A few weeks ago we told you about a woman from Mozambique, standing in the rain with her three-year-old boy, asking strangers to take her child.
We couldn’t stop thinking about them.
So the next day, we went back.
We didn’t have a plan. We didn’t have a strategy. We just went, because that’s what you do when Jesus puts something on your heart and won’t let it go.
We found them in a hijacked building. No electricity. Barely any light. The kind of place that swallows people — the kind of place you don’t end up unless life has taken everything from you.
But inside that darkness, we found something we didn’t expect.
People who love Jesus.
A small community of broken, beautiful people who had opened their door — their room, really — to whoever needed it. Former addicts still fighting. A young mom with a toddler. People the city had discarded. And right there in the middle of it, a warmth and a welcome that had no business existing in a place like that. Except that Jesus goes exactly where He has no business going. That’s kind of His thing.
We sat with them. We listened. And in that room, one young woman — we’ll call her Marié, 27 years old — told us she was done. Done with the streets. Done with the addiction. Done with the life that had been eating her alive.
We’ve heard that before. We’ve learned not to push, not to pressure. But something about the way she said it felt different.
So we made her a simple offer: If you’re serious — meet us Thursday at 10am. We’ll take you.
Thursday morning, she was there.
We brought her to rehab that same day.
She’s still there now. It’s hard. Nobody pretends otherwise. Recovery is not a moment, it’s a war. But she’s fighting it. And she’s not fighting it alone.
And the little boy?
We got word this week that he will be taken to Maputo, to family in Mozambique.
He’s going to be safe.
We want to be honest with you — none of this was us. We didn’t have the right contacts. We didn’t have a system. Half the doors we knocked on stayed shut. There were moments we genuinely didn’t know what to do next.
But God did.
He knew about a hijacked building with no electricity and people inside who loved Him. He knew about Marié and a Thursday morning that would change her life. He knew about a little boy who needed to get home to his family.
We just showed up.
Will you help us keep showing up?
Every week we go back into the streets of Johannesburg’s inner city — into the broken buildings, the rain, the hard places where most people look away. We go because Jesus goes there. And we go because people like you make it possible.
If this story moved you, please consider giving today. Your gift — whatever the size — puts us back on those streets. It funds the fuel, the time, the hands that knock on doors and don’t stop until something opens.
You can give in South African Rand, US Dollars, or Euros. Every gift goes directly to the work here in Johannesburg.
There are more stories. There always are. We’ll keep going — thank you for going with us.
