They said they needed someone for sports ministry and everyone knows that’s my favorite. It was our first day of ministry where we were able to go into the refugee villages. They asked for two people and Tabitha and I were the two that got to go. When they say sports ministry you actually never know what is going to happen, but I was excited, first day out in the field. We got to one of the villages and two staff members told me that this is where I was going, thinking that Tabitha was going to be with me. Wrong. They told her she was going to a different location. Okay, so whatever happens its just me so I have to be bold and ready for anything. Little did I know what was coming. J, a staff member, told me to follow him because we were going to visit people in the community first.
We first visited with an older woman, (wrote about her in my last blog) there were a couple women from the community there helping her with her home. Later on I would find out that that was the first time anyone has helped her in the two years of living in the community. She’s alone, some things are hard for her to do, but it was cool to see that the girls in the program are being taught that serving others in the community is so important. I went inside her house, and by house I mean a hut, I prayed with her and we moved on to the next home.
We visited with people for about an hour, going from home to home. Praying for whatever they asked for or didn’t ask for.
I was hanging out with some children and holding a baby, Steven, when a woman and her newborn came over. She told us that her baby was a week old. I talked to her a little bit and (maybe you remember from my last blog) but her baby had a rash and her husband refused to buy medicine for him because he wanted to spend the money in other ways, drugs/alcohol. This was their second child, he was just a week old. She told me that if he were a girl she would name him after me, but since he was a boy she wanted me to pick his name. Uhmmmm what?! Me? Name a child? In this moment you know theres a lot of pressure, you have to pick the perfect name, what if you pick the wrong one? There was one and only one name that came to my mind. And get this, I even tried to think of a different one, but… complete blank. Aaron. That’s the name that was in my mind. So I said it out loud. I know that it had to come from the Lord, because I even tried to pick a different one and I couldn’t.
What a blessing to be able to be given the opportunity to name a child. Later on in the week one of the other girls on my team went into the same village and was able to sit in on a counseling session with the same woman and got to pray over her and her baby. It has been so amazing to see the work that the Lord is doing here and how we can come alongside an amazing ministry and partner with them in any way that they might need.
