Well, it’s been a minute. We are rounding out the second week of our time in Mokhotlong, Lesotho which makes me want to both celebrate and hyperventilate. (I’m mostly kidding.)
But honestly it’s been a whirlwind of ministry and activities here in Africa. We have partnered with a group of pastors and churches that send us out to do a variety of tasks at all times of the day.
- Every morning on Monday – Friday, a group of 3 of us go to the hospital at 7:45 am to deliver 1 message, 1 testimony, and 1 prayer. They walk to the hospital after breakfast and return within the hour because we are only allotted 15 minutes in the hallway with the patients. It was my turn to go earlier this week, and I’ll go again on Monday. I gave the message and pulled from Luke 7, where the “sinful woman” finds Jesus eating a meal with some of the disciples and Pharisees, and she starts crying and cleaning his feet with her tears and hair, anoints them with oil, etc. The people in the room judge her because of her sinful life and Jesus calls them out. It’s a beautiful display of someone being overwhelmed with gratitude and love towards their Savior, and His beautiful attitude toward the sinful and dirty.
- We visited a prison one morning and were greeted by an open courtyard area with a large group of men dancing and singing. A few people from our group gave testimonies, which included their own experiences with prison, and then another teammate gave a message about choosing Jesus. 5 men gave their life to Jesus that morning! Hearing the pastors translate our messages into heir language was really moving, because they speak with a TON of passion and authority.
- Some days we do a lot of gardening and landscaping at the church and school! Pulling weeds, watering gardens, etc. we have plenty of time out in the sun, but thankfully the high elevation bring cool breezes. We have also cleaned out the church a couple times.
- Every so often we help with a soup kitchen. A group of us will walk to the church and help prepare the food, then we take it over to the hospital which has an area to distribute food. Someone gives a short message, someone else will pray over the meal, and then we serve and walk around praying for people. The other day I prayed for a woman who was looking for a job, then a girl about my age who had depression, and a mother who was with her 2 year old son. The time before, a teammate and I prayed for a lady with a limp who experiences a lot of knee, leg, and foot pain on her right side. We prayed for healing twice and she walked away jumping and dancing.
- Another time we returned to the hospital, split into groups, and walked through the patient’s rooms to pray and visit. It was a pretty heavy atmosphere, and there were diseases and ailments of all types. Towards the end I walked into the next room a little before the rest of my group and found a woman sitting up reading the Bible. She spoke English well, and told me she had just experiences a miscarriage of what would have been her 3rd child. We prayed together, and I couldn’t keep the tears back. “God you give us life and you decide when to take it away.” Oof. But we both agreed that He would bless her with another child in the future.
The weather is cool and the sun is warm. We only have wifi when we visit the Internet cafe in town, so it’s nice to be mostly disconnected! We’ve had a couple water shortages which was interesting but our time here has been VERY enjoyable and refreshing. We are in the mountains and meeting great people and I have personally enjoyed the fresh air and time with God in my bible.
I’ve read through Leviticus and Numbers since being here and am working on a sermon about the parallels between the Old Testament and New, talking about the system of the Old Covenant between God and the Israelites and how they had to sacrifice animals and go through step after step to atone for their sins — and we don’t have to do stuff like that anymore because Jesus changed everything.
I’ve also really enjoyed the 2 teams we were paired with this month! And have gotten to bust out my hammock a couple times. Praise the Lamb.
Anywho. There’s gonna be a new podcast episode up soon aaaaaand I’m still fundraising money if you’d like to partner with me! There’s another deadline coming up and the end of the month to be fully funded and I think I’m around $3,500 away. It’ll happen when it happens! God finishes what He starts.
