building up this ministry in South Africa?”

I said, “Whoa! Lord, You know my heart. I would really love to do this, but You have to tell me. I cannot just leave the other organization.” So I had a lot of preparation, praying, seeking the Lord’s face. And the Lord was so good.

He answered me in such a clear manner. He gave me Scripture, confirmation from my mentors, and the release of the other organization with their blessing. And, really, the Scripture He gave me and the vision that Retha had made it so I was absolutely certain that this was what I had to do.

I joined the board of Revive Our Hearts South Africa. I am amazed. I am really in awe of what the Lord is doing in South Africa. I can’t believe I’m part of it. I can’t believe actually that I’m sitting here again, and again, that the Lord provided for me to be here [at True Woman '16]. Yes, I’m so thankful.

Leslie: We’ve been hearing from Marisa Badenhorst, one of the women God has raised up to carry the mission of Revive Our Hearts in South Africa. As you probably know, this is a country that has experienced a lot of injustice for many years, and society is still segregated in many ways.

Part of Marisa’s vision for Revive Our Hearts South Africa is for women of all backgrounds to meet together at the cross and find freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ. So while the team is translating Revive Our Hearts’ messages into Afrikaans, they have a burden for those who don’t speak this language. Marisa has some creative ideas for how to reach out to many more women.

Marisa: Since Retha and I joined this ministry, it was as if our eyes were opened, and we realized, “Whoa! What’s going on with women’s ministry in South Africa? What resources do we have?” We realized that there is such a need for women’s ministry, and especially in our culture, the white Afrikaan people. There’s really a lack of resources and a lack of women’s ministry and Bible studies.

I think that’s why we are eating this up as if we can’t do it fast enough. But the challenge is that it’s also in other cultures. The situation is the same. We have eleven official languages. We come from a privileged background, and the community is a privileged community.

But the majority of people in South Africa come from very bleak circumstances, very, very disadvantaged communities. Some people don’t even have access to water. So you could think, How would they have access to the Internet or any other resources?

The challenge is so big. Retha and I keep on praying and keep on talking about this. We are so excited about reaching our own people, our own culture, with all these wonderful resources of Revive Our Hearts. But how are we going to help the ladies of the other cultures? So we know that is a big challenge.

We are so thankful that the True Woman 101 book has now been translated into Afrikaans. That will be on our shelves in December. We are really excited, but still, the challenge is: What about the other ladies? They are the majority. Our culture is, I would say, less than five percent of the population. So the majority is out there. And that is the challenge.

We joined hands with an international organization called Davar. They have a little audio device, and they load the messages, spiritual messages, on to that device. But first and foremost, they load the Bible onto that device in all the languages. So we can have that audio device with the Bible in all of those languages.

And what we did was, we loaded the podcast of Revive Our Hearts, but it’s English, on to that device. Now, many people understand English, and that's why we’re so thankful, because many of those people are also illiterate. So they can just listen.

So that is a wonderful way. That’s a door that we know the Lord opened up to us, and that’s one way of reaching them. But still, in South Africa, in your terms, it would be $40 for a device. So we need the money to get a lot of those to distribute amongst the women.

We are praying that the Lord would bring women from other cultures, from other backgrounds so that we can meet with them, ao that we can identify leaders in those communities in those cultures, so that they would take the baton and run with the message in their culture with their language.

We’re starting to get a group of ladies together which we knew shared our vision and passion. Our committee of seven people is actually running with the vision. We immediately started with the True Woman 101 Bible study. Retha and I got some ladies together. We were a group of five. The ladies were so excited, and they started groups, and I started my own new group.

Since that time, I think we have run about twenty-four groups with the True Woman 101 studies, of which six are online. Now the third True Woman 201 group has just started, and two of them have already completed. We are so excited about that material. It’s as if the ladies can’t get enough.

Actually, my own group told me, “You can go to America, but don’t you come back without True Woman 301, or something similar.” They are so excited.

Then there’s the online ministry, which is really exploding. We took hands again with another organization, Women at Work, who wanted us to help them with the material of Revive Our Hearts, with the message of Revive Our Hearts. So we joined together. They do the technical stuff, and we brought the material to the table.

It’s such a convenient manner for women, especially the women that are working, corporate women. They can dial in, and for an hour we come together. We do it via Zoom—which is very similar to Skype [online video chat]. We take our mugs of coffee, and we have coffee together, and we take our tissues and cry together. It’s like you are together—you just cannot touch the one beside you. So that is really a wonderful manner in which we are reaching people.

And from that, we also had webinars once a month to get the message of revival to the women. So the Bible study groups are really growing rapidly.

Then we had the wonderful, wonderful opportunity—and we know that it’s only the Lord that could have done this—in our Afrikaans community. The biggest denomination in South Africa (called the ministry) comes together on a national level with nine representatives of the nine regions.

They invited us to come and share with them what we do at Revive Our Hearts. They gave us almost the whole day of the three-day meeting to come and share what we are doing. And we felt, Whoa! Lord, You did this for us. You came through for us to give this to the whole country actually in one day.

So the ladies were so excited. One lady said, at the end of the day, “I don’t know what you’re going to do. You can still decide, but I am running with this. I am taking the baton, and I’m running.” She’s in one of the regions.

She immediately started with the 30-day challenges because she said wanted to wait for the Afrikaans’ translation of True Woman 101 at the end of the year before they did it. She will start with True Woman 101 in January, but in the meantime, she started with one of the challenges. I think there were fifty-three ladies in her church involved in that.

The youth leaders in the church said, “We want to do this also.” So they signed up the youth with, I think, The Power of Words Challenge. The youth started doing this and told their parents, “Look at this. We have to be accountable to each other, and we are challenged.” And their parents got involved.

The church board came and said, “Qhy don’t we do this as a church?” I signed up for another challenge, and that involved this whole church with these challenges.

One lady told me she would take it to the other churches in her region. I think it’s seven other towns that she will challenge them to do the 30-day challenges.

So one lady took the baton and is now running with that in that region. We believe that the Lord will do that all over South Africa, in His right time, at the right place.

It is actually wonderful that we can be part of this organization and that we can have access to these resources to us in South Africa that don’t necessarily have all the resources, don’t have all the money for what we need. We are blessed by everything that we receive from Revive Our Hearts South Africa. It’s such a blessing to us to be equipped by you—in books or in studies and the radio programs.

We are so thankful to Revive Our Hearts USA. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to do it, because South Africa is not a country with a lot of resources. We know that you are also dependent on the Lord for your resources and people that buy into the vision of Revive Our Hearts USA, that see that this vision is big. It’s for the whole world. It’s for people who don’t have access, who don’t have all the resources. It’s wonderful that these people who are listening to the Lord and opening up their hearts and opening up their hands and give to the work of the Lord. We are thankful to them also.

Leslie: We’ve been hearing from Marisa Badenhorst, part of the team responsible for the new Revive Our Hearts’ ministry in South Africa. Our team caught up with her at the True Woman ’16 conference.

At that conference, attendees got to know one of Marisa’s associates Retha, and others who want to live out the beauty of the gospel around the world.

Bob: Retha is that how it’s said?

Retha: Retha.

Bob: Tell us about what God is doing in South Africa and how this vision got birthed with you.

Retha: We are really excited about what the Lord is really doing in South Africa. When I came here the first time, the Lord called me to become an Ambassador. Then when I got back, I shared it with a friend of mine, and now a team of seven ladies come together on a regular basis. We start reading the message. Now we’ve got twenty-four True Woman 101 groups. And True Woman 201, that’s a great group. For those that haven’t done True Woman 201, I think you all need to do that one.

Then we started with online Bible study groups. We partnered with Women at Work. So we’ve got six online Bible study groups for women that maybe can’t do the Bible study at church. They do it in their offices. So that’s wonderful to see that happen. Then we’ve done four True Woman conferences for about eighty people, I think, at the time.

The other great thing that we’re involved with is this little audio Bible. It’s got a solar panel at the back, and we put some of Nancy’s teachings on this with an audio Bible in different languages. We have eleven official languages. So we put the Bible in the language of the people, and then we are going to try and start training illiterate women to become Bible study leaders or session group leaders. They can listen to a program of Nancy’s. All of us in South Africa, or most all of us, understand English. So they’re going to listen to the program, and then, in their own language, have a discussion group about that.

Bob: So the programs and the Bible are on there in eleven languages?

Retha: Yes.

Bob: Wow! That’s amazing.

Now, you’re from Mexico?

Myrna Ortiz: Yes, I am.

Bob: And how did you first hear about Revive Our Hearts?

Myrna: Well, I got on to the Internet, and I listened to one of the programs.

Bob: I’m just wondering—did you know about it?

Myrna: No, I didn’t. I was just looking for something that could help me to forgive. I knew that I had many things to forgive because I was not going to be able to have a good relationship with God if I didn’t. So I just typed forgiveness, and the first thing that came out was an interview by Nancy. I just heard that, and God used that.

He has used all the different programs to free my soul and to go into the gospel and to repeat the gospel every day to myself that I need it every day. I’m really grateful for this ministry, and I can see now why this ministry has been so blessed. It’s because we—a lot of people—believe in prayer.

I don’t know what I had in mind before I came here. I said, “We don’t know how many prayers have been said, maybe there’s no one that knows our name, but we have been an answer of a prayer, I’m sure. It is like God's affirmation of this ministr. Prayer has been so important. So I’m really grateful.

Leslie: Wow. Bob Lepine has been talking with women around the world who have a passion for bringing the message of Revive Our Hearts to their countries.

I love the story from Mexico, how the Lord took this program and got it in front of a woman who needed to hear that exact program at such the right time. He really can take our loaves and fishes and multiply them in ways we didn’t expect.

Nancy, what goes through your mind when you hear a story like that?

Nancy: You know, when our dear sister from Mexico was looking for help and turned to Google, I’m so thankful that the Lord led her to Revive Our Hearts.

The reason ReviveOurHearts.com was there for her in both English and in Spanish is thanks to listeners like you who support this ministry financially. Your investment in this ministry is not just some abstract number. It’s not just a donation of $20 or $200. No. Your investment looks like the story we heard today. You support Revive Our Hearts. That results in a woman who was desperate finding hope.

Now, almost half of the support that we receive from listeners through the entire year comes during the last several weeks of the year. So at this time of year, we get on our knees. We turn to the Lord, and we earnestly ask Him to meet the needs that are needed to support this ministry for the year ahead. This year-end, we’re asking the Lord to provide just over $1.8 million in donations.

Now, I’m so thankful for some precious friends of this ministry who have seen what the Lord is doing. They’ve heard stories like the ones you’ve heard today. They’ve seen the changed lives that have resulted from their investment in this ministry. And they want to not only give themselves, but they want to encourage you to help meet this year-end need. So they’ve offered to match each gift given between now and the end of the year up to $600,000.

When you give to Revive Our Hearts by December 31, you can help us meet this challenge amount and then go far beyond it.

So would you pray about what the Lord might want you to give to help meet this year-end need? And then would you join us in praying that God will provide all that is needed out of His infinite resources and grace?

Thank you so much for being a part of what God is doing through Revive Our Hearts as we show women how to live out the beauty of the gospel.

Leslie: All right. I hope you won’t wait until the 31^st. Call today to 1–800–569–5959, or you can go online to ReviveOurHearts.com.

Hey, don’t miss Revive Our Hearts on Monday. All next week, Nancy will give you the background to some of your favorite Christmas carols. Please join us Monday for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.