These last few weeks have been hectic, as usual.
We did a ton of hut to hut ministry, prayed for families, as well as celebrated with new brothers and sisters coming to know Christ!
As everybody knows, this last week was Thanksgiving. Instead of just my team and Georgia's team celebrating it together, we had four other teams come and stay with us. (Mostly because 13 people on our squad were climbing Mount Kiliminjaro the next day, and then 22 people were doing a safari)
Anyways, we decided to have it as one big family.
There were 36 of us for Thanksgiving. Which meant tons of cooking.
Too bad nobody in Africa celebrates it, so we had to explain, and find things to cook.
Ended up Alyssa and I spent all of Thanksgiving morning shopping to cook for 36 people.
We walked in the market for three hours, holding over 100 potatoes, 30 onions, 3 pineapples, 25 ears of fresh corn, and 2 chickens (We already had five at home, and turkeys were too expensive).
Heavy, right?
So we went home and started cooking right away. We were supposed to do shifts for each team, but most of my team worked all day.
We ended up making garlic potatoes, regular potatoes, french beans, bread, tons of fruit, roasted corn, and chicken (which I cut all seven up with a little help of mama!)
After many hours of cooking over three open fire pits, we had our feast. We invited our friends, John; our safari guide who helped us with anything and everything the whole month, Wallace; who was the Mount Kili guide, and then Costa, our contact. It was such an amazing Thanksgiving, and I was blessed to be surrounded by my new family.
After a great meal, I was able to Skype my family at home and talk with them.
We even had a family portrait made!
Earlier in the week, we were invited to a Crusade that had about 300 people at it. (Not big)
For many of you who do not know what a crusade is, it is where a few preachers come to a village, set up a bunch of speakers, as well as a stage, get some type of praise team who also serve as helpers throughout the whole crusade, and then save and heal the heck out of everybody.
So this started as a typical crusade.
We sang.
We danced.
Somebody spoke.
Then the normal alter call.
This is where people come forward to be saved (which is everybody) and then the speaker asks if they want to be healed.
This is where it gets crazy.
The speaker decides to have us "Mzungos" (white people) to come up and pray and heal everybody who has their hands raised.
Now most of us are holding a baby and playing with the children, so we hesitantly walk up.
As soon as we start praying, people start dropping.
Not the normal "we are so filled with the Holy Spirit we can't stand" drop, but the "we are manifesting demons and don't want any part of this" drop.
All of a sudden, the helpers/praise teams comes running and picks up the people and takes them to a tarp.
Now, I have seen Furious Love, I know how this works, but to be honest, I have been terrified to see this in person. And I was praying against it.
But as usual, I ended up being stuck between two tarps filled with possessed people, so I went at it.
I prayed. Hard.
I remember praying over a specific woman, and it was hard.
But I wasn't scared, at all.
To be honest, I was kind of excited.
I wanted to see how the Holy Spirit would come into these people's lives, and fill up the emptiness where the demon had left.
After the demon was casted out, the woman just sat there, confused.
Come to think of it, they all did.
After they were "OK" the helpers picked them up, and walked them away.
And I got pissed.
They didn't even talk to the person about Christ.
They just picked them up and told them what happened.
There wasn't a, "If you come to know Christ and accept Him as your Savior, this will never happen again."
Or, "God loves you so much, and it hurts Him so bad to see you like this, but if you love Him like He loves you, He will make sure you will never be harmed."
I remember one schoolgirl in particular this day. We thought she was fine, but all of a sudden she started kicking and screaming and spitting.
This is where I got real angry. That a demon could take over this little girl's life, and be ok with it.
And then afterwards, not know who could save her from this misery.
Most of my squadmates were shaken.
Some still played with the kids, some kept the drunkards away from the women, some watched in horror, and some took photos.
Part of me thinks that God put me between the two tarps just to make me more brave.
Because I know if I was at the side, I would not have done anything. I would have watched, or prayed silently, or played with the children.
Dang. Once again, Abba surprises me.
So, I forgot to tell you, my team was selected to go to Malawi instead of Mozambique this next month. It will take us over two full days to drive there, and we leave tomorrow morning at 7am.
We got lucky, because some teams leave tomorrow with us, but won't get to their location until Tuesday!
We willl be living in our tents the whole month, and traveling across the country every week.
Our description on the paper said we were: preaching, planting churches, healing the sick and injured, and casting out demons.
Ha!
This will be interesting.
Pray for safe travels, and pray for braveness for my family as well as for me!
Here are some photos of Thanksgiving 🙂
Here is me cutting all the chickens, also around the time I sliced my whole thumb open around the knuckle!)
Me roasting the corn over one of our open fires!
(If you can't tell, I did a whole freaking lot that day, too stressful!)
And after such a stressful day, my team helped me let off some steam by wearing the mustaches my mom got me to our Thanksgiving dinner.
Love them too much.
