A Mission in Africa
For more than 50 years, the ministry of South Africa’s Paul and Ellie van Zyl has been the stuff of legend. From the moment they were married in 1956, they have dared to go where no one else would go and do what no one else would do. Like Moses, throughout their fruitful ministry they have experienced a spiritual fire in the bush of darkest Africa.
A year after they were married, they went to Tonga, located on the border of Swaziland and Mozambique and planted a church among the African population. Together, they built a concrete block building which seated 250 people.
Little did they realize how important and pivotal their new church plant in Tonga would be nearly 50 years later.
After Tonga, they moved into a new frontier. Swaziland bordered South Africa but had its own language and king. It was a strange and foreboding land where Paul and Ellie were forced to live off the land. He hunted for their meat, and together they planted a garden to help sustain them over the first few years.
In this area of the world the infant mortality rate was high – inordinately high – and then came Ellie. As a trained nurse and midwife, Ellie has personally delivered more than 3,000 babies without losing a single baby or mother.
In 2003, she was nominated as South Africa’s Woman of the Year.
Along with her husband, Paul, she has led in the creation of schools, free medical and dental clinics, and three mission stations – at Swaziland, Ohrigstad and Mpumalanga. From these stations they ministered to souls and to bodies through the free distribution of food and clothing to the hungry and hurting.
Everything they have achieved throughout their illustrious ministry has had a significant redemptive impact, as evidenced by the 103 life-giving churches they have planted.
While maintaining their base mission at Mpumalanga near Barberton, South Africa, Paul and Ellie built a Feeding Center and Maranatha Home for Children at Tonga, where they had first started their missionary ministry more than 50 years before. There, the outreach is especially to children with HIV/AIDS, mainly double orphans who were born with a death sentence overhanging their young lives.
In 1981 there were only a few hundred cases of HIV/AIDS and only a handful of deaths from such a relatively new and virtually unknown disease.
• Since that time, more than 22 million have died from this tragic disease.
• Today, over 42 million men, women, and children are living with HIV/AIDS; three-fourths of those are in sub-Saharan Africa.
• HIV/AIDS is rampaging throughout the world – and especially throughout southern Africa.
• There are 14,000 new infections every day – 600 every hour – 10 every minute – 1 every 6 seconds.
• Currently, there are some 15 million AIDS orphans, and the UN estimates that within only months from now there will be more than 25 million children robbed of their parents by HIV/AIDS.
Africa, already known as the dark continent, is getting even darker.
The Tonga area is known as the World’s Capital for HIV/AIDS; the infection rate is now fifty-two percent.
So many are dying now from HIV/AIDS, the country is running out of cemetery space, causing thousands to revert to the unauthorized burying of the children in any available space, even between old grave plots. Just a brief walk through the public cemetery reveals the little mounds of dirt and stones covering the bodies of the children. When you see the meager personal possessions of the children strewn on top of their hastily dug little graves – a pair of ragged tennis shoes, a worn-out pair of jeans, a rusted-out wash-basin, all the children’s personal treasures – it is then that you can truly understand what a desperate life these orphans of AIDS suffered, and what a desperate death they met.
It can break your heart.
But about a mile from this cemetery of so many countless homemade graves, there is a beacon of hope – Maranatha Mission. Located less than one block from the life-giving church congregation which these lifetime missionaries, Paul and Ellie van Zyl, planted in 1958, the home for children is saving lives, and saving souls.
It’s amazing what hope can do – even in the darkest of circumstances.
When Ellie and Paul returned to minister again in Tonga, it began a whole new life for scores and scores of the orphans of AIDS, who live under their own death sentence from the disease.
Here, at this happy place, they can still laugh … and play … and sing. They are provided a safe place, are fed nourishing food, and they learn about the hope that only Jesus can give.
Fruitful ministry also continued in Mpumalanga. In 2003, Paul and Ellie almost single-handedly built new buildings on their 100 + acres of land for a School of Ministry, to help raise up a new generation of leaders. The new construction included a 120-seat chapel, 15 private air-conditioned apartments for married students, plus a dormitory to accommodate 50 male students and another dormitory to accommodate 50 female students. The work continued with a cafeteria and a stainless steel kitchen. A student union building is the centerpiece of the campus – all of which is very African and very nice.
In 2008, Paul completed construction of a new prayer chapel and more classroom space. Instead of resting from those labors, he volunteered to help install the roof on a new church for an African congregation near Barberton, South Africa. It was hard, back-breaking work in the scorching African sun where temperatures regularly climbed to almost 100 degrees. One evening as Paul was returning to the mission station from the construction site, he was involved in a fatal traffic accident.
Paul van Zyl – an artist, a sculptor, a builder, a preacher, a teacher, a missionary – went to be with the Lord at age 75, enroute from another day of hard work as he helped to expand the Kingdom of God in South Africa. After 53 years of being together with Ellie nearly every day and every night and working together in the primitive African Bush, suddenly Paul was gone.
Ellie said philosophically, “Paul always told me that he wanted to die with his boots on – and God gave him his wish.”
She continued, “I’m going to continue working until either I am unable, or until the Lord calls me home.”
“Many times we ask ourselves the question, ‘Why do we do this?’” Ellie said as if thinking aloud.
“One day my sister, Lenn Munro, looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘In my mind’s eye, Ellie, I can see a dying mother praying, ‘God, please send someone to care for my little baby. God, don’t let her feel the hunger pangs and have to beg for food. Lord, give her a bed to sleep in and a caring person to watch over her. God, never let her have to sell her body when she is barely a teenager in order to buy a bag of rice or a crust of bread to eat.’”
”You are an answer to many a mother’s prayers,” Lenn assured Ellie.
“Paul is now already in heaven,” Ellie said to me in a voice choked with emotion, “and I am still here to work for God until the Lord says ‘enough.’”
“We are God’s. We are completely His.
His face.
His eyes.
His hands.
His touch.
We are Him,” said Ellie van Zyl.
“Look deeply into the eyes of a child and you will see His likeness.” Ellie said while weeping softly.
“But I am constantly renewed by the thought of all the children we have helped.
And by those who are still waiting.”
(Source: Beyond Borders)
