Yesterday, (Thursday), was our first day serving at the Shepherd's Conference at Christ Baptist Church. At a few points during the day, I was working at the shoe-shining station, which turned out to be a good place to talk with some of those attending the conference. Two stood out.
The first one, David, was a seminary student from Botswana. He grew up in a charismatic church, and always had that background following him. He went to one or two Bible schools before he came to the seminary at Christ Baptist. He told me he had always gone through his life looking for the power of charismatic theology. His first one or two schools had also taught this idea of charismatic power, and yet he told me he still always felt unfulfilled by it all. He then came to the seminary here and was taught just directly from the Bible, and he said the first year he was pretty cynical because it wasn't what the power he was necessarily looking for. When he talked about it, he had a big smile on his face. He talked about how it was so fulfilling just to be taught from the Word of God, and it was so neat to see how God had really changed his life just through studying the Bible as is, and the joy he had in God's Word.
Also, I met Andrew, a pastor at another church in South Africa. He was pastoring a new church in his town. There had been a church that switched to speaking officially in Afrikaans (like Dutch), and he had started a new church in two languages, Zulu and another one. He told me he prepares his sermons in English, and then depending on who was there on any given day, he would deliver his sermon or lesson in either of those languages.
It was really cool meeting these people who share a passion for God and the Bible, and yet are from totally different backgrounds. Our God is great.

-Joel