3 Weeks Living the Village Life

As you may have read before, the team and I took off for three(3) weeks to go and do some evangelism in a Muslim village nearby to Mozambique. We set off on the 14th of January and came back on the 5th of February. We have just been resting till now and been trying to figure out what is next. Most of the team left again yesterday (Friday) to head down to southern Malawi, where it’s nice and hot, for the last week of the DTS outreach phase. I stayed behind so that I could over see what is going on from here as well as the fact that my parents are coming on Wednesday and need to plan their trip out here as well as be here when they get here. I thought I would just write a quick update about some of what we did as well as one or two of my own highlights of or time away.
We split all the students into three teams for our time away, each team being assigned something to do each day and then work on a rotation through-out the time. One team would be on cooking each day, one would be on local ministry and another on Jesus Movie. In the afternoons the cooking team would be in charge of running a kids ministry for about 2 hours. We’d turn up the music and the kids would flood in from all directions, even though lots where already there. They would do some dancing, games as well as a short drama or bible skit (always need to be doing our Christian input of course). Over all the kids’ ministry went really well and on our second last day we had one big final party for all the kids with some drinks, candy, face painting and other games. There was really a great impact made on the kids as we could see within about 2 weeks there was already a change within some of them.
The second team would be doing local ministry each day, meaning that they would go around and do door to door ministry, or walk around the local market and talk to people. One of the highlights for people doing local ministry was going to be well to collect water for the day, it was a time to talk to the women of the area and just be helping to them, pumping water and helping with their. It also made talk in the way that the locals would get a good kick out off some of the white foreigners caring water on their heads or in different ways.
The third team would be the Jesus Movie team, pretty self explanatory. The team would be going out at night to show the Jesus movie in different villages nearby. We also did two trips out with one team to show the Jesus movie in a couple farther away villages. So we would go out for 3 days or so and show the Jesus Movie all three nights in a row in three different villages but have a main centre place to sleep. One of my highlights was during one of the three day trips that I took the team on. A lady came to us one morning looking for prayer; she said she had back pain as well as pain in both of her feet. We started praying for her, and nothing happened, prayed again and nothing happened, then Pastor Size (our contact out that way) starting talking to her. Once they had finished talking back and forth the conversation was translated and he was saying that she came to us for prayer, but that if nothing happened when we prayed that she would go straight to the witch doctor. This motivated us even more to press in and keep praying, we were now crying out to God for a miracle to take place and for this woman to feel a touch from God. After we spent a couple minutes praying we said amen and all looked at the women with anxious eyes. She looked no different to us but said that she was feeling less pain in her feet and that her back was healed. We were excited that God had touched her but wanted to see her fully healed. After praying for some more time she said she was better and walked away with her two kids. The next day though she came back and was looking so much better and said she slept so well that night and was so grateful for our prayers and concern for her. It was amazing to see the power of God fall even though we knew there was a battle going on inside her and for her life. God conquers all!
The second highlight for me was on a Friday night when a team and I went out to show the Jesus movie. The church we were at was surrounded by trees and there was very little open space to do the movie but we still had a great turnout of about 400 people or so. After we had finished watching the movie, maybe 100 people gave their life to Jesus and we had called people forward to healing I went forward to pray for people. The first person Benito and I went to go pray for was talking to Benito and he was translating for me. We prayed and he said he was feeling, Amen Jesus, but then he started speaking in English about what was going on. I was in shock as I stood there talking to him, hearing about the last 3 years of this young guy’s life and the pain he had been suffering. This was the first time I had ever prayed for someone, God heal them and then find out that they speak English. I was able to chat with him about life and what has been going on and then just felt the need to pray a blessing over him. Over all it was a great experience and was in a great time where I was just getting into the routine of praying for people, not understanding anything and them being healed and not being excited about being better. But both of these experiences where a true blessing from God and really was perfect timing.
The DTS is just about over now, the students are off on their last week of outreach like I said before and we are here at the base just doing some administrative things and getting reading for what is next. In March it looks like I will be helping either doing some church planting and also planning some work with a church already in Blantyre, doing some outreach with some of their members. I’m excited about the rest of my time here as I really don’t know what it’s going to look like yet but that’s part of being a missionary, you never know where God is taking you, all you can do is hold and enjoy the ride that He’s taking you on and man am I excited for that ride.

Like I always say, feel free to e-mail me with any comments or questions about what I’m doing or with anything really. I normally reply pretty quickly as I really appreciate the e-mails.
Many blessings from myself and the team here in Malawi, Thanks for all the prayers and support that you have given all of us here. May God bless you richly.