Excerpts from my Journal…
June 5, 2012
8:30am
I’m wide awake and it’s morning. So this is Africa. This is that mysterious land that beckons people to come and then digs a place in their heart forever to stay.
The people here in Dar es Salaam are very friendly –especially to my teammate Mark (he has a crazy huge beard) they either call him Jesus or Osama –this, however, helps us to distinguish between who the Christians and the Muslims are.
Tomorrow we leave for our ministry in Morogoro. We are going to be working with a church doing evangelism!
June 7, 2012
8:46am
It’s morning again. There was a close call with almost drinking unpurified water –but I caught it in time…I lost my coffee though.
12:16pm
We just got back from our first “door to door” evangelism ministry –and let me tell you, I’m still blown away by how awesome God is and that he chooses to use me! The first house we went to the lady
was in the yard working and we asked if we could share with her some words. She told us we had 3 minutes to tell her why we were here. The pressure was on. I said that we came to tell her about Jesus and the freedom he brings and that he has changed our lives. She asked if he could change her life , I replied, “Yes, if you trust in Him.” She looked at the guitar in my hand and said, “Okay, you can play me 1 song, and maybe while I’m listening I’ll become born-again.” Challenge accepted. I played a simple song called Hallelujah –it consists of 4 chords and one word. This song has become our squad anthem and is also understood universally. After the song she said that we could come back on Saturday at 6pm to tell her more. It was intense! We continued going from place to place tell people about Jesus and praying for an old woman’s knees to be healed, and singing Hallelujah.
1:44pm
Zack just spilled his beans ALL over his lap.
June 8, 2012
10:19am
I woke up this morning after a terrible night’s sleep (there is this annoying creature outside my window that sounds like it’s being tortured—all night, every night) to find out that we had been robbed in the middle of the night! Some of my teammate’s things were stolen through their bedroom window such as wallets, a purse, and a computer. We found the tools that they had fashioned to reach in and grab things lying below the window. Weirdly enough, the girl whose purse was stolen had the passport inside of it, but they took it out and dropped it beside the house!
8:26pm
We went with the church tonight to go to a lady from the church’s house to cast out a demon and pray over her to break the power of witchcraft in her life. When we first walked into the house it was eerie and I could feel the spiritual oppression there. But after everyone started praying and when we finished there was such a peace in that house. Praise Jesus!
June 10, 2012
5:19pm
So Mandi, Wes, and I along with this guy Johnson from the church just returned from what we thought was just going to be a nice Sunday evening walk, but it turned out we began to evangelize. As we were walking a group of young men called us over because they wanted to meet us. So we went over and introduced ourselves and then Johnson sprung on us, “Do you have anything to preach to them? This is the perfect opportunity!” We didn’t know what to say at first, so I just began to share about what we’ve seen God do while on the race, and about the power of Jesus’ name and that the Christian walk isn’t about following a set of rules, it’s about following Jesus.
We walked maybe 20 feet before a group of women invited us over wanting to talk to us as well. There were 3 women sitting on a bench and the ground working on each other’s hair, and there was one man standing nearby who spoke English really well. All 4 said that they were Roman Catholic and wanted to know what it meant to be “born-again.” None of had a bible with us but I had just read John chapter 3 this morning during church (when services aren’t translated for us, I end up doing a lot of bible reading) and so with the Holy Spirit’s help I was able to share with them what the Bible says about being born again. I asked afterwards if they wanted to be born-again, they replied that they wanted to think more about it, and the guy said that he had never heard this before so he wrote down John chapter 3 so he could look it up and read it on his own. I’m started to realize that many people here who call themselves “Christian” or “Catholic” have never really heard the Gospel. Also, another thing that is really cool is that whenever we start to share the Gospel I looked behind me and a small crowd begins to form –people in this community want to hear the word of God!
June 11, 2012
1:20pm
God is so good! We just got back from evangelizing in the community and we had so many opportunities to share the Gospel with the people there! There was one man in particular who sitting outside a little store with some other men, he was very friendly but when he heard that we were Christians he said “Sorry, but I am a Muslim.” Normally when we meet Muslims they kind of shut us down and don’t want to hear anything we have to say, but we just continued to make small talk with this man and asked again if we could share some words with him and he said okay. It was in that moment that I could feel the Holy Spirit taking over my words and I explained that Jesus was God more fluently than I ever have before; I told him that Jesus died to pay for our sins, but he rose again, defeating death so that we could have new life. Jesus’ death restored the broken relationship with the Father that was severed when Adam and Eve first sinned and made a way for us to now have a relationship with God. I can’t remember everything I said, but that was some of it. After I finished speaking I looked up and everyone was intently staring at me. Then he spoke and said, “Never give up speaking about Jesus, because of what you said I now believe in Jesus.” He spoke a little more and then I asked if he had a Bible, he said no but he wanted one. So we made a promise to bring him a Bible in Swahili –and that is what we are going to do today.
(The man that we talked to is in the green in the middle)
I am 2 weeks away from my FINAL deadline and I still need $2,691 to meet the deadline and be fully funded! Would you pray about donating? Any amount would be appreciated! Thank you so much!
