Hello everybody!
First off, I am fully funded!! Praise the Lord for that! $18,700 raised in 7 months!
Second, I am sorry that I haven’t posted a blog in well over a month. I will give a quick update to what has happened since then. So, praise the Lord, by the end of Lesotho, our group saw nearly 80 people commit their lives to Christ, 15 of which were prisoners! Lesotho was an awesome month, God did so many cool things. We saw a multitude of healings and obviously a bunch of people come to Christ. That month came with a lot of down time, opening the door for all of us to get a bit of rest and grow in our personal relationships with the Lord.
Following the end of Lesotho our squad had a debrief; a debrief is a period of typically about 4-5 days where we debrief and go over everything that has happened the last few months. At this debrief, we were assigned new teams, my new team chose the name 7th Heaven.. because who doesn’t love hit TV shows from the late 90’s?? (You can see all of my new teammate’s blogs on the left side of the webpage.) I was also given a new role in our squad. At the beginning of the Race I was asked to be the safety coordinator for the squad, which, if you know me, is a sort of funny title. At this debrief, my position was changed to be one of our logistics coordinators, which is something that I absolutely love to do! Debrief was a great time of learning and refreshing.
After debrief our squad made our way to Swaziland. Typically when we get to a new country we will split up into our respective teams and head to different ministries throughout a country. In Swazi we had an all-squad month, which means we don’t split up and do our ministry together. We were spread out into different jobs while working with a single ministry. Our squad was working with AIM and the Children’s Hope Chest. My ministry was a little different than usual, I was working in their corporate office. I would work on IT problems, train people on computers, and do data entry. It was a little different than what I was expecting to do, but it was great, nonetheless. We received the opportunity to help make an organization that works to serve so many different people run a little bit more efficiently. We were given the chance to help them work in the lives of hundreds of kids all over Swaziland. Although I didn’t get the chance to directly work with any of the kids, I still feel like I played a part in running the bigger machine, which is a really fulfilling feeling. Swaziland was great!
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Now onto what I was planning on blogging about today!
What Are The Odds?
This month in South Africa is going amazingly. We have this little thing called ‘Manistry Month.’ This month is exactly what it sounds like, all the men of the squad doing ministry together. The 8 of us are in a town just south of Cape Town, South Africa, working with Kingdom Sports Ministry. Our days look like this: wake up > eat corn flakes > drink tea > worship together > go out into the community > pray with men In the community > make friends with men in the community > go home > eat sandwiches > go to a sports field > teach the kids about Jesus > play soccer with the kids > score goals with the kids > teach the kids more about Jesus > go home > hang out and do man stuff together > sleep > repeat the next day.
This is Caleb, one of the boys who we get to hang out with everyday.. I love him.
This has been our schedule for the last couple weeks and it is amazing! We sometimes will get the morning off to go work on different things, depending on what the weather is like, and a couple other factors. Our group of men also have some norms that we honor as a group. These norms usually have to do with holding a certain level of integrity and respect for one another. My favorite of our norms is called ‘odds.’ Odds is a game where you ask somebody to do an unpleasant or undesirable task, they then give you a range of numbers, our highest level is 100. So if I were to ‘odds’ somebody, they would give a number between 1 and 100, so if the number given was 30, then you and the person you challenge would then do a countdown from 3 and on 3 you would both say a number between 1 and 30, if you both say the same number, then the challengee would have to do the task, if the numbers were to add up to 30, then the challenger would have to do the task. Here is an Urban Dictionary definition for a little more clarification: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=odds%20on
One morning we were all at a coffee shop in town. I was eating some carrot cake, because I love carrot cake, if you don’t love carrot cake, you have a serious problem. Anyways, I turned around with a fork full of carrot cake and shoved it into the mouth of an unaware Ryan O’Keefe, a man who also loves the sweet delicacies of carrot cake. He was plesently surprised to say the least. I then looked at him, offered him a fork and said, “odds you go around the restaurant and try to feed this carrot cake to somebody.” He replied, “ahhhhhhhhhhh! 1-30.”
“Deal, 1… 2… 3… 9!” I exclaimed.
“9!” Ryan said at the same time.
We both laughed and he was a tad bit frustrated. He picked up the fork and was set out to accomplish this task. The first lady he asked said ‘no,’ the second said ‘no,’ the third, then the fourth, then the fifth all said ‘no.’ He then moved to a girl and asked her, she said, “well, I don’t really like carrot cake at all, but sure,” and ate it. The task was complete. She asked Ryan why he did that, he then explained the rules of the game, why we did it and everything, the girl and her mother laughed, and Ryan was on his way.
Some time passed and Shiloh and I decided to head back home. On our way out, we hear the lady call out to Shiloh and myself, we walk over to the table and she says, “odds you eat a nacho,” my immediate thought was, “there is no way that I would ever decline a free nacho, heck yea I will have a nacho,” so I ate the nacho. I don’t really think she understood the rules to ‘odds’ but like I said, I wasn’t gonna turn down a free nacho. We then proceeded to explain all the rules of the game to her, and what we were doing in South Africa. The girl’s mother was super excited to hear that we were some Jesus loving missionaries. She started asking about specific scripture and things that could help with hearing. This woman had lost her hearing in one of her ears some time before we had met her. We asked her if we could pray because that’s the only remedy that we know of. We prayed for the Lord to restore her hearing in that ear. Right after we said ‘amen,’ she looked up and said, “would you believe me if I told you that I felt a change?”
“Heck yea I would believe you! That’s what Jesus does!”
This woman had her hearing restored, and it was all because of a fun game that we choose to play. It was interesting to think of how that woman’s daughter didn’t even like carrot cake and was probably the seventh person who was asked if they wanted a bite. God wanted all of those people to say ‘no’ to the carrot cake that day so that that one girl would say ‘yes.’ Because the girl said yes, the door was opened for greater relationship and it was so apparent that God wanted to touch that woman’s life that day. He sought her out and changed her life with just a simple little game. It was an incredible experience to be a part of and I am humbled that the Lord chose me to be part of it. If you are ever skeptical about whether the Lord can heal through prayer, just know that He 100% can and will!
Philippians 4:19
“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”
Your needs aren’t just financial or emotional, your needs are also physical. The Lord will meet ALL of your needs, not just some, but all! Never forget that.
I would love to encourage you to be playful this week, do something slightly immature, something you wouldn’t normally do. Go with your spouse to a local park and swing on the swings, go skipping through the mall, talk to some strangers! The Lord will open a door for you that you never thought would’ve been open, you just gotta have faith and trust that He will take care of everything that needs to be done.
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Thank you so much for reading! I have a couple more blogs I have on my mind to write over the next couple of days. I appreciate all of your support! I have been active on Instagram recently, so feel free to follow me on there @miiggy.smalls I also have been wanting to receive more prayer requests and updates about your lives! Feel free to send me a call or text at any time, my number is +1 414-416-5659, I am always down to chat!
Much love, yall!
