I am currently sitting in one of the plastic chairs covered in a piece of fabric with a small table for a footrest, watching the rest of my team dance with the village. As I sit here watching, my heart and soul is at peace. I can feel the Spirit of the Lord in our midst and I can’t stop thinking about how this is my life right now, watching the rest of my team dance in Africa. I want to dance but I can’t. Oh wait. You want to know why I can’t dance, well I will start the story at the beginning.
Our team and our host’s team have been on the road since Saturday December 9th. We are traveling around to different villages about an hour and a half away from our home village. Saturday and Sunday we stayed in one village had several services and then relocated to a different village to spend the rest of the week there. Every afternoon we travel to a different nearby village, play an evangelical movie, worship through dance, and take turns preaching. We are four full days into our trip and I want to share several stories.
Day 1: Sunday
Church didn’t start till 10:15. I went early to try and help fix one of of ministries computers so that they could show a movie to the church and the village. It didn’t want to play the movie. I keep getting the black screen of death. Tried and tried to get the computer working. Part of the problem was that the computer was French, not just the words but Windows code was French, the keyboard was French. Anyway after our technical difficulties prevailed us, we couldn’t let the people go home empty. So the rest of my team joined me and church began at 10:15, 3 hours and 15 minutes late. Oh, I may have forgotten a minor detail, this service was at night not in the morning.
After an hour of worship, lots of drums and dancing we were asked to play some of our worship music and dance. So the 6 only white people the village had ever seen got up and danced to songs like ‘This Is Living Now’ and ‘I Am Free’. Some of us don’t dance let alone to worship music, but here we are dancing, jumping, and clamping for the Lord. This was hard for us, as we felt like the people of the village were coming out just to see white people dance. Wrong. The next day we felt convicted, and God revealed to us that He is using us to reach the hearts of the village. People may only show up to see white people, but they are actually encountering God.
Day 2:
Church started at 9:30pm this night and our hosts’s team got the movie to play. Almost the entire village surrounds the projector and screen to watch the movie. Just when the movie is about to wrap up, our host, Pastor Jacques stops the movie to worship and share a message. So we plug in our iPhone and dance to the same songs. As we are dancing I twist my ankle on a rock, down I go. So I call over Taylor S., our team nurse, to look at it and pray. Tonight was my night to share, so as I am fighting this struggle between my flesh and my Spirit, I fight through the pain and share what God laid on my heart. After I finished the message I sit back down and our host’s team goes and gets the car to drive me back to our guest house. And that is the reason why I am currently sitting in a chair watching my team dance
Day 3:
Church stared a little earlier tonight, and they played a movie. Again they pause the movie and we plug in our iPhone and dance, while the rest of my team dances. Service was awesome.
Day 4:
As I write this blog I am sitting on the edge of our worship/movie screen area, listening to some African worship music. The area is a dirt rectangle about the size of a volley ball court. Three of the four sides (2 short, 1 long) are surrounded by mud and stick huts; the fourth side is bordered by a dirt road and rope lights with a mango tree in the middle. Along the huts are wood benches and plastic chairs. The movie screen is just a sheet stretched between two tall branches stuck in the dirt in the middle of the meeting area. Our ministry host is borrowing a generator to power the projector, sound system, and rope lights. Just found out that they don’t have the movie they wanted to show so we are just going to have a worship service.
Made it back to my current story, so as I was saying. I can’t stop thinking about how this is life now. Sitting in an African village surrounded by a village who loves the Lord. Like I was saying I can feel the Holy Spirit here. It’s this feeling of peace and fullness and unity. My Spirit is reaching out and finding complete unity and peace with the Spirit of the people of the village, and together they sigh. As the Spirit has been reunited with itself, it’s a beautiful picture of what heaven will look like. This feeling is so hard to explain, but it is so completely peaceful, fulfilling, and joyful
Africa has been so incredible. The Lord is adding daily to His kingdom and our team is deeply honored to be witnesses of it.
