A life of high highs and low lows

"This is a life of high highs and low lows." That's how Pete Portal describes the years he's spent living in Manenberg, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, working with gang members and drug addicts. He tells of seeing a baby raised from the dead, but then days later watching the father return to heroin and living on the streets. The reality, as he sees it, is that "yes, we see the kingdom breaking forth in lives", but there are also "brutal setbacks".

In 2009 Pete, then 24, moved to Manenberg, a township set up during the apartheid government to segregate 'non-whites' and move them around 20 miles away from the city centre. Pete had just graduated from Edinburgh in theology and had a job in children's television at the BBC. He was setting up life in London when, after a short-term mission trip to South Africa, he heard God say, "I've shown you something and you need to respond."

Pete was keen, but he had some conditions: "God said, 'I want you to move to Manenberg,' and I said 'Give me a house, and I want it to be in the middle of gang territory, not on the posh outskirts please.'"

He needed 200,000 rand (roughly £20,000) to buy the house, and another 8,000 to transfer it into his name. In three and a half weeks he had 208,200 rand.

"When I first moved into the house, [I] turned on the lights and nothing. Drug addicts had broken in and stolen all the copper wiring. A friend offered to rewire the house for that last 200 rand," he said. He no longer had any excuse, God had provided the exact amount he needed.

Pete is close friends with Dowayne. They have shared their lives for the last five years, having lived together and now work together. Dowayne is from Manenberg and used to be involved in gangs and addicted to drugs. Pete describes his story of Manenberg as, in part, "our story of friendship, quite an unusual friendship".

They met through a mutual friend, when Pete was working for Fusion, an NGO working with at-risk youths, and did not yet live in the township. Pete was looking for a housemate and Dowayne was keen to leave his family home, wanting to get off drugs but finding it hard living with people who were also affected by drugs.

"It was a win-win situation; I was up for getting freedom from my addiction and he wanted to get to know people in the community," Dowayne explained.

The reality was harder than expected. Dowayne admitted to struggling with the "challenges that came with change" such as "how to sit at a table and talk while having dinner" and being asked, "How was my day?" When asked these questions, Dowayne described how he would become defensive, assuming Pete was interrogating him.

"The plan was that we would challenge and equip one another, like iron sharpening iron," Dowayne explained, "but I didn't know how to deal with it.

"I had a new friend who wasn't there to get something out of me, but to invest in me, but I didn't see that, I just saw all that I could get out of Pete. I got away with a lot of things."

The reality, Pete says, was that he "had become a single parent to a drug addict living in a township with no friends and a lot of bitterness".

Dowayne was seeking recovery, and was building a relationship with Jesus, often "smoking heroin and sharing Jesus, because he had encountered Jesus and Dowayne is an evangelist," says Pete.

He came to the realisation that he had been inadvertently setting Dowayne up for failure by continuing to live in the community, "although if you'd told me that at the time I would have hit you", he adds.

"I was telling Dowayne he needed a complete identity migration away from this lifestyle and to come live with me, but it just wasn't that simple."

The reality of that part of Manenberg in which the pair were living was brutal. Gun fights across school playgrounds and by maternity units were commonplace. Gang territories divided the community and if you found yourself on the wrong side of a boundary there were no second chances.

It dawned on them both that for Dowayne to have the opportunity to heal, they needed to get away from this hotbed of violence. "A bit like when you strike a match and then need to shield it from the wind, Dowayne needed shelter," Pete says.

Together with Pete's wife, Sarah, they "started praying right then and there asking God for a house that young guys from various gangs can come and live in as sons and brothers and come to know Jesus". The vision for a house project, named Cru62, had been born. 

Sarah had inherited some money when her mother – who Pete described as "one of the most healed and faithful women" – died of breast cancer.

They felt God say that "if you give everything Sarah inherited to buying a house in Manenberg, I will provide everything you need to turn that house into a home for young guys coming out of gangs and drugs.

"In that sense, this is more than a ministry: this is getting personal, it's a legacy," says Pete. "And that's the key – Dowayne was not one of our clients, we didn't have professional boundaries, we were friends, we were brothers.

"So the house that was opened on 12 January was an answer to half a decade of prayer."

Pete and Sarah and Dowayne now live in gang neutral territory, alongside various ex-gang members coming out of a combination of heroin, crystal meth and mandrax addictions.

"Seeing them loving one another or seeing a new guy getting into the house and members of different gangs assisting and helping them; it's like redemption," Dowayne explains. "You don't see that often in Manenberg."

Since opening the house, Pete describes the reality as one of "high highs and low lows", but that "if you read the Book of Acts, that seems pretty par for the course".

Central to the way the house works is that while healthy boundaries have been put in place, the nature of the relationships are reciprocal and never just one way. Describing one of the newly converted, ex-gang members, Michael, Pete says, "he's my teacher".

This might seem paradoxical, but Pete says he had "taught me it really is all or nothing – his two options were heroin and death or Jesus and life".

The community has seen miracles, both relational and physical. Two of the men who'd been living in the house for just two weeks prayed for a woman who had suffered from arthritis for 10 years and say she was healed on the spot.

"I have seen a little baby raised from the dead," Pete says.

He tells how Ryan, a man from the house he had been discipling – "an anointed sweet man of God" – was about to become a father. Before he had moved in, his girlfriend had become pregnant. But when she went into labour, the baby's heartbeat stopped "for about 15-20 minutes the baby was dead". Ryan asked the house to pray and all the boys got up and interceded for the child.

"The heartbeat returned, she was alive," Pete says. He jokes: "I'm retiring. We've seen the dead raised, my work is done."

That was the Thursday, but the following Monday Ryan relapsed and is now back on the street on heroin.

Pete said: "We want to be clear that, yes, we see the kingdom breaking forth in lives and in communities where enemies are serving each other and getting on as brothers and sons as a family of families, but we are also seeing a guy who is deeply anointed of God, seven months off heroin, seen his baby raised from the dead, but then choose to return to heroin on Monday."

Out of Cru62 has grown a church called Tree of Life, which is part of the 24-7 Prayer network.

Pete and Sarah describe Tree of Life as a "family of families" that "would love to be part of seeing many people saved, healed and delivered" – and believe this will positively affect crime statistics and quality of life in Manenberg in a way that no institution, however well funded and organised, ever could.

"The way we set out to achieve this is to model a different way of doing life and worshipping together – which involves trying to follow Jesus and commit to each other with our whole lives, not just attending religious gatherings, or telling others how to live and what to believe. Also, it's really really fun!"

If you would like to support Pete, Sarah and Dowayne in their work at Cru62, email pennytrustuk@gmail.com for more information.