Wednesday, October 18, 2017
This Morning was our first morning of prison ministry. Everyday our team splits up into a group of 3 and walks over the the local hospital to give a word of encouragement. We usually wake up and sacrifice breakfast in order to be on time for hospital morning devotion. Today three of my team members walked to the hospital, while the rest of us began our mornings with the most delicious French toast and chard bacon, the first American breakfast I have eaten since arriving here in Mokhotlong. During breakfast, our team discussed what prison ministry would look like and what collectively we would need to prepare for the day. As we have learned here in Lesotho most of our visits, whether to hospital, churches, schools or prisons, we usually always are asked to bring a word, and testimony or two. Today was no different.
The ministry here invigorates me. I love the opportunity the lord has given my team and I to be strengthened by our understanding of the gospel as well as our heart to seek him and be confident to preach the Good News. Short notice is something I actually am fueled by as I have grown used to preparing school projects and assignments within the day of their due date. I will admit that being a procrastinator in school for me was actually a good thing because it allowed me to push myself to preform well under pressure. So unlike most of my peers I have always invited the opportunities to teach under hastened formality. I alerted my leader that I would be ready to give my testimony and dashed to my room to annotate what I wanted to share.
As quickly as I said yes, the Lord made straight a pathway for me to speak. I had only a few minutes to outline what I wanted to say. However, I was unsure of what I was going to leave in and leave out. I grew up in a church that taught me to always know my audience before attempting to speak on the Lords behalf and this idea was pressing on my heart for the next few moments. The trouble I had was that I didn’t know my audience. I had never meet a man or woman in prison, I had never even witnessed what ministry was like in prisons. Are you more reserved or do you speak openly? Are they fearful or angry? How was I to revise my testimony to speak volume to a mass I did not know? All these questions quickly consumed my mind, but I continued looking to scripture for something to outline and tie together a theme of my message.
I opened to Jeremiah 1. From the first glance of the text, I had known that the lord was going to do something powerful through my vulnerability, even to complete strangers. He assured me of this and I read, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” Wow Jesus so good! Continuing on, “and before you were born I consecrated you; you were born a prophet to the nations.” I read on to the end of verse 10. By the verses in this first chapter I had my outline. I was to speak about Grace.
We loaded up in the back of our translators truck and headed toward the Mokhotlong correctional , located on the lowest plateau within the village. Once we arrived at the prison we awaited our time to go in and sat on a bench outside where I was completely at peace. The guard guided us to a gate and down a slope of rock. We could see men dressed in red tattered clothing. A row of chairs were placed in the middle of a court yard for us to sit in. The men gathered all around us. Stebo our guide opened us up in prayer and then the men of the prison lead us in worship and dance. Their song was very rhythmic and beautiful. One man held a base drum and a stick which he cued the tempo of the worship and the tap, tap, tapping of his fellow mens feet. They gathered in a circle and blessed us with a traditional Sesotho anthem.
Sharing my testimony in a African prison opportune a new development in my faith. I witnessed the lord give a profound message to these men. Men I did not know or get to individualize. All that I was able to individualize was myself to a courtyard of my fellow teammates and brothers in Christ. As I spoke, I grew stamina, “I did not know Jesus” I gave a heartfelt account of my life before the Lord. I shared my depression, anxiety, and fear of loneliness and eroding self worth. I shared with these men how the Lord was able to take hold of my heart and use it for his glory, that he made beauty from my ashes and turned the death inside me to life in him. Mathew 22:32 says, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Issac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of dead but of the Living.” I also shared Job 10:11-12 “You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews, You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirt.” God showed me my worth, he showed me that he had a greater purpose for me that I did not yet know. Grace saved me. As I waited for my translation to be completed, the Lord put on my heart 2 Thessalonians 1:11. So we read, “To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
By this, I was finished and then two of my teammates followed me to share what the Lord had done in their lives as well. It was quite an incredible step in my faith to openly share so much of Christ workings in my life and bringing me out of the darkest time in my life and into the place the Lord has me today. By the end of Sam and Cole’s testimony, Stebo again came up and prayed over the people in the prison, but to me these men looked so human, I had encountered the presence of the Holy Spirit in the most taboo place my society had dehumanized. After Stebo’s prayer, a man came forth and Stebo explained to us that he wanted to accept Jesus Christ into his life. I was deeply moved. The Father’s works were unseen to me until this man stepped up. I hadn’t seen spiritual progress from any of people I was ministering to until this refined moment, when the Lord had boldly attested to his mystery ways. It built in me a spring of confidence like no other to watch as one man humbled himself before an entire courtyard of his fellow inmates myself and God.
This is the work of the Lord.
