From January to August, Ressler ministered with a team of five in Barkley West, a small racially divided town in South Africa. There she struggled with questions of God's call and experienced the joy of lives newly filled with Christ. The RAD team's main work was with Rising Stars, a group providing worship and positive activities for local teenagers. Team members helped with leadership training for South African youth, held weekly Bible lessons, and rehearsed with worship, dance and drama teams. Many of the youth in Rising Stars come from homes with alcohol abuse, absent parents or other family problems, Ressler said.
Employment is very hard to find in the area.
Like most towns in South Africa, Barkley West is still racially divided into black, colored and white sections. Although Ressler was aware of the division before going, she said actually experiencing such great separation was a shock. The climax of Ressler's term actually came in a three-week mission trip to northern Zambia with 16 South Africans. Sponsored by another mission organization, the group drove for three days over dirt roads and potholes to the Zambian countryside. Ressler learned her biggest lesson of the year as she struggled with whether or not she would be able to answer a call to extended mission in a place like Zambia, she said.