Wednesday morning I woke up so tired. Which is funny, because of course my devotional was titled “Getting Tired?” and my daily verse was a prayer for endurance. “Everyone is expecting today to be mighty. We are leaving earlier and staying later. We finally all know what to do. But, oh, we are tired!”
We went to a different village area today…one we had to drive to. We met the chief there, and besides going out in our normal groups with our normal translators, we were also paired with a local church member from this new area, to go out with us and take our teams in different directions. (Our church went to this village area last year, and planted a church…so these local members were from that planted church…there to lead us around but also to take the names of the new converts from the day, so they could follow up with them and try to get them to attend church in the future). So Rodney and I, and Giles and our leader walked a long way to get to the area we were supposed to canvas. Along the way, Rodney ministered to several groups and had 5 salvations. As we walked along the road, a man named Macford stopped us at his house. While we waited for him to find us a mat to sit on, two women walked by on their way to cut pumpkins (the older one, Filine, had a huge machete in her head covering…the younger one, Juliet, was her daughter). They spoke with the translator to see what we were up to, nodded and walked on a bit, then turned back around and came to sit. I was pretty excited about that, as it meant they were willing to put aside their work to hear what we had to say. Th
en three adolescent boys came down the path (Timothy, Dennis and Chikondi, which means Love), and I waved them in with promise of “a story”. While we waited, Filine continued to speak with the translator. Giles told me that she said she wished she knew English…so she could sit down and just talk with me! She had such a direct and outgoing but yet friendly, manner…that I immediately took a liking to her and saw her as someone that God could potentially use greatly in this village. When all 6 were finally seated, I used the Evangecube and took my time telling the story. I wanted to be very sure they all understood what I was saying and what it all meant. At the end, I asked if any of them had heard this before, and if any of them had ever accepted Jesus and prayed the sinner’s prayer before. One thing that is tricky in Malawi, is making sure the people understand that salvation is a one-time thing. They love to sit through the story over and over, even if they are already Christians. So if you are not careful, you will sit there and “convert” people that have already been through this before, but because of the language barrier, and their limited post-salvation discipleship, you don’t realize and they don’t understand. Anyway, my 6 all said they had never done this before, but they all wanted to. So I sat there in emotional awe, as I led my first 6 people ever, in th
e sinner’s prayer to become Christ followers. We took pictures together afterwards, and when I showed them in my camera, Filine squawked and jerked her head covering off and started re-wrapping it. This cracked me up…just like an American, worried about what she looked like in the picture! We laughed and hugged and took another picture before parting ways. It was an amazing and awesome day for me. God had already done so much, that although in the back of my mind, I knew that I wanted to lead someone to Christ… I had told God that I was perfectly fine with that not happening on THIS trip. I had seen so much personal victory, I wasn’t going to be pushy, you know? And then God allows me this honor. I wrote later in my journal…”It was an amazing experience, and a perfect ending for the trip…except God is more amazing than I could plan for, and He had more in store.” Doesn’t He always? Just when you think it can’t get any better…We met several more groups of believers before we left to head back to the group for lunch. After lunch, we led more discipleship…this time we had a more diverse turnout and so split up the adult men and women. This group of women was very engaging, and I had a great time talking with them about how we are to love God and others, pray without worry, read God’s word, meet with other believers, and share with the unsaved. I leaned heavily on them about how God looked to the believers of the group to reach out and share with their fellow Malawians, and not to simply depend on us Americans that come for one week every 6 months.
After the discipleship time, all of the groups, adults and kids, chief and local church members, our team and our translators…came together for a time of worship and preaching. I had been asked to give my testimony in front of this large group. I grabbed Giles (even though he was Rodney’s translator, I felt very close to him and knew how he felt about me) and together we let that group have it. I had my notes with me this time, but I didn’t use them much until I got to the Roman’s Road verses. “God was all over me—I had no nerves and never stammered around. Being up there, entreating the people, felt as natural as breathing. I was sad to sit down. This trip has been so amazing.” And there isn’t much more to say about it beyond that! After the service, we drove back to Esther’s House for a final farewell. “Everyone was crying, but for perhaps the first day here, I had no tears. I am not sad at all to be leaving. I am only anxious to get home so I can figure out when I can come back.”
No comments:
Post a Comment