When God Brought the Nations

In September 2025, our small Michigan church moved into a larger building. Six months later, a South African woman named Adele asked on Facebook where she could find a Spirit-filled church.

We had made room before we knew her name.

She was living in the Ann Arbor area. Ricardo, one of our pastors, saw her post and invited her to Bethesda. That weekend, she came with her family and another South African family.

Two families, visiting a church.

We had no ministry specifically prepared for what followed. There was no team waiting to guide a growing South African community through life in Michigan. There was no transportation network ready to collect everyone who would need a ride. We had a church, people willing to welcome them, and an invitation that was easy to give.

Come visit us.

Looking back from October 2026, that beginning seems almost too small to account for everything that grew from it. Families told friends. Friends brought other families. People began coming back. Our weekly life changed, and the people we had first welcomed as visitors began helping shape it.

Some found their way back to faith after years away. Some began following Jesus. Baptisms became part of the story, and the people taking those steps were becoming part of our church family.

We call what we are experiencing revival. The word has become personal to us as we worship beside people beginning or renewing a relationship with Jesus.

And the change has reached the church that welcomed them.

A home with room to grow

Bethesda's history reaches back to 1961. Long before these families arrived, people had worshiped here, raised children here, served their neighbors, and carried the life of this church through different seasons and different buildings.

The move to Data Court in September 2025 was another step of faith. We were a small congregation taking on a much larger home. The new space gave us possibilities we had not had before: more room for children and young people, for shared meals, for food distribution, and for the work that happens throughout the week.

A building can make room for those things. People still have to choose to do them.

We already had ministries through which neighbors received groceries, clothing, and household goods. We already understood something of the work of preparing a meal and welcoming whoever came. Those familiar acts would become important in ways we had not anticipated.

When the first South African families arrived the following March, we did not yet know how much of church life they would touch. Within months, the welcome would involve people across Bethesda: pastors, volunteers, people working with children, people organizing food, people answering messages and helping arrange rides.

The timing has stayed with us. We took a step into a larger place, then met people who needed a place to belong.

We see God's kindness in that sequence. We also see a responsibility that became clearer as relationships grew. Having more space meant we could invite more people in. Knowing them would ask more of us than opening the doors.

The invitation keeps traveling

The connection spread through ordinary friendships. One family told another about Bethesda. People in the same apartment communities heard that South Africans were being welcomed. A church invitation traveled through conversations we had never planned and could not have organized ourselves.

The families were building this community from the beginning. They introduced friends and encouraged one another, extending the invitation far beyond the first two households.

By the fall, Bethesda had touched and supported close to 500 South Africans in some way since March, with over 150 participating monthly.

That measure matters to us because people were returning. Conversations could continue from one week to the next. Children saw familiar faces. People began to know whom they could ask a question, and a Sunday service or shared meal brought them together again.

Somewhere in those repeated visits, strangers were becoming friends.

Worship and meals gave people regular reasons to gather. Questions about work and school carried the conversations into the week.

A family could come through the doors on Sunday and still need a friend on Tuesday. We were learning how far a welcome might take us.

Learning a country together

These friendships were forming against a wider backdrop. On February 7, 2025, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14204, directing federal agencies to prioritize humanitarian relief, including refugee admission and resettlement, for Afrikaners in South Africa whom the order describes as victims of unjust racial discrimination. That policy is part of the context for South African resettlement in the United States. It does not establish the circumstances or immigration status of each family in this story.

Our leaders also shared the account of a father who had been kidnapped and held at gunpoint in South Africa. He feared he would be killed. Afterward, he decided to leave the country with his family and come to America.

Many of our new friends brought professional experience, practical skills, and years of responsibility with them. Moving to a new country did not erase any of that. It did put them inside systems they had not used before.

School enrollment, driver's licenses, identification, employment paperwork, medical appointments: each came with its own process. Knowing how to manage a household in one country did not automatically tell someone which office to call in another.

Some families were looking for work. Some had housing and needed basic furniture. Many needed transportation or help understanding the steps toward a Michigan driver's license. The needs were connected. An appointment was harder to keep without a ride; finding work and getting to work were two different problems.

Even setting up a kitchen could require more than it first appeared. An apartment might have cupboards but no plates or pans. A bed needed bedding. A family preparing for life in Michigan needed clothing suitable for the weather as well as the clothes they had arrived with.

Our existing ministries gave us somewhere to begin. The Storehouse food pantry helped with groceries. The thrift ministry and household donations helped families furnish rooms and find clothing. People moved furniture and delivered meals. Staff and volunteers helped explain forms, make calls, and work through unfamiliar requirements.

Our leaders recall a father beginning to cry when he received food for his family. He explained that during his years in South Africa, he had never had that much food for them.

The help became most useful when it stayed close enough to the person to find out what was actually missing. A website could be a starting point. Sometimes someone also needed help understanding the documents it requested. An address was useful if the person could reach it.

So a question about paperwork might lead to a phone call, and a conversation about an appointment to finding a ride. We were learning what it meant to stay with a need long enough to help someone move forward.

Transportation made this especially clear. So many parts of daily life depended on being able to get somewhere. Volunteers gave rides. The church rented a van for four months and later purchased a used 61-seat school bus as it worked on the transportation challenge.

Behind those decisions were people trying to take part in ordinary life: get to an appointment, look for work, buy groceries, join their friends at church. A ride could determine whether a plan was possible that day.

Helping also required humility. We could help a person navigate a process without pretending to be the agency responsible for it. We could share what we knew and find out what we did not. And we needed to listen to people who knew their own families, abilities, and priorities far better than we did.

As more families became connected, informal arrangements became harder to maintain. A message could be missed. Two people could be trying to solve the same problem. A need could remain open because each person thought someone else had followed up.

We began organizing intake, communication, rides, donations, and follow-up more carefully. The purpose was to care reliably for people we knew. When someone was waiting for an answer, we needed to know who was responsible for giving it.

Staff and volunteers were also carrying more. They needed clear responsibilities and realistic limits. The relationships mattered too much to build everything around a few people being constantly available.

These lessons have been humbling. We have had to acknowledge the distance between wanting to help and having the capacity to do it well. We are still learning how to keep the welcome personal while making the work sustainable.

Around the same table

Wednesday meals and Friday gatherings gave people time that a Sunday greeting could not always provide.

There were barbecues, shared food, conversations, and children playing. People could stay long enough to talk. A question could lead to another question. Someone who knew where to begin could help someone who was still finding their way.

Our team recalls a Friday gathering when two children ran toward the play area and their father panicked on realizing they had left his side. There had been attempts to kidnap his children in South Africa. Watching them play without fear moved him to tears; it was the first time in a long time he could remember them freely leaving his side.

These gatherings made time for friendships to develop at their own pace. People did not need a special occasion to spend time together. They could come back the next week and get to know the family they had met a little better.

Practical information traveled through those relationships. People shared job leads and helped newcomers understand things they had recently learned themselves. The church's knowledge grew as our South African friends added their own experience to it.

So did the friendship. Our new friends brought humor and perspective, along with the everyday company that makes a community feel alive. Their children became part of the life around us. Their questions and contributions gave us more reasons to listen, learn, and spend time together.

As people settled into the life of the church, they also began changing it.

We began sharing more of our lives. We prayed together. We worshiped together. We learned about the challenges facing families we now knew, and we celebrated progress with them. People who had arrived looking for a church were becoming people whose presence mattered to the rest of us.

Some have chosen to remain in the area even when opportunities elsewhere were available. We do not take that lightly. The relationships formed here have become part of what makes this place home for them.

A person may first come because someone says a church could help. The reasons for staying can grow far beyond that first need.

People were finding friends. We were finding them too.

Jesus at the center

The first Facebook post was a search for a Spirit-filled church. That spiritual beginning is important, because the story can become distorted if we tell it only through groceries, furniture, or transportation.

From the beginning, people were coming into a worshiping community. Prayer, faith in Jesus, and the life of the church were part of the relationship. As more families came, some returned to church after years away. Some began following Jesus. People were baptized.

About 81 percent of the South Africans who have made Bethesda their church family had previously been unchurched. People came with different beliefs and histories, and some began a personal relationship with Jesus here. For those beginning to follow Him, learning their way around a new world was unfolding alongside an introduction to life in His kingdom.

61 South Africans were baptized during the first three months. To us, that is an extraordinary part of what God has done. Each baptism concerns an individual's response to Jesus, and each person has a life that continues well beyond that moment.

For Bethesda, that continuing relationship matters deeply. In May, we announced a six-week Next Steps discipleship class for recently baptized people, new believers, and others wanting to deepen their faith. A person taking a step of faith needs people to walk with afterward, with room to ask questions, learn, and grow in worship and service.

We have seen practical friendship and spiritual life grow alongside one another. People who first heard about Bethesda through a need also entered relationships where prayer and worship were part of ordinary life. People looking for a church found friends willing to help with the demands of starting over.

We cannot describe every person's journey in the same way. Some arrived with faith already central to their lives. Others were returning or beginning. Our South African friends brought faith into Bethesda as well as finding opportunities to grow in it here.

Their faith has encouraged ours. As we have come to know one another, we have had more reasons to pray together and more to be thankful for when we gather.

When we use the word revival, we mean people coming alive in their relationship with Jesus and a church being renewed as it shares life with them. We are grateful for growth, but our hope reaches further than attendance. We want people to know Christ and keep growing in Him.

The people building Bethesda with us

As the months passed, our South African friends took on more of the work of community. They volunteered, helped at events, cleaned, welcomed others, and shared information that made the next family's arrival easier.

Some of the most valuable knowledge belonged to people who had recently faced the same questions. They knew what it was like to work through an unfamiliar process. Having found a way through, they could help someone else begin.

People who had received help became people others could turn to. They brought their skills into church life and helped carry responsibilities that mattered to everyone.

They were helping build the church they had joined.

That has meant learning to hear new voices and make room for other people's gifts. We had welcomed friends who could help shape what Bethesda became.

The welcome began to reproduce itself. Families who had been new themselves were inviting others. People who had needed answers were sharing what they knew. The community had more hands to help, more experience to draw on, and more people who cared what happened to the next family.

That is why we tell this as a story of what God is doing among us. The word "us" has grown. It includes people who, only months ago, did not know Bethesda existed and whose friendship now belongs to its everyday life.

Growing steadier without growing apart

One important goal has remained clear: families should become increasingly able to manage daily life for themselves. Steady work, more independent transportation, and familiarity with local systems make a real difference. As those things develop, the kind of help a family needs can change.

Our team began using the word "graduation" to describe moving beyond intensive support. It points toward a good outcome: people becoming established, making their own arrangements, and needing less routine assistance.

Friendship can keep growing through that change. A family can need fewer groceries or fewer rides and remain deeply connected to the people who helped. They can participate, serve, and help someone else while continuing to belong.

We want our relationships to keep growing as families become established and the circumstances that first brought us together change.

The door is still open

A year after our move, the larger building has become part of a story we could not have written when we entered it.

The rooms have held worship and meals, practical help and new friendships. Families have begun finding their footing in Michigan. People have made decisions to follow Jesus. Our church has received the gifts of people it had never expected to meet.

There are still needs to meet and questions about how best to carry the work. New relationships take time. A growing community needs care. We are grateful for what has happened without pretending the next chapter is already settled.

What has become clearer is the kind of church we want to be. House of Mercy is a name we are learning to live up to through the people God has brought into our lives.

We think back to that woman looking for a church, and to the two families who came after a simple invitation. They could not have supplied us with a plan for all that would follow. Their arrival gave us the opportunity to begin a relationship.

We are thankful we began.

If this story makes you curious about Bethesda, about the community growing here, or about following Jesus, you can learn more at https://houseofmercy.online. We would love for you to get to know the people behind it.

The invitation is still simple.

Come visit us.

There are more people here now to welcome you.