News & Notices

Newsletter - May 2009

Greetings to all, and to our newest Community members, who have just enjoyed the Emmaus Experience, WELCOME, from the Port Elizabeth Emmaus Board, and ‘family’ to which you now belong.

2009
is the year this community celebrates 10 years

of blessing pilgrims along the road to Emmaus. Our first set of Walks in the Port Elizabeth area were held in July of 1999. With just a handful of members, who had ‘walked’ in various centres around South Africa, and trained alongside those communities to gain experience, it was a very exciting time to put everything in place for God to Bless this very area, which, at that time also included the George area.

The Walks #1 through #16 were held at Waverley Hills campsite, where the small team gathered weeks before the time to help the camp owners prepare the venue to accommodate the Walk. We had paint donated, and painted out the areas that became the Conference Room and the Chapel. The camp owners added more bunk beds and spruced up the Dining Room. There was a great deal of community spirit and servanthood to enjoy as we met to begin making our very first agape gifts, Talk and theme banners, and source equipment.

In 2002 we had outgrown the campsite, and moved to the stunning premises at Sumcay. We have been blessed out of our socks with this God-given place, and the amazing, accommodating servanthood of those who run the campsite – all now members of the PE Emmaus family.

 ♫♪ Plans are in place to arrange a blessed time of celebration in November this year, and it would be the most amazing experience if everyone who has walked, worked and been blessed in P E could make an effort to attend for this massive reunion. Details will be made known once the arrangements have been finalized. ♪♫

To God be the Glory !!

IMPORTANT DATES for you to diarise:

A message from our Community Lay Director

Dear Community and newest members of the Port Elizabeth Family,

I greet you in the awesome Name of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

One of the main objectives of the Emmaus Walk experience is to guide you into a deeper, more meaningful under-standing of the abundance of God’s Love for you. It provides a platform to refresh and/or revive more fruitful, joyful and effective servanthood in ministry back in the world.

In Acts 17:6 the Bible talks about the new church that turned “the world upside down” with love. This ideal changed over the centuries and in most cases moved from being motivated by love, to become motivated by duty or responsibility.

Emmaus has succeeded in renewing vast numbers of disciples, sending them back into their local churches to be agents of agape love, because it provided them with a fresh awareness of just how much God really loves them. Emmaus is a “spark” that gets a fire rekindled.

No new knowledge or skill is obtained during the weekend, just a new goal to listen for the prompting of the Holy Spirit to find ways to raise the intensity of love in your communities, through acts of enthusiastic, awesome agape love. You become a true saint in street clothing.

I pray that this has been your experience over these 72 hours, and that you will take with you the servant attitude and abundant love that you found here on the road to Emmaus. Keep the fire burning by getting more deeply involved in the activities of your own church, but also in keeping contact with your new family of Emmaus. I encourage you to join an accountability group and come and experience the fellowship, love and joy all over again at future gatherings and Walks.

De Colores,
Ed Hill
 

A message from our Community Spiritual Director

Terry Beadon

Emmaus family, beloveds in Christ our risen Lord, Easter season greetings to you.

Just after the 1917 Russian Revolution, a Moscow communist leader and intellectual hijacked an Easter Day church service, and during 30 minutes of brilliant oratory totally refuted the Resurrection of Christ's corpse from the grave. At the end, a soft-spoken elderly man in the congregation asked if he could reply. The atheist in the pulpit told him he had five minutes. “I will only need five seconds,” came the gentle answer. Turning to the congregation, he shouted the traditional Easter greeting "Alleluia, Christ is risen !." The answering shout from the mass of worshippers was thunderous and triumphant, "He is risen indeed ! Alleluia !" .

No attacks can disturb the faith of those who have personally met Jesus Christ. We know He is risen, because we have personally experienced His love and His healing presence. He has softened our hard hearts, sensitised our consciences, exposed our self-centred and self-destructive habits, and inspired us with His unconditional love that accepts us just as we are. We personally know a living, risen Saviour to whose feet we go when we have sinned; an ever-present Friend and Shepherd who is our guide and help in temptation and weakness, and our encouragement and strength in hard trials. He is the One who pleads our cause before the throne of God, and a living King who has won the battle over death and the grave – and so can lead us through the day of our dying to eternal life. We know Him personally. We've met Him. We walk with Him.
He is especially and refreshingly real to those who have just completed walks 41 and 42. May you never lose that lovely intimacy, that sense of His healing and comforting presence, that warmth of His love that makes everything else pale and tepid by comparison.

“Alleluia, Christ is risen !” May His resurrection life fill your day today, and your Fourth days forever.

With great love to you in the Name of Him who is Love.
From Terry
 

CHRYSALIS

Dear People of God

Do you have a passion for the well being of our youth? - Come sign up to serve or sponsor a young person for our first flights in the Port Elizabeth Community. What a wonderful opportunity to help make a difference in the lives of our young people.

A Chrysalis flight is the name given for the youth/young adult “Walk to Emmaus” because it symbolizes growth in the lives of the young people. Chrysalis has its roots deeply planted in the “Walk to Emmaus” and is a 3 day spiritual renewal that provides an opportunity for participants to grow in their faith and to experience Christian love and support and to make new commitments in their journey.

Chrysalis is open to all youth between the ages of 17 and 24.
30 Participants will be accepted per week end on each of the flights and you are encouraged to get your application forms to the Emmaus Registrar as soon as possible. Application forms can be downloaded from the Port Elizabeth Emmaus website.

Each young person who attends Chrysalis has a “sponsor” who supports and encourages him/her before, during, and after the Chrysalis experience. Sponsorship is the way in which the Chrysalis experience is passed on from person to person, reflecting the manner in which God purposefully reaches out to people through other people. Without your sponsorship of caterpillars for Chrysalis, this outreach of becoming beautiful butterflies, will not be possible.

We would like to encourage you to join a Chrysalis team. Volunteer forms are available on the pe-emmaus website or contact the LD’s (Anthony van Eck and Lianne Kritzinger). Please, people, we need your support in this. You do not have to be a young person to be on team. Any person under the age of 100, who wants to be an instrument in the hand of God to help make a difference in the lives of our young people, can volunteer.

Do you have a passion for the well being of our youth?

Fly with Christ, Alwylene

For our IMPORTANT DATES and contact details:
See page 2 of this document !!!!
 

COMMUNICATION

The easiest way for us to reach the majority of our Emmaus family is by means of e-mail Newsflashes and occasional notices in the freebee newspapers. Please seek to print out for folk whom you know are not connected, as a gift of agape, so that we can, indeed, keep in touch with as many of our family as possible.
 

What happens at “Gatherings”
and who should attend?

Various gatherings are organized in an effort to bring the ‘Family’ of Emmaus together. Not only do we enjoy meeting up with those who have shared this incredible journey, but we also bring along our own family members to share in the delight of such gatherings … families within the Family … binding together.

Gatherings take many forms and are held at various venues. However, three things are certain ….

Emmaus people know how to

• enjoy food together !!

• enjoy fellowship together !!

• enjoy worshiping our Lord together!! 

We have, over the years, gathered at various Churches in Port Elizabeth, and in the Karoo at Steytlerville and Jansenville. We have also gathered at Jeffrey’s Bay, at Kenton-on-Sea and at Bushy Park Farm. Each gathering has something unique and special to offer, so the idea is NOT to miss any one of them! We have enjoyed speakers on various subjects, experienced special ministry Services, sleep-overs, sightseeing by boat and game drives. Who knows what lies in store?!

Make an effort to be there whenever you can. Fill your vehicles by inviting others to travel with you, and by so doing, enjoying Emmaus fellowship even while getting to and from the gatherings.

Another way to meet up with friends made on your Walk is to attend Sponsors Hours (6pm Thursdays of each Walk), Candlelights (6.30pm Saturdays of each Walk) and Closings (2.30 pm Sundays of each Walk).

One of the great Agape Gifts you can give is to volunteer your name on the Walk Prayer vigils; you can volunteer to pray once over a weekend, or once a day over a weekend. Remember, from your own experience, that Prayer is the foundation of Emmaus, and community members who cannot be there for the pilgrims, can certainly be there for them through prayer.
 

Agape gifts

Each set of Walks is, amongst other sacrificial blessings, abundantly blessed with wonderful small gifts, all made with loving fingers before pilgrims are even invited to be on a Walk. God knows whom He will choose as pilgrims, and so, in faith, the gifts are made for the ones He will choose. The abundance of the Love of God goes far beyond our human understanding. Scripture confirms it over and over and over.

• Ps 33:5 .. the earth is full of his unfailing love.

• Eph 3:17-19 And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the Love of Christ, and to know this Love that surpasses knowledge-- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

• John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that He gave his onlybegotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

When we (this now includes you) make our agape gifts and give them on an Emmaus weekend, it is to drive the point home that …

“…. God loves you with abundance that blows your mind!”

How many agape gifts, you ask?

Per Walk we ideally have in the region of 65 separate types of gifts.

• For a Ladies Walk: pilgrims only = 36 gifts; conference room team plus pilgrims = 65 ; full team plus pilgrims=75.

• For Men’s Walk: pilgrims only= 30 ; conference room team plus pilgrims = 50 ; full team plus pilgrims = 65.

• If really industrious and generous for one set of Walks = add the men’s and ladies together!

• Chrysalis: Girls only = 35; conference room/dining room = 65

• Chrysalis Guys only = 35; conference room/dining room = 65

☺ Please let Blanche Hohls (Tel. 082 7501811), the Agape person on the Board, know what you will make, for whom (ladies / men / everyone / Chrysalis guys / girls) and how many. This helps her to plan ahead.

** The way to package and submit your agape gifts: pack them into a 2litre ice-cream tub, or appropriate size container.  Clearly mark the container with the number of gifts and for whom (‘ladies’ ‘men’ / ‘Conference Room’ ‘Dining Room’ ‘Beds’(this will be those for pilgrims only). Also put your own name (and if a group, the name of the group)as reference to have the left over items returned to you .. to hopefully top up for the next Walk.
 

EMMAUS P.E. CD

Enjoyed the music on the Walk, did you?!? To purchase one of our very own, [PE Emmaus muso’s], CDs, ask Judi Slade, at Tel. 042 294 1429 or Cell. 084 604 2226, or see her at the Post Walk Gathering.
 

MUSIC

Are you a musician, or budding musician, or wannabe musician? Great!! Being on a music team for a Walk is such a precious ministry. The music brings much joy, fun and deep worship to the Walk and is an incredible blessing to the muso’s, the rest of the team and the pilgrims.

Ken Collier, who holds the Music portfolio on the P E Emmaus Board, is seeking to encourage all folk who might wish to be a part of the music teams for future Walk weekends, to make themselves known to him. Contact him: kenc@incledon.co.za.

In his own words, from his first e-mail:
Some of our objectives over the next year or three are; 
   Get back in the fire and get hot for Jesus
       Pray, Love, Fellowship, Multiply, Encourage.

• To gather as the “active, serving muso’s” at least once every 6 weeks for prayer, bring, share, “jam” and fellowship sessions.

• To pray for protection as musicians in the Emmaus Community

• To encourage other Emmaus muso’s to join our group with the view to sharing the load.

• To identify and mentor potential Walk P & W leaders.

• To change our mindsets from being musicians to being Spirit driven, Praise and Worship (P & W) warriors.

• To examine each song in our songbook and institute chord changes where necessary.

• To add new songs to our repertoire. (The ones that you feelwill bless the pilgrims)

If you are a musician, don’t be shy ... identify your talent and become involved in Emmaus music.
 

ACCOUNTABILITY GROUPS

Meeting together in small groups gives us the opportunity to
1. keeps the fire alive,  2. keeps us accountable, [remembering our promise we made to “count on Him” as He “counts on us”],  and 3. also provides opportunities to design and make agape gifts for the next Walks. (A variety of at least 65 gifts per Walk are required, so the sooner we begin the better it will be.)

Find the group in, or closest to your area, call the ‘Contact’ person and make a plan to attend, or simply “bug” your sponsor to put you in touch with his/her and another group.

Date Added: 2009-05-20

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