Hey Everyone. This is my attempt to blog more often. Shorter, less pictures, but hopefully this way I will keep you more up to date.
The new team is still Sweet, and being a leader is turning out to be a very rewarding experience. It is draining tho. The other day Marisa was praying for me and she asked what I wanted from God. I told her Wisdom to lead my team. She said “No. What do you want between yourself and God?”
I have been warned by other leaders that if you arent careful you can take on the Spiritual state of the team and ignore your own personal relationship with Jesus. I definitely can see that this is going to be something I have to fight against the whole year. Already I think more about how the team is doing and where everyone is at than I do about where I am at with Jesus. But it is in the open so the Lord will redeem it.
So Tanzania. Well my team is by itself in Arusha. When I called my contact, Pastor Marco Hauly, he told me that communication between the World Race and himself had been poor so he would be out of town for the first 3 days that the Holy Banditz would be in Arusha. Whatever right? New city, no contact. Our team was excited.
The only embarrassing part was when our bus pulled into Arusha with 3 other teams and they realized that the H.B.z had absolutely nothing set up. We had the bus driver drop us off at a hostel, the 3 teams drove off and we worked it out.
We negotiated the price for 3 rooms down to under our budget and tracked down Jill’s Compassion Int. child and got the paperwork rolling so we could work with the Compassion base in the city. While Jill and I went on a hunt for the Compassion paperwork other members of the team ATL’d (Ask the Lord). Essentially just praying to see what God tells us to do. Shiloh felt like we should break onto the balcony of the hostel and do a little worship service and read the Sermon on the Mount out loud to the city below. There is a few Mosque nearby that play the call to prayer 5 times daily so we thought we should have a little Christian call to worship. So we went on the balcony, read the sermon on the Mount, I preached the Gospel for a few minutes, then we sang some worship songs. When we were done we went outside and talked to people that came to our door to talk with us. No one accepted Christ with us, but we got to talk to all kinds of people: street children, Muslim men, Christian believers, etc.
It was a cool step of faith for me to just go and do it. I know that 4 months ago I would have never gotten onto a balcony to sing worship songs and preach, but I lately I am just starting to walk in faith that my God is real, that Christ is real, that the Cross is real and that God is going to let me see some really cool things for His kingdom if I just act like its real.
So there it is: Thats how the Holy Banditz spent their 1st 24 hrs in Tanzania. No contact, No place to stay, No nothing. Just faith in Christ and a zeal for life.
