Powerful God

I wrote this about 2 weeks ago, but just haven't posted it yet.

We serve such a powerful God! Mallory arrived yesterday, and we kept hearing from the girl she sponsors that she would be going to town for holiday break. We decided to go and find the auntie, who she stays with, to see if she could hang around the village for a few extra days to spend time with Mallory. 

When we arrived at her house the auntie was bathing. When she came to join us she could hardly walk because her leg was hurting so badly. We asked her about it and she said for the past year the pain has come and gone, some months more intensely than others. She has gone to the hospital and they gave her some pills to take, but the pain hadn't left. She said she now thinks the pain has something to do with the witches because of the way it hasn't left for months. At this point I knew we had to pray over her. 

We asked if it would be ok if we would pray over her. We explained that God is so much more powerful than any witch and that if we called upon Him, He could heal her. She agreed and we spent time laying hands on her and praying. When we finished we asked if she had felt the pain move or leave her body. She said she had felt the pain move up her leg. This made me feel like it was something demonic, so I asked if we could pray again. She agreed. We prayed healing over her body, and the Lord healed her leg! It was amazing! Henry, who was translating for us asked her if she could stand up and make sure it really was feeling better. She did, and it seemed as though the pain had left! The Lord is SO powerful! We prayed and sealed the healing over her body and encouraged her that if satan ever tried to bring the pain back, to pray and ask God to take it away. 

Hopefully we can go back and find her this week. The Lord tells us in Luke 10 to go out and pray for the sick so that they can experience who He is. That is what we want. We want people to be able to experience the Lord. We don't want to go and dump a bunch of churchy knowledge on them and tell them to believe, we want them to truly experience His goodness and might! 

Praise the Lord with us as this lady experienced the healing power of Jesus! 

Fruit

I found a fruit in Zambia that I really like. It is hard to beat fresh mangos here but there are many Zambian fruits found in the bush that we have been able to try. This particular fruit is in season now and is pronounced "mauwi" in some local languages. It is the size of an orange, yellow/green in color, and has a hard shell. To eat it you crack it open and there are many seeds inside covered with tasty fruit. The taste is almost like a cooked tart apple.

Last week, I found out that my body is not used to this fruit. It was my first time trying to eat a whole one. I was 3/4 of the way through it when my stomach started feeling weird. So I left the rest and departed to a home church meeting. My wife and I decided this time to take the motorcycle rather than doing the 45 minute walk that we normally take... which ended up being a good choice because I might have not made it back. Let's just say that I was supposed to be leading the group that day and I ended up leaving the group and vomiting several times. Thankfully, when practicing simple church the leader isn't all that important and the meeting went on just fine. I may need to try smaller amounts of fruit next time... but it may take a couple of weeks before I want to see, smell, or taste that fruit again :)

Battle

You know that weird feeling when the only way you can explain someone knowing something is through witchcraft? If you are living in America, many would answer that question "no". But the spiritual realm is so real and if you are a Bible believer, you know that the demons and the angels are battling (...but Jesus wins! FYI). We have had some odd or abnormal (maybe supernatural???) things happen. And we know of two witch doctors that live in the area. A couple of weeks ago, Allison and I were praying in bed when she said "Benjamin, start praying against the devil!" She had just seen demon eyes in the window after our team had been feeling spiritual warfare. Some of the things that happen in Africa I would have never believed being in the U.S. But now there is very little that I totally discount. The good news: we have a God over angel armies, power in Jesus name, and armor in Ephesians 6. Don't go to battle naked!

Saturday Tutoring

Saturdays are one of my favorite days of the week. One of Love's Door's focuses is education. There are approximately 55-60 kids sponsored to go to school through Love's Door. A requirement as part of the sponsorship program for the kids living out here in the village is that they come to tutoring on Saturday mornings. This includes 1 hour of small group tutoring and 1 hour of discipleship time. It has become quite a program! 

Here's what the schedule looks like: 

9:00-10:00 The first tutoring group comes through. We have around 20 kids during this time slot broken up into 6 different tutoring groups. 

10:00-11:00 Approximately all 45 sponsored kids from the village attend discipleship time. This hour is open to any village kid, whether sponsored or not. The kids under 12 stay together and it is sort of like Sunday school. We study a Bible story together, sing some songs, play games, and sometimes do crafts. The girls and boys over 12 break into gender specific groups and talk about purity, what it means to be a godly man or woman, and play games together. 

11:00-12:00 The second tutoring group comes through. We have around 25 kids during this time slot with 6 different tutoring groups. 

Sometimes it makes for a crazy morning, but I love tutoring. The students I work with are in a range of grades from 3-7. We spend time working on math, reading, and writing. It has been amazing to see my students grow and improve. When I started with these students last year, some of them could not yet read. I've had 4 new students join me throughout the year as they've received a sponsor, so it has been interesting to watch them try to catch up to some of my other students. I still have a few who struggle to read, but we are working on it. We've also been trying to master skip counting by different numbers to help with multiplication facts. 

As you feel led, pray for this program. Pray that the Love's Door tutors would be able to make a difference and impact these kids on Saturday mornings both academically and spiritually. Pray that these students would be able to continue their education even up through college. I know only a handful of villagers who have even been through high school. Pray that these kids would be educated and rise up as leaders in their communities. I see so much potential in many of these kids. 

Unbelievable

Two crazy, unbelievable, and frustrating situations in one day. The first was from a lady who works on our property. She has been sick on and off for many months now. The clinic and hospital have told her that she has low blood but I am not really sure what that means. So I was checking in on her one day and I wanted to discreetly encourage her to get tested for HIV because it is very taboo. It turns out that she was already tested and that a doctor from town has been telling her that it is because she hasn't been sleeping with men. I got a translator because I was thinking that something was lost in translation. But it was true! She hasn't slept with anyone for over a year and the doctor has been telling her that she needs to have sex to get different blood in her body and she is now starting to wonder if he is right because she has been sick so much. Those things make me want to visit the clinic and punch someone right after tearing up their doctor license!

Scenario number two was also someone who works for the organization. He has a wife who is 15 years old and is pregnant. He told me about her not feeling well and the family wanting him to go to a witch doctor. I had been meaning to talk with him about the spiritual implications of entrusting health and children to demonic influences. But things came up and I never did. Thankfully, God made it work out because the next day he was knocking at my door asking for a K200 loan for the witch doctor. I couldn't miss this opportunity if I tried! Apparently, the witch doctor wanted K750 ($75... almost a month of wages!) to determine the problem and give them charms. I was able to speak truth into his life along with another Zambian staff member who is so wise on these issues. And he went home and took a stand to rely on Jesus.

Unfortunately, the family went around him and came up with the money themselves. The diagnosed problem is that the baby is being stolen from the womb at night and then returned and the headman of the village is putting curses on the baby because he wants it to die. Sounds wild but I don't write anything off in Africa. The headman has now kicked this man out of his house and he is living in a nearby rundown mud and grass house that will not make it through the rainy season. Wonderful opportunity to help and speak truth... but Jesus can come back and take over anytime!

Flying Termites

The rain has begun to fall harder and more frequently. This means that all of a sudden one night we had a mass of flying termites. We remember them from last rainy season. The body is maybe four times then size of an average termite and they have four clear wings similar in look to a dragonfly. They must only hatch after it rains and they disappear after a day.

It was around 7:30 pm in our house. It had been dark for an hour when we heard hundreds of these flying termites trying to get in through our screens and blinds. Houses are not completely bug proof like a winterized house would be so hundreds of flying termites did get in the house.

So here we are after dinner hoping for a relaxing evening. We shut off all of the lights in the house save a small camping solar light. We filled both sides of the kitchen sink with water and placed the light in between so that some of the flying termites would drown in the water. We quickly took ice cold showers and jumped into bed in the safety of our mosquito net at 8 pm. An early bedtime isn't so bad. We are just hoping that the many people that fry and eat these flying termites won't offer us any in the next few days!

Cicada

We were meeting with a home church group when all of a sudden a loud noise started right behind me. It made me jump and turn and I noticed that it was coming from a pot. It turns out that some people eat cicadas in Zambia! This one was being kept alive in a pot to fry in the evening. The things we learn after being here for a year.