start by apologizing for my lack of blogging this month but this month I
struggled a lot. I couldn’t find words
to describe how or what I was feeling. This is my effort to try and explain the past month.
The moment we
arrived in Tanzania I got sick, I believe now that some of it was spiritual as
well as physical. I spent two nights in
the hospital followed by my team putting me on house arrest for the first week. After about a week of not doing anything I
was bored and refused to sit around anymore. So I attended a funeral, where we
sat in the extremely hot sun after walking 30 minutes to the funeral location. We soon found out that the burial was back in
the direction of our house, so we had to walk back. My body was really tired and I decided to
stop once we got to the house.
Our second week we
did door to door ministry. This is
something that I have yet to get use to or be comfortable doing, but I went
out. Satan
got into my head and told me that my words were not powerful. This left me not wanting to do door to door,
so I volunteered to preach on Sunday so at least I wouldn’t have to go out and
do door to door. Well thankfully the
Lord took my step in faith and gave me words to say. At our debrief in Kenya a session was done on
Redemptive/Motivational Gifts, the Lord gave me a sermon on Spiritual Gifts,
and that session came in handy.
Sunday came and it
was time for me to give my sermon, I got up and gave it, and felt no
responses. Satan
again got into my head and told me that my words were not powerful. While there a girl manifested and the few of
us there got to teach the church how to cast out spirits with the fruits of the
spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control. I could
have let Satan win and not stepped in and helped
but I know that Satan has no power on this earth so I helped. Satan lost because Jesus’ blood has won!
The next week our
teams had time off. It was split, 6 of
us had the first half, and 8 had the second half. The 6 of us spent 2 days on a Safari, in the
Serengeti. We got to see 3 of 5 of the
big 5: lion, elephant, and buffalo. The rhinos are kept in a separate part of
the park because they are endangered so the only way to see them is to pay
extra money, and we did not get to see any cheetah’s.
the group was taking their time off the 6 of us were in charge of running a
Crusade. A crusade is an open air
church, in the middle of a field. We did
skits, the worship team from the church sang, and we gave a salvation
message. The third night of our crusade
I gave the salvation message, and unlike the following two nights at the end of
mine I asked people to raise their hands if they wanted to accept Jesus because
it is a sign of surrendering. Well no one raised their hand. Pastor got up and began speaking, and since
he was our translator, we didn’t know what he was saying. After a while a bunch of kids came to the
front raising their hands. During all
this Satan got into my head again telling me
that my words were not powerful.
month on a bad note so when the opportunity came to speak at a school I jumped
on it, and volunteered to speak. I wasn’t going to let Satan win because Jesus has won my heart. So Stacy and I headed off to the school. The Lord told me not to prepare much, but gave me a few ideas. Walking into the classroom knowing I was
going to speak without anything prepared I felt calm for the first time on the
race. Stacy introduced us and what we
were doing and then handed it over to me. I spent the next 30-40 minutes talking to the students about when I was
their age. These students ranged from
12-20, the typical age for secondary students in Africa. At the end of telling the students about my
life I gave them the opportunity to accept Jesus. One student stood up. However, this time I didn’t let Satan win, and I said if you are afraid of what your
peers will think not to, because that’s how I felt, and one more stood up. I then told them that the rest of them are
telling me that they are already born again and living in the Spirit, at that
time the majority of the students stood. We raised our hands and I prayed for them.
