YWAM South Africa - Hunter & Mary Jane Stewart
Potchefstroom, South Africa
Our vision is to ignite revival in Africa, Israel, the Middle East, and the nations.
Our mission is to send out trained revivalists to share the love and power of Jesus, and bring unity among believers throughout Africa, Israel, the Middle East and the nations.
For more information visit www.ywamsa.org
Or contact Hunter or Mary Jane Stewart at hunterandmaryjane@gmail.com
10/7/24
Here are some things we would love prayer for…
Please pray we are able to find the right home for our family to live in. We have been staying on base and there are a lot of students that have just arrived. This makes cooking and sharing a kitchen while also keeping an eye on a toddler challenging. We would love to be able to find a place and move as soon as possible!
Prayer covering over things we own, especially our house. It has seemed like from the start of this year, one thing after the next has happened with our house in Tennessee which has made things challenging for our renters. We just had the flooring replaced, but we are still having issues in certain areas with the floor buckling. This has been a massive inconvenience and we have had the flooring person out several times and still has not been properly fixed. We also had a major car expense.
Prayer for our financial partners. We are needing an additional $400 a month in order to be at our ideal budget for living here in South Africa.
Prayer that in the midst of moving to a new country, and all that we have going on, that stress would not be our portion. Pray that we would remain in a place of peace and trust and God’s rest and that His Presence would continue to sustain us in everything we do.
Continued prayer over Israel and the surrounding nations
4/24/24
Living Hope Family, it has been nearly three months in our new home in South Africa and now we are on a 3-month outreach to Germany and France—we will have more to share on this in next quarter’s update! Every step of our journey of moving to South Africa was overlayed with testimony after testimony of the Lord’s provision for us. As each piece miraculously came together so quickly, we said goodbye to our friends, family, and the city we have called home for so many years. With our lives packed up in suitcases and bins, we boarded the plane to South Africa to begin our next chapter of ministry here with YWAM. Hunter is now part of the DTS (Discipleship Training School) as he onramps into base staff, and Mary Jane has joined staff, and is helping disciple young women on our DTS outreach team. The heartbeat of this base is to raise up radical evangelists, disciplers, and worshippers. Our DTS and the base staff have been doing weekly outreaches on the streets, in hospitals, in nursing homes, with Muslims near the local Mosque, and with prostitutes and pimps. Since the DTS began mid-January, over a thousand have heard the Gospel and over 450 have responded and given their lives to Jesus. It has been wild to be part of so many coming to know Him! We have also seen so many miracles of healing as we have prayed for the sick. The Lord has healed chronic pains, broken bones, blind eyes, and more! We have seen incredible favor too in ministry. On one of the outreaches, the Lord opened a door for Mary Jane and another student to share the Gospel and personal testimony LIVE on a local secular radio station! The other girl shared her story of Jesus healing her from abuse and her related trauma, and she and Mary Jane boldly challenged the listeners to seek and follow Jesus. What is next? We finish our outreach to Germany in a week and then will fly to France. We will continue ministering alongside local YWAM bases to reach the Europeans and refugees here during DTS outreach before returning to South Africa. We are excited to share the testimonies from this trip in our next update! COMMITTED TO MAKING JESUS KNOWN
Hunter, Mary Jane, and Av
12/6/23:
We have big things coming soon that we would love to share with you all! We have been in a beautiful whirlwind of the Lord speaking clearly to us, and of His confirmation of things to our family, and we are excited to share these things with you! In this season of the Lord speaking, He has hinted at a shift for us since July—when we spent a month in Israel followed by two weeks in South Africa with YWAM. Over and over, we have heard the Lord say, “It’s going to be sooner than you think,” as we talk to Him about moving overseas. Friends of ours from different circles—completely unconnected to each other—began approaching us, telling us they felt the Lord was going to move us “suddenly” and “uncomfortably fast.” These words from the Lord resonated with what we had already been sensing, and they pressed us into the place of prayer. This is when the Lord began speaking clearly to us about a transition, ahead of us.
He was impressing on our hearts that there is a next step to take in our journey to Israel, and from many personal encounters with Him, He made it clear He is calling us to transition to YWAM South Africa. Why South Africa? We have had it in our hearts for many years that the Lord would have us serve both in Israel and in South Africa. As a family, we’ve been moving towards Israel, but then the Lord began to speak to us about SA being both preparation for Israel and a time of great fruitfulness as we co-labor with them in their vision. This YWAM base is contending for revival to be released in South Africa that will spread through all of Africa up into the Middle East. This is the exact word the Lord gave Hunter in 2014 before he even stepped into missions. This is also the same vision that key pastors in Egypt shared with Hunter and our Director, Tod, in 2019. This is also the exact word from the Lord written and posted in the Jerusalem prayer house, Succat Hallel—that revival will come from SA and be released into Israel and the Middle East. Our connection to South Africa goes further as this YWAM base, and this team in SA, are the ones that Mary Jane served with and did her YWAM secondary school alongside. This is also the base where our Director, Tod McDowell, now has one of his sons serving there and also where he taught their staff on Israel. We believe the Lord is calling us to serve this vision unto when He opens the door for us to move to Israel long-term.
With the Lord speaking so much to us and through so many people, we immediately brought all of this to our leadership team at Caleb Global to submit it to them. When we prayed together, they confirmed it resonated with them, and our leadership blessed and released us into this next season. We have been blown away by the Caleb Global team, their championing, and their releasing of us into what the Lord is speaking.
After talking with the base leader in SA, we have been invited to join them for the start of their Discipleship Training School on January 17th and then to join their staff team after. It is an incredibly quick and “uncomfortably fast” transition for our family, but we are so incredibly thrilled for how God will pour out His Spirit in South Africa, Israel, and the Middle East! We are excited to join them in bringing the Gospel to the lost, in discipling and mentoring other missionaries to go, and taking more ministry trips to the Middle East to serve alongside our contacts and Caleb Global.
We want to thank you all for your continued support, prayer, and giving to our family. We truly can’t do this without you. The past 8 years of fruit in ministry have been because of your faithfulness and obedience to the Lord to pray and give. We are overjoyed that the Gospel is being preached, the lost are having tangible encounters with Jesus, the Church is being discipled, Israel and the Middle East are coming to faith, and the Great Commission is being finished! Keep praying!
8/22/2023 - Update
- In July, we ministered in Israel for over a month while working towards getting our longterm visas for living in Israel. On this ministry trip:
o We ministered to Muslim men and women from Gaza, where they heard the Gospel for the very first time.
o We were welcomed to pray for and share Jesus with the sick in the cancer ward of a hospital in Jerusalem.
o We poured into the Messianic Jewish youth and Muslim-background youth as we helped facilitate two discipleship camps.
o Throughout our trip, we stopped to share Jesus with those on the street, in taxis, on buses, and anywhere we saw an open door.
- We wish we had room in this update to share the full testimonies with you, but what we can share is that the Gospel is powerful, Jews and Arabs so open to hearing about Jesus, and He is making Himself known in this land that is less than 1% reached with the Gospel! Let's keep praying for revival!
- While we have been at our home base here in Nashville, TN, we have:
o Continued to minister to the Middle Eastern communities here (Jews, Iraqis, Palestinians, Iranians, Kurds, and more)
o Focused on learning Modern Hebrew
o Continued working on our pre-launch development through Caleb Global
o Begun pouring into our students in our Caleb Global School of Revival (Aug-Nov)
- Prayer Requests - We are believing the Lord for the favor to receive our long-term visas to Israel. This is a very difficult process as the current government is making it even harder to be approved. Please pray with us for breakthrough