The month of May was packed full of Resident end-of-term activities, including capstone projects, presentations, debrief meetings, final braais, final dinners, final partner visits, exit interviews, and finally a wonderful graduation ceremony on May 31. Read some feedback from residents on how they grew over the course of the program.

After graduation, our staff spent a couple days meeting together to celebrate wins from the first have of the year, praising God for his faithfulness and to dive into the questions we are having and the space for growth and improvement we see on the horizon. It was an encouraging and productive time together before heading into a few slower weeks between residencies.

A couple weeks ago we hosted a "Vision Braai" with 50+ partners, alumni and friends of East Mountain. Despite the only rain storm in February hitting at that exact time, we were still able to have a wonderful time catching up with new and old connections, communicating our vision and sharing our hopes and dreams for the next few years at East Mountain as we fundraise for a new property and plan residency and non-residential programs.

The 2025 (Term 1) Residents have made it through their first week at East Mountain! It was an orientation week in many ways, but we hit the ground running with Theology, mentorship and other topics and have really enjoyed getting to know the staff and each other.

For eleven years, the Lord has been using East Mountain as an instrument of transformation, but our "space" has been a struggle. This year we received a great opportunity to purchase a property in Somerset West, just outside of Cape Town that will fit our needs! With this acquisition, we would no longer be burdened by rent, and would even have income and sustainability opportunities. We are so excited by the potential for this property to be a place that meets the needs of our vision for emerging and engaged leaders to come and be transformed and encouraged by the Gospel for years to come! We hope you will join us in praying for God's kingdom building on this property and in all of our spheres of work and support us as we raise funds for this new opportunity!

We have had a lot of staff transition in the past 6 months, but are so excited by the passionate team that God has been pulling together!

Among other events and programs we have planned for the end of this year and beginning of next year, we are particularly excited to be developing a spiritual formation program for discipling leaders engaged in ministries who would be less able to pursue a residential pathway.

The Youth Outreach ministry is a new partnership this year for East Mountain. It is an organization that serves children that come from unstable homes or environments. There are currently about twenty children staying there from ages 5 – 18. Some of them have parents back at home who are addicted to substances, while others were sent there by their parents to avoid the gang infestations in their communities. There are also children that come just during the day as day visitors in order to receive some food and tutoring help.

If you drive down the R310 towards the N2 towards Cape Town on almost any given day, you will see a small cluster of women sitting on the side of the road in a bush area. With two to seven or eight of them gathered on most days, they come to this area to work as prostitutes on the side of the road.

In honor of women’s month in August, we would like to put the spotlight on three ministries that East Mountain partners with that focus entirely on women and the unique challenges and joys that they face.

From mid-May to the end of June, we welcomed four young adults into the East Mountain house to live with the residents and participate in a compact version of our leadership and theological development courses,(one from America, two from Zimbabwe and one from right down the road in Kayamandi). It was an incredible 6 weeks of growth and awakening for these young adults.

A long-time dream has recently come to fruition at training4changeS, one of East Mountain South Africa’s ministry partnerships. training4changeS uses the sport of futsal to holistically change the lives of young boys. Since 2019, they have strived to address the educational needs of the boys they serve. As of about a month ago, the long awaited program called School in a Box came to be in use, and has transformed the way these needs are approached.

There are family realities factors as well as other variables leading up to the decision to transition out of South Africa. We sensed our parents’ need for care increase over the past couple of years. We also have not lived close to Jessica and Julian for many years.

Grace2Learn (G2L) has long been a name known around East Mountain along with the name of its founder and director, Brad Sitzer, whose face has been seen at our community braais for some time now. However, it has been more recently that East Mountain’s partnership with G2L has matured.

What started out as house dad Caleb Duttweiler’s new hobby to alleviate boredom during South Africa’s lockdown has become an opportunity for individual and corporate worship, service, and creativity in the East Mountain community.

East Mountain South Africa has never sought to force new trails or impose our customs on people, but to come alongside partner organisations in our region who are doing God’s work and could be benefited by our leadership development program. From our soccer academy boys getting into a high school we partner with to leaders of Her Voice bringing non-profits together to form Stellenbosch Unite, one theme we have been delighted to see this year is how many of our partners have been collaborating with each other.

We are so thankful to all of you for the prayers and support over the past year and for encouraging us through an eventful journey of ups and downs and a lot of “look at God!” moments. With your support, we’ve been able to be a part of some amazing Kingdom work in South Africa in 2020.

On the first full day of the 2020 residency, the residents and some staff members went to attend the Sunday service at Chosen Generation church and to hear the stories of Pastor Dumisani and his team. The residents were able to introduce themselves to the church and experience what was, for most of them, a very different style of worship then they are accustomed to in this small charismatic setting near Mandela Park in Khayelitsha township.

In the context of Kayamandi, life for a young, single mom can be a difficult one. Kayamandi, like many townships in South Africa, is plagued by generational cycles of poverty, fatherlessness, and substance abuse among other issues.

When Katsi first walked into the training4changeS (t4c) academic support session, the primary school boy from Kayamandi felt the walls of limitation and struggle around him. A typical classroom for his age would have one teacher to around 40 students and very few resources provided.

The mark of any great process or organization lies not only in how a mission or goal is carried out in the present, but also by the mark of a legacy that is left behind. One such legacy figure in the history of East Mountain is Siyanda Landzela.

This past week, East Mountain had the opportunity to participate in a community enrichment workshop on the history of the church in South Africa. The workshop was led by John Scheepers, the founder of a local organization and training centre called Isiphambano which strives to pursue cross-centered theology in response to the injustices seen in South Africa.

Once again, as in years past, East Mountain ushered in the new year with a braai to welcome our new residents: Tamson, Jacques, Matt, Jordan, and Azola (Stix).

On any given Monday or Wednesday afternoon, you can find the EM Spark cruising along the 310. Enveloped by the sprawling township of Khayelitsha on one side and the rolling Atlantic Ocean on the other, our fellow EM residents hang a right toward Mitchell’s Plain, one of the largest coloured townships in the Western Cape.

Tucked neatly within the hills of a farming community off of R 44 in Somerset West is the Helder Valley Community Learning Centre.

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