A fourth community will add a Children’s Club as soon as a former missions training student establishes a church there. Joan has also recruited other OMers, some local believers she has discipled and the students of Wessel’s yearlong missions training course. Now, the calling of the children happens every Saturday morning, with Children’s Clubs in three different Menongue communities near the OM Angola property. “It was a bit like the man who plays the flute,” she says, referencing the Pied Piper, “but fortunately I had a much better reason for getting the children to follow me.”Īnd follow her the children did-just a handful at first, but in growing numbers as time went on. Joan decided that whatever may happen, she would obey God, so she set out into the community and called out to the children.

But I felt God say, ‘I’m not asking you if it will work I’m asking you to trust me and be obedient.’” It didn’t seem like something that could even work. I asked God why He would want me to walk around calling after children. “That’s not something you can do in South Africa. “I felt God say, ‘Just walk through the streets and call for the children to follow you,’” she says-to which she responded as a South African would. Years ago, desperate for an avenue into the lives of the Angolan children, Joan asked God what she could do to reach them. Instead, she chose to focus on children for her ministry in Angola, and as such, she is always looking for new ways to connect with the youth of the community, bridging the gap and bringing them the gospel.

Though she often serves friends of OM Angola whenever a medical issue requires her assistance, she does not advertise herself as a doctor. When Joan and her husband, Wessel, moved to Angola more than 15 years ago, she decided not to pursue ministry related to her skills in nursing. The first time OMer Joan van der Merwe (South Africa) went walking through the dirt roads between a cluster of houses in Menongue, Angola, calling for children, an oft-repeated mantra in missions work rang in her ears: “All missionaries experience culture-shock.”

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