God is so amazing with his surprise blessings and is perfect at knowing exactly what we need when we need it. We’ve been helping at open air crusades these past few days – which are held in the village marketplace and basically consist of worship, prayer, preaching and evangelism. It’s been awesome to see God work and for hearts to be changed. My teammates have really stepped out in their giftings within ministry and I feel like that has definitely paved the way for us becoming unified as one.
The second to last day of crusade, I met a thirteen year old girl named Lucy and we ended up having a really good conversation. I found out she is a believer and attends a nearby church with her family. Anyways, I asked her if she’d come to the crusade the following day and if she’d bring all her friends too. She said she would and that she’d be on the lookout for me too. I felt a connection with her and truly believed I would be seeing her again. She totally reminded me of the middle school girls I led in my life group (small group) back home.
Sure enough, I ran into Lucy at the crusade and she was with five friends whom she had invited! I was introduced to Mary, Naomi, Gladis, Olive and Caroline. We hung out during the whole crusade – asking each other questions and laughing about random, silly stuff. It was great. Then as we were saying goodbye, an idea popped into my head (definitely leading from the Holy Spirit) to start a small group with them. So I went for it. I asked the girls if after school, around 5PM the following day, they wanted to come to the church I’ve been staying at to do a little Bible study. They immediately agreed and seemed genuinely excited, which made me really pumped. I tried not to think about wondering if they would actually show up and focused on trusting that God would work it out perfectly.
The next day, 5PM came and went – no girls to be found. I started to get a bit discouraged and decided to just pray. Then, almost immediately after I prayed, the girls walked up to the church door! We spread a sheet out on the grass and started talking. I shared about what it looks like to be a rebel for Jesus and not to be ashamed or afraid of living out our faith, no matter what people think. Worldly teens are busy doing things like drugs, drinking, having sex, disobeying parents… So to be a rebel is to go against the norm – which looks like doing things such as reading God’s Word, praying fervently, evangelizing, putting others before yourself, staying pure until marriage. We taught each other some worship songs, both in Swahili and English, and prayed. Then, I introduced them to the fabulous game of Uno. They were all about it and didn’t want to stop playing. We have probably been through like 20 games of it so far.
The girls are showing up each day to continue doing small group, and they bring new people every time. A couple of boys have now joined the group too!
God just blows my mind. He knows how passionate I am about teenage girls and how much I miss leading and mentoring my middle school girls back home. To have this opportunity here in Africa is so encouraging and just furthers my desire to work with youth when I return home!
