Around that same time, Alece moved from New York to South Africa. The year before, she’d come out on a one-month mission trip and felt called to return. When she asked Niel if he could use her help for a year or so, he answered, “I’ve actually been praying for God to send me some help to start a ministry.” With both her heart and her suitcase bursting at the seams, Alece headed off to Africa and moved with Niel and a small team of helpers to Harrismith.

About 18 months after we arrived, the government declared the area the poorest region of South Africa. God truly sent us to the poorest of the poor.

We knew God wanted to use us to make a difference; we just weren’t sure how. We started by trying to meet the needs we saw, trusting that God would show us more clearly what He wanted us to do. We befriended the children who lived on the streets of our town. We earned the right to speak into their lives as we spent countless afternoons with them, getting our butts kicked in soccer, talking about God, and sharing meals together. We eventually got all the children off the streets and back into school.

We focused a lot of time on building relationships with local pastors. They were a little mistrusting of us at first because no other ministry had ever come into this area and stayed. They thought we’d be like all the others—leaving after we’d made promises we had no intention of keeping. But as time went on, they discovered we were different. We were in it for the long haul. Because we proved ourselves faithful to them, they opened their hearts to us.

As we worked with the street children and built relationships with pastors, it quickly became evident how large the need was for leadership development. God began to speak clearly to our hearts, bringing clarity to our vision and definition to our strategies.

We started teaching weekly Bible classes, which grew into our LaunchPad discipleship program. We began training pastors and church leaders; out of that, Hand in Hand was born. We took our interns to lead assemblies in public schools—the early seeds of our Leadership Summit AIDS prevention program.

In October 2000, we got married here in South Africa. We were broke, and had a record-breaking small wedding, but we were happy, content, and excited to see what God was going to do through us as we served Him together.

Back then, we called ourselves JCMI—Jesus Christ Ministries International. Four years ago we changed the name of the ministry to Thrive Africa. It seems such a perfectly-fitting name, we can’t even imagine ever being called anything else!

In 2002, we took the biggest step of faith we ever had. After much prayer and counsel, we purchased a 2,500-acre game lodge to use as our mission base. And we bought it for only $400,000! Whole pages could be written to recount that story, but suffice it to say that our faith was stretched like never before. Overnight, we had a mortgage payment that was more than the ministry’s entire monthly income.

Our faith was challenged again the following year when a fire destroyed 5 cabins and hundreds of acres. But we didn’t allow it to slow us down. We persevered and kept right on doing what God called us to do. This past year we had another fire which left us needing to rebuild our eating hall and main conference room. Rather than wallowing in discouragement, we’ve chosen to rebuild bigger than before—so that we can impact more people! God always brings beauty from ashes…

Since we moved onto our base, the ministry has grown in leaps and bounds. We’ve grown from a mom-and-pop-shop type of organization into one that is making a huge impact on the African continent. We’re reminded of the passage that says, “The people rejoiced because of what God had done… for everything had been accomplished so quickly.” (II Chronicles 29:36) When we look back at the past ten years, it seems as though God did things so fast!

He’s given us an incredible team of staff who’ve helped take things much farther than we ever could have done on our own. We are so blessed for all the staff and interns who have served with us over the years, and are especially grateful for our current team.

While our vision to train Godly leaders has never wavered, our strategies and methods have certainly been refined over the years. And they’re still being refined. We’ve learned a lot over the past decade, and we by no means have arrived. But we are proud of what God has done here, and we’re excited to celebrate that. It is absolutely incredible to look back and see how far we’ve come. It’s even more incredible to look ahead and see how much farther we have yet to go.

Brace yourselves. This is only the beginning!

Take a look back at some pictures from before the digital age.