A few weeks ago I went on a weekend outreach with my color group (= your small group which consists of us international students and Mozambicans). It was so fun to go off to another village and do evangelism, show the Jesus film, pray for people, children’s ministry, just a jam-packed time.
To be honest though, the Tanzania early bird outreach was
so incredible that it had set a really high standard. But I realize that if I
keep setting my expectations based on that I would miss out on what God is
doing. So that was something that I had to constantly keep reminding myself
going into this outreach.
Below is a video I made. Not super high quality cos can’t upload anything bigger on this slow internet.
My favorite part of the outreach was seeing 24
people get baptized in a river. Our truck was packed full with about 50 people
and we traveled for 40 minutes just to get to the river. As my arms got more
and more tired hanging on the back of the truck with half of my body
hanging outside for dear life, I kept
telling myself “for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). And thankfully the joy of the Lord was very
evident and contagious in the truck. Even though we were cramped full, like
face to butt full, there was constant singing by the Mozambicans. They would
sing through the loud noise of the engine in beautiful harmony (as always). It
truly taught me to “rejoice always… Be thankful in all circumstances…” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). And when we
got to the site of the river I was taken aback by the beauty of that place.
Mountains and clean, clear water in the middle of Africa. Women and children
were washing their clothes there and taking baths in their colorful wraps. It
was just a beautiful, God-given place.
As I stood there in the water watching all the
people get baptized, I just felt such a privilege to be witnessing this. I mean
how many people get to do this? And the Holy Spirit’s presence was just so
tangible in that place. What was really amazing too was that the village chief
who was a Muslim came as well and he was grinning from ear to ear the whole
time. I just know that he will come to know Christ soon if not already. I
honestly cannot imagine somebody who is so open to Christianity (he even
welcomed us back to his village) not coming to know Christ sooner or later.
Something that I didn’t get to put in the video was when we were going around the houses in the village to pray for people, there was a boy who had epilepsy for a long time. His parents didn’t understand why and just asked us to pray. So like 30 of us cramped into this tiny one room mud hut and prayed over the boy. We prayed and prayed. He didn’t get better. Then Zac got a word of knowledge about witchcraft, and he went around the house to see if there were any witchcraft items. Nothing. He asked the boy’s parents, they said they have never gone to the witch doctor.
We kept praying. Still no changes.
Zac got really worked up in the spirit and he straddled over the boy and laid his hands on him. He found a bone tied around his neck. He immediately pulled it off and asked the parents about it. Then the mom realized that there was another item that she had received from a local ‘doctor’. It was a bowl with pieces of wood soaked in it. Definitely witchcraft.
We took the items and burned it outside of the house. Immediately, a cooling breeze swept through the stuffy little room with 30 people inside. There was no way a breeze could have come into the house in the natural. It was definitely the Holy Spirit.
The boy’s fever broke. We fed him a little bit of rice and some water.
The thing with Africa is that many locals don’t know that the local ‘doctor’ or ‘healer’ are actually witch doctors and so they go to them for ‘medicine’, not knowing that they are actually bringing curses back home. To be honest, this doesn’t just happen in Africa, but everywhere around the world, except that we don’t call them witchdoctors, but give them a nicer name. As Christians, really be discerning about the ‘cultures’ that we take for granted and think that “Oh, that’s just the Chinese/Spanish/etc. culture” and become ignorant or tolerant towards. There is only one true God and one true Healer.
