With knots in my stomach I walked through the trails lined with grass huts to preach The Word of God in a church that wouldn’t even measure up to the carport on my church at home.
As Ashley, Sabastian, Pastor Amos, 20 kids and Myself gathered on the dirt floors of the small church pastor explained they would pack the floors with water to keep dust from stirring when the “dancing” started. I thought to myself “but pastor, what dancing? There is no one here”.
Pastor began to sing & play his accordion and the 4 of us and the 20 children began to worship the Lord. Within the next 15 minutes the presence of God showed up and so did the rest of the church members. I now found myself thinking “so this is what the water was for”.
The church was packed, the people were dancing like crazy, and between my outfit and my skin I was the brightest and whitest person in the room, but I still couldn’t seem to keep the precious kids off of me. I was loving every minute of it.
By the time the “1st session” of worship was over, The Holy Spirit & body odor had filled the room and I took a deep breath as it was time for me to preach.
As my translator, my translators translator and myself took the floor I stared into the crowd at all of these wonderful people thinking “Why me, This small town girl from Texas, preaching in Africa?” Suddenly I was no longer nervous, only excited and ready to make the best of this opportunity.
I referenced to Matt 4 and preached on how just because you say no to a temptation the first time, that does not mean that the enemy will not continue to try within the next minute. The key to overcoming the temptation is found in James 4:7 which says Submit yourselves to God, Resist the devil and he will flee from you. As Christians we tend to think this is a verse we should only have to live out once, but even Jesus in Matt 4 had to do this 3 times in one setting before the word says the enemy finally left Him.
At the end of the service my prayers were that the word I had to bring them would penetrate through their hearts and give them a little bit of peace knowing that if they just submit to God, He will provide a way out.
We then went back to the house with Pastor Amos to indulge in an awesome lunch, only to find out that the “meat” we were eating was the goat Ashley and I had made friends with the night before. It was actually very tasty : ). Later that afternoon Ashley, Sabastian and Myself got in the back of a short bed truck (public transportation) along with 15 other people, with the topic of converstation being “What color is Jesus”? This was a very awesome and interesting weekend. We are now back in town and ready for what God has for our team the rest of this week.
End of Blog…
—————————————————————————————————————-
This one particular Sunday Team Bling was separated into 3 different sets of 3 because Kristen, Shannon, and Myself were preaching at different churches. Next weekend all of the Bling girls will be going back with Pastor Amos to take part in a Women’s Conference. So we are praying God will use us however He wants. Sorry there are no pictures with this blog, We cannot upload stuff on this internet. I will post them as soon as we get to debrief on the 29th or 30th.
