City Bowl of Milk

I am in a totally cool place right now. In the process of getting my head around the culture of the City Bowl in Cape Town. Straight up, I love it. The music, food, people and vibe are truly original. I won’t begin to try and describe it yet, but I will say that 10 years ago I had a radically different vision of God had for me in Africa. I dig it.

Aaron Marshall
Gratitudinating

A Tender Slap in the Face - The Prodigal God by Tim Keller

What a book. I have always imagined my story to be inline with the “prodigal son”, but after reading this I realized I am just as much the self-absorbed and self-saving “elder brother”.

Keller spends some time digging up the roots of the elder brothers anger. That was probably the most fruitful section for me. I was able to see the roots of my own anger and judgment. There is a part of me that still clings to the thought that its me doing the work, its upto me to save these people…That person does not deserve my grace father… I should have a say on all of this. Just like the elder brother, I lack awareness and understanding of the Fathers words “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours”.

Wow. So needless to say the book was convicting and revealing. There is so much more I could say about this book, but I would rather say just read it. My big take away in summary is that I have been craving a deeper knowledge of God’s love and this book has really helped me down that path.

Aaron Marshall
A Repenting Elder Brother

August06

Hunting Ministry in South Africa

While we were on our short vacation. Got a call from a recent new friend Anthony Jacobs, inviting me to go hunting with him. He has a friend (Rufus Luttig), who runs a personal hunting business as a ministry. It was really an awesome experience, If you are ever in South Africa I reccomend looking this organization up.

This is a Blesbuck that I got that day. The hardest part is negotiation with Nichole where we are keeping the horns.

Aaron Marshall
Neo-hunter

August05

A bit of silence.

Our next project starts in the beginning of August and our leaders have commissioned us to take a vacation. One of our new sweet South African friends happened to be going to her parents beach house for the exact week and invited us to stay. Phewy, are we ever grateful… The place is wonderful. We think it is a excellent opportunity to get really quiet, focus on Christ, reflect on what God has done in the last 6 months and pray into the exciting next chapter he is bringing us too.

That being said, we are taking a break from communications, staying off the internet and taking the SIM cards out of our phones.

We are very grateful to God for this quality time, and we are very grateful to you, our supporters. Thank you.

Aaron & Nichole Marshall
Listening

P.S. If there is an emergency, you can contact Christine Pienaar  and she can let us know.

July27

Holiday

Happy to have some down time with Nichole for the next week. A friend invited us to a beach house in Port Elizabeth headed there on Saturday.

Looking forward to the time off. May be a perfect time for Social Media silence too… We shall see.

Aaron Marshall
Breather

July23

Sorry Folks... No More Elephants...

The next chapter of our lives in Africa is going to look radically different from the last several months. After numerous learning experiences and processing with mentors, we have become convinced of the value of working “upstream” in the major cities of Africa. For us this means the city center of Cape Town. I will expand on this at http://aaronichole.com soon, but wanted to prepare folks for elephant free reports.

Aaron Marshall
Dumbonomo

July15