Dear friends and family,
Once again too much time has passed since my last update. Keeping up with newsletters is certainly not my gift, but I hope by the Lord’s grace to improve in this area! I will write a more comprehensive update on our ministry work soon, but for now I am sending through a more personal update on my health and what God has done through it.
Since my last blog post, I started battling with my health once again. In February I started becoming sick with what turned out to be malaria, and again it seemed like it just wouldn’t go away! I had malaria 4 or 5 times between February and May, and I was feeling exasperated. Many of my close friends and family encouraged me to leave Mozambique, and rightly so. Even I felt like giving up on everything here and leaving, as being constantly sick was becoming unbearable! I couldn’t function well and I could not do any ministry work whatsoever. I was just at home most of the time, sick and unable to do anything. This drove me to my knees and I started seeking the Lord earnestly, to know His will. I was desperate, depressed, and weak. As I prayed and sought the Lord, He confirmed to me once again that He has indeed called me to be here in Mozambique. He showed me that I must completely surrender to Him and trust Him fully, even in my health. My parents also reminded me of the many times our family had been in crises in our first years here and the only possible outcome had seemed for us to return to South Africa, but they had trusted the Lord and stayed on. Now 21 years later we are still here, which is a testimony to the Lord’s faithfulness!
My health now became a priority for us in prayer, and we decided to do all in our power to resolve my sickness. So in June I consulted with different doctors and specialists, and they all came to the same conclusion: the number of times I was getting malaria while taking every precaution possible, was abnormal! They said I either have a strain of malaria very resistant to treatment or I have some serious underlying sickness that is compromising my immune system. So in June I traveled to South Africa for a comprehensive medical checkup, and I was honestly expecting bad news. I was dreading my test results as I knew that my liver, kidneys, and other organs would be damaged and stressed due to all the malaria, not to mention the possibility of some other underlying sickness!
That morning finally came when I sat across from my doctor to hear all my test results, and I was about to be amazed. With a puzzled look on his face, my doctor said to me, “Isak, I don’t know what to tell you. I am looking at your test results, and I am looking at the results of a very healthy young man. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you! This is really miraculous, but I cannot even tell that you have been sick at all! Your organs are all in perfect health and show NO DAMAGE, even after all the malaria! Your tests all came back with great results. I mean, I wish MY results came back this good!!” I was awestruck. As my doctor sat there all perplexed, I could barely contain myself with the joy and gratitude I was feeling; the Lord had healed my body!! What an amazing, faithful, and merciful God we serve!
To the left is a picture of me taken recently, looking and feeling so much better. I praise the Lord for that! Being constantly sick really took a toll on me mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Honestly, if I look back over the last year and a half since my friend Michiah’s death, I see a time of deep darkness, grief, and sickness. But I am so grateful for it, as the Lord used all this greatly in my life for my own good. You see, the Lord put me through the fire to show me what I am really made of, and it became clear to me that apart from Christ I am a miserable, weak and sinful wretch who cannot do anything! Christ is ALL!! I have eternal life because He mercifully gave it to me, and not because I earned it; I am forgiven, pure and righteous before God because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, and not because of anything I did; I can live this Christian life only by His grace, and not in my own strength; it is for Christ’s Kingdom and glory that I must live, and not my own! So the Lord disciplined me in His love, for He saw how my heart had become hardened and prideful. He saw how my love for Him grew dimmer and dimmer, as I neglected the Savior who died for me. Even though everything with ministry was going well, my own heart had become hard, dull, and filled with unbelief. I was not walking closely with my Lord anymore, and instead I was following my own will and walking in my own wisdom. Through this time of discipline, struggle and sickness God has humbled and broken me, and brought me to a deeper place of surrender and trust in Him. And for this I praise Him! I am just amazed at what a wonderful God we serve, for He is faithful even when we are faithless! He forgives us, restores us, and heals us even when we do not deserve it in any way!
So please join me in thanking and praising the Lord for what He has done and continues to do in my life. Please pray for me that I may be revived, that my heart might be filled with a passion and love for the Lord Jesus, and that I would live fully surrendered to Him for His glory! And I want to thank you all who loved, supported and prayed for me during this difficult time. I don’t know what I would have done without you, and I thank the Lord for you! One particular friend the Lord greatly used in my life is Hunter Combs. He and I recently spent 2 weeks together as he was teaching at a Bible College not too far from us and then he came to visit us here in Xai-Xai. You can read about our time together here: missions-to-mpumulanga-and-mozambique
I am now full-time back in the ministry work and Lord willing I will be sending you an update on the ministries here soon, as there are some exciting things happening! I can’t wait to share it all with you, but for now I will close here. May the Lord bless each of you and cause His face to shine upon you in this day!
Love in Christ,
Isak for the Westraads
Mozambique Missions 