God launches SA business couple on mission to unite churches for Jesus

How did business owners from Hartbeespoort get to be on a mission to unite churches for Jesus — starting in the Eastern Cape?

It’s a story that began in 2010 when Christi and Beate ten Haaf signed up for a Freedom in Christ online discipleship course. This led to them going to Europe in 2017 to do discipleship training with The Last Reformation. Christi went to Holland and Beate went to Denmark — but they both had the same Jesus experience, said Christi.

“We did a little bit of class training and then they took us to the streets. We shared the Gospel with people. When they went through repentance and baptism, demons started to manifest. They taught us how to cast out demons. It was really the Book of Acts playing out in front of our eyes. We shared the Gospel, we healed the sick, we cast out demons, we baptised them in the name of Jesus, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

” And then when we came back to South Africa, we started having ‘kickstart’ weekends.  And we saw exactly the same results. And we trained people to do much more than just sit in church — it’s more about coming into your calling and purpose,” said Christi.

Christi and Beate continued with street ministry while also running their horse-riding and quad-biking business and raising three young children, Talia, Abia and Migael, who “we took into the harvest fields with us”. Christi also enrolled at an online Bible College.

He said their new ministry lifestyle was “supernatural” to them but it was “normal Jesus culture” for their children who didn’t know any other way of life. “So if you ask them: ‘What do you do when you’re sick?’ — You heal the sick. ‘What do you do if somebody’s bound?’ — You cast out the demon. The Word says: ‘Do this” and then we go and do it.”

But in 2022 they faced a serious setback. “Beate was diagnosed with cancer — a huge, aggressive tumour in her colon,” said Christi. She had chemotherapy and radiation treatment and at a certain point she was due to have a scan to assess progress.

“During that cancer journey we went to different people in ministry for prayer. We surrounded ourselves with ‘lions’ so that we could put all the medical reports on the table and pray through them. At that time a prophet, Andre Q Louw, prayed over us and the Holy Spirit showed him: ‘They’ll look to the left and they’ll look to the right and it will be gone.”

He said the report they later received from their oncologist was that when her radiologist husband checked Beate’s scan, he looked to the left and the right and could find no trace of the tumour. “So, Jesus healed her completely.”

In 2023 the Lord showed them He wanted them to “Go”, said Christi. It started with a long weekend with friends on the West Coast. During a cell group gathering Beate sang a prophetic song for the unsaved husband of their hostess. At midnight that night the husband knocked on their door and asked to be baptised. Spiriitually hungry people from the cell group returned the next day and they were baptising people all day and until 3am the next morning.

A month later God told them to embark on a ministry trip around South Africa for the next year. They should not visit their home during that time and they should head out without making advance appointments. Leaving their business in the hands of a manager, Christi, Beate and their three children, then aged 14, 11 and 8, set out on their mission. Christi said that not long before that Beate had felt God telling her to start home-schooling their children. “Now we knew why!”

During the next 12 months they visited all nine provinces of SA. Christi said they had thought they would mainly be doing street evangelism. While they did minister on highways and byways, including to prostitutes and drug addicts, God surprised them by opening doors for them to minister in many churches throughout SA. “One church was made of wooden pallets — and the Holy Spirit moved there like I’ve never seen before. The biggest church we ministered in had 2 000 members. And it all just happened despite us. We are not famous, we’re nameless. But pastors just opened their doors for us and we shared a message of hope, but also a message of returning to the King — to your first love. And it just reignited and encouraged some places.”

“The Lord took us through the nation and showed us the state of the Church — the good things, and the not-so-good things. And He gave us hope because there are a lot of prayer warriors praying. There are some pastors who are the hands and feet of Jesus in their communities — we connected with those ones. And 40 000 kilometres later, and lots of baptisms and deliverances later, we returned home.”

During their year of travel they visited Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape and sensed a peace there. They returned to the town several times and in October last year the Lord directed them to move their base permanently to Port Alfred. “Once in the Eastern Cape we asked the Lord: ‘Now, what’s next?

Then the Lord started to remind them of the churches they had visited during their year on the road — that “they were islands doing an amazing job” but they were not working together for their communities. He said God impressed on them that he wants unity to be restored among the different ministries across SA. “They all have unique gifts but the gifts must flow back to the Body” and pastors should look to each others’ ministries to identify the gaps so that they can strengthen each other in the work of reaching the lost who are mainly “outside the Church, in the communities”.

The United 4 Jesus movement that Christi and Beate launched a year ago came out of hearing God’s heart for uniting His Body, said Christi. So far they have run three United 4 Jesus missions with churches in Port Alfred, Makhanda (Grahamstown) and Bisho/ Qonce (King William’s Town). Currently they are discerning God’s will for the next steps. Some of the lasting fruit they have seen arising from their missions is church youth groups working together, pastors who did not know each other before ministering in each others’ churches and the launching of a regular pastors’ leaders’ meeting. They are also looking at facilitating equipping workshops for church leaders in the towns where they had missions. Their idea is to bring in some of the gifted leaders they met on their national pilgrimage to assist with equipping.

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