God On The Move

GOD ON THE MOVE – SATURDAY 7/26/08

I just looked back on these blog inserts and realized that I haven’t been able to write in several days’… man this place is busy and Internet is just about impossible!

OK, here’s the latest. I’m looking down the pike at my final days here in Pemba and if I had to write about everything that took place in just one of these days I would be spending every other day typing away at my computer just to keep up.

Before I get into it I just want to update you on my present living conditions. My flooded shower pool is still flooded and presently all the water has turned a murky shade of black that’s beginning to give off a nasty toxic vapor odor. It’s becoming way beyond what I can live with… as well as a serious health issue – at least one might think.

Roosters (right outside my bedroom window) continue to crow at ridiculous hours of the evening. Witchdoctor chanting fills the hollows of the deep, dark night and the endless dirt just won’t go away.

The big issue here is how much time most things seem to take to get taken care of. “Right away” just doesn’t equate in these parts. My friend Kent told me that when he first arrived here in Pemba several years back, he and his wife would actually go to a restaurant, order their food, go back home for a few hours and then go back to the restaurant to eat…crazy stuff! And no…there are no drive-thru anything’s here ether.

Yesterday we came back from our forth outreach. We re-visited the village we just went to one week earlier. It’s a village that Iris Ministries hadn’t been to before and we wanted to do a follow up to see how things were going - and continue to support and build that community. When we pulled into that village a week earlier, we weren’t sure what was going to happen. Some villages are friendly and the people are very receptive while other villages can be just the opposite. They may even throw rocks at you and curse you. This village was friendly.

The SOP (standard operating procedure) of an outreach stays pretty much consistent –
o The team pulls into a village.
o We intermingle with the village people and locate the Chief
o Set up the PA system and stage (the back of a flatbed truck and generator)
o Play some pretty cool praise music in their local language - Makua
o Dance and sing a bit, creating a very festive,loving and supportive atmosphere
o Crank up the ‘Jesus Movie’ (two hours & pretty good production value)
o Do a sketch, which brings one of the Bible stories to life (they love this)
o Heidi and/or one of the guest speakers will preach or share their testimony
o There’s a call for anyone who is sick, and healing prayer begins
o This is when the miricals strongly take place
o An invitation to receive Jesus is given
o A bunch of people consistently respond
o More music and dancing to close out the evening
o Most everyone in the village is 'partying' - so to speak
o The locals will gradually fade off into the darkness of the night and go to sleep - they hit it pretty early
o The mission’s team then gathers around a fire and eat dinner (hot noodles mixed with a taste of tuna fish… if they have it.)
o Next morning we baptize the people that received Jesus the night before, teach and pray a bit more and leave them with a talking solar bible which has been translated into their native language…this is very cool!

Sometimes a team will stay for a day or longer, or they might move on to another village. That decision is, at times, made in the moment depending on what the state of affairs is in that particular village.

The supernatural will usually present itself, somewhere, during these meetings. These people are already very open to moves in the spirit…it’s just not usually the Spirit of God that they’ve been encountering...

I’ve been pretty fortunate because I’m usually up front filming and trying my best (in pretty difficult surroundings) to get some decent coverage. Apparently it’s not uncommon to have deft ears open or the mute speak. When I was filming about a week ago, I actually caught a guy on camera getting healed from not being able to hear or speak…his whole life. Heidi called for anyone who fit the bill and this guy came up. Apparently his friends grabbed him and brought him up. She began praying for him and after a few different prayers…the guy began to hear and speak. As he began uttering words, you could see the reactions on his friend’s faces. That’s what did it for me. His brother was next to him and he said that he hadn’t spoken a word his whole life. After saying his own name for the first time, his friends became so excited that they lifted him up on their shoulders and carried him around like an MVP ball player…that was radical…and I captured it all!

Most of the village responded to that miracle in an exceedingly positive way and a whole slew of people came to Jesus that night. Heidi wanted to plant a church in the village so the next day she went into negations with the village Chief and some land owners and wound up buying enough land to build a church, school, home as well as some additional huts on…about an acre. The negotiating went on for a while and we wound up purchasing the whole lot for $600.00. Can you believe that!

This is the village we just got back from and when we first pulled in just a week later, they already had the entire lot fenced in, the framing was up for the church and the latrine’s were finished being built…all in a week! Next, Heidi laid out the rest of the plans showing where the other hut buildings were to go then we paid for the construction and the materials…and additional $900. So, in a brand new village, (new to us anyway) we will have a new church, a school, a few mud hut living quarters, latrines and a fence… all for $1500! This was such an amazing feet to watch that I offered to pay for half the construction. So if you’re lending me any supporting for this adventure…you are also being credited with a new church plant in an un-reached African community…how cool is that?!