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Friday, October 29, 2010

New Faces

It was Tuesday, October 5, and we had just arrived in Chilli, a village in the Nyawa chiefdom about a 6 hour drive from Livingstone. It was our second of three expeditions during AMT and we were excited to be there after learning so much in class since the first expedition. We got our camps set up, ate dinner, and had worship around the fire with about a dozen of the local people with us. It was a perfect start to our ministry there.

Over the next three days, we met with and ministered to hundreds of people in the villages within walking distance of our camp as well as in a meeting hosted at a church several kilometers away. Much of the ministry was just meeting people in their homes but we also had the privilege of teaching about Jesus to the entire local school. We had a lot of fun singing with the kids and doing a skit for them as well. The kids tended to gather at our campsite in the evenings we spent a lot of additional time with them just playing games and having fun.

I liked this expedition more than the first one. We saw great spiritual hunger in the people we met and we got to see them give their lives to Jesus and passionately worship him. We prayed for healing over dozens of people and cast demons out of a handful of others as they tore off the charms they got from a witch doctor and gave their lives to Christ. Overall, we saw many lives change for the better and I grew tremendously in my understanding of the local culture, the African worldview, and how to share the Gospel to people who think nothing like the way I do with my Western mind.

PJM

Monday, October 4, 2010

fasten your seat belts

It's been getting hot here, and I'm not just referring to the weather.

We had the "Guest Speaker" portion of AMT this week and we had three of Overland's long-time staff members speak some amazing messages. They covered a variety of in-depth teachings that I found invaluable to my understanding of our identity in Christ and a greater understanding of what this Salvation is that we have been blessed with. Some of my favorite topics were about our identity in Christ as taught out of 2 Chronicles 2 and 3 and our priestly duties to God as outlined in 2 Chronicles 29:11. We had some amazing times of worship, prayer and encouragement and even our conversations throughout the week were of great benefit. It's been great to see the events of the past week in light of what will be happening this week. Tomorrow morning we head out early to do some ministry in some remote villages in the Nyawa chiefdom in an area that the staff have been telling us about with amazing stories of the ways that God is working. This expedition will be more challenging in the realm of comfort and convenience than the first (we have a rougher truck, worse roads, no borehole or well at the camp, less room for personal gear) but it sounds like the ministry opportunities are off the charts. Please be praying for our travel since we will be bouncing around in the back of a truck for 8 hours in 100 degree heat and these roads are about as smooth as a cornfield. Above all, pray for open hearts and minds of those we will be meeting out there and that my team and I will humbly and wholly give ourselves to God for the preaching of the Gospel in every way.

We've taken the tests for the culture unit, turned in our theology papers, and gave our last messages for preaching class so next up is the Wilderness First Responder course when we get back from the bush.

PJM