Ladies and Gentlemen:
First of all, an apology. As you know (or are about to learn), living in the third world has its challenges. Things like running water, clean places to eat and sleep, safety and showers are all luxuries. This means that ice cream is a step above a luxury, internet a step above that, and internet that works at the top of the list.
The good news is, I have a million blogs to post. True, some of them may only be blog ideas bouncing around in my head, most of them are half started (not even half finished- half started indicates a title and maybe the first line), one or two are actually complete.
The bad news is,due to a lack of technological support, I probably won't be posting any of them until we hit debrief in Johannesburg, South Africa.
This does not give you an excuse to stop praying for me or my team, because the needs are great this month.
Our weekly schedule is:
Sunday: preach at church.
Monday: prayer meeting, teach at the Bible school.
Tuesday: boy's devos, work projects, hospital ministry.
Wednesday: boy's devos, work projects, jail ministry.
Thursday: boy's devos, work projects, widow's ministry.
Friday: boy's devos, work projects, street ministry.
Here are a few stories to get you through the month:
Yesterday we did street ministry, aka went downtown and gave out bread and bananas to blind people on a bridge. A baby pooped on his mom (light green diarrhea poop) and she hit him (a BABY) and then almost dropped him off the bridge.
Another guy got mad at me (through the translator) for not actually fixing things. He was like, you white people come here saying you're Christians and sometimes hand out food and pray for us, but then you leave. How is that practicing your faith?
It's true- we come, we give them food and pray for them, sometimes share the Gospel (I did with him) and then we leave. That's all I CAN do- I still have 5 more countries to go and do the same thing: come in, help for a moment, leave.
There has to be more than this.
There have to be people willing to rise up and do more than feed these dearly loved people for an afternoon.
And, even if it's not the dirty slums in Mozambique, DC alone has 17,000homeless people in it- maybe God's calling you to give up a Saturday afternoon to love on those men and women, created in the image of the same God as you.
I'm just saying.
Widow's ministry the day before: we walked through the bush to different homesteads to share Scripture and pray for women who literally have NOTHING and NO ONE (well, some have abandoned grandchildren to take care of, but their father had run off and her other children had died). One woman had leprousy. No one takes care of these women or even remembers them, they're totally alone. And we come in, smile and hug them, maybe build a house or share some food, and then leave.
THIS IS HARD.
And it should be.
But true religion that our Father accepts is this: to look after widows and orphans in their distress (James 1:16b). Even when their distress has to become our distress.
Prison ministry has been going on for a few years, and we walked into a building with a large open area to hang out with the men who were singing and worshipping Jesus. They could have attacked us (because there were no guards or bars), but instead,they joined with us, dancing and praising their Savior.
During hospital ministry, we prayed for babies with malaria and yellow fever and all sorts of other unknown ailments- this week they were all released.
Praise. The. LORD.
There's more to come, but for now, PLEASE continue to keep my team (and my squad!) in your prayers.
Also, our final financial deadline is coming up at the end of the month. My team is still a few thousand dollars away from our full support goal. If you feel God is calling you to support the work we're doing, you can go to any one of our pages and follow the "Support" links. Thanks!
Team Raw Fish: Kacie Kerri Charlotte Evan Phil
