Wednesday Dec 18:
This morning after getting a late start because they have missionary devotionals in the evening we headed out on a prayer walk through the local village, Bounda, with our tour guide Eric. Our first stop was actually Eric's house that he just finished. It was a little mud hut, but you could tell he was very proud of it. He is a very bright young guy that works for GSF and is sponsored in school by them. He has dreams of becoming an engineer and is currently the equivalent of a tenth grader, (S4), and is in pre-calculus and physics. We then moved onto his aunts house a met and prayed for his aunts and his nephew that has an umbilical hernia. Here in Africa these hernias are quite common because when children are born they stuff the umbilical cord with dung. While there we saw some kids playing on some very inventive "playground" equipment. The lady we met after this was one of my favorites, she was a Jaja (grandmother) who when we asked if we could pray for her literally THREW her machete and hoe to the ground and got in the middle of us and asked us to pray for healing. It was so cool to see her faith that prayer was going to be the way she was healed.
One of the most rewarding and interesting individuals we talked to was Nathan who when we first talked to him he said that he wanted to be saved and then expressed that he was not saved because of his work and his children. We spent some time trying to explain the concept of grace and that what he does is not what makes him a believer, but the explanation got lost in transition. So we prayed for him and that someone would come along side him that understands and can explain it in his own language. Next we came along to Samuel, one of the men that works at GSF. He was sick and laying on a mat outside his home. The team prayed for him but I got caught up playing with his 12 children. His oldest was claudia, probably about 13-years-old, and was so precious. She was cooking for her family and watching her brothers. After she and I talked for a bit I walked over to where they were praying and the children followed until there were 12 of them sitting on a rock. It was so cute! As we walked to the new church we picked up more children and two of them followed me everywhere. There names were Iesha and Niema, they were walking to the watering hole to get water in their jerry cans, but made many detours to follow me along the way. We took many pictures and talked a little bit. They were in P2 and P4 (2nd and 4th grade), but they did not know how old they were, I would guess 6 and 9ish. We got to the church along with about 8-10 visiting children that had followed along the way and prayed over the church and the people of the village as all the children either played out side or sat quietly inside. After praying we took some pictures and showed the giggling children their pictures and walked on to the watering hole with many of the children in toe. The hill to the watering hole was steep and slick, but the children basically took it in one leap while all of us buzugo were very slow. When we got there we saw Iesha fill up their jerry can and women and children washing clothes. We gathered everyone up, held hands, and prayed for all of them. I don't think the women really understood us, but they had big smiles on their face. Finally we walked back to GSF and prayed for the missionaries, the ministry, the "mommies" or the children that live here and the children themselves. It reminded me again just how precious it is that I do not have to go to a building or a person to be heard by my God, that I can walk around a village in Africa or say a prayer in an airport in Ft. Lauderdale and he hears me all the same, because my God is bigger than it ALL!!!
After lunch we headed down with Carolina, one of the missionary kids to paint the nails of the girls still at GSF. They picked some pretty crazy colors and we had fun laughing with them as we painted nails and then played the land version of Marco Polo. As we headed to the missionary Bible Study that night we picked up a bag of peanut and peanut butter M&Ms to bring because on Sunday there had been a secret santa played and we brought peanut butter M&Ms and peppermint hand soap. By the way it went around you would have thought it was a pot of gold, so we decided we should share the M&Ms we brought for the kids with the staff since the children would not have a preference between smarties and chocolate. John talked about the story of washing feet from the bible and how the definition of Love changed when Jesus came to serve those that were his disciples. We then headed to eat dinner and off to bed.
As always,
Live Foolishly
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