What’s up everybody! I hope all of you are doing amazing and
having a blast wherever you are! It is so good to be able to reach out to
everyone again as we were out of power for a little while all over the city and
I wasn’t able to connect anywhere haha. So sorry for the late post again but I
am slowly learning to stop making plans and agendas in this culture, which I
guess Jesus never did either. But anyways yea we also didn’t have running water
for about a week too. Oh and yea I have more joy than I ever have it’s amazing
what happens when it’s just you God and others. Especially the kids! I can't wait to get more in depth about the kids with you guys next week kid by kid and just let you know how they grew up and how they live now, but we will save that for next week!
This last Saturday we attended one of the most amazing
weddings I have ever been to. It was filled with more glory and the presence of
God than any other wedding I have been to as we just worshiped all throughout.
The girl is a fourth generation missionary and the guy was also a missionary.
Haha I guess their a cool couple. But yea it was so beautiful right on the
beach by the ocean with a perfect breeze! Although I have never seen more chaos than at the end when
cake was given out with over a hundred little kids running around. They were
literally changing shirts and hiding in line trying to get another piece of
cake. It was part hilarious and part sad. But yea I gave you guys a good idea
of the surroundings last week, this week I wanted to share a couple of
testimonies of not only what happens around here but what is happening in my
heart as well. Lets hop back to the first week of school when my heart was
absolutely wrecked over the topic of the Father’s heart.
Pastor Steve Long was the guest speaker for the first week.
He was the pastor of a church called Catch the Fire in Toronto Canada that had
a huge revival and many amazing moves of God during the late 1990’s. His
messages were so simple it was hilarious. Everything in the bible was created
to be understood by a child but man tries to make it all complicated. As we
began to cover the Father Heart of God and getting rid of the orphan spirit it
was amazing to me on how much I found I acted like an orphan instead of a
child. As I slowly began to feel the love of God and experience his Presence
(The presence that David in Psalms talks about every other Psalm almost) I was
discovering on how to become and act like a child instead of orphan. Today the
church sais to do this and do that and whoever works the hardest or whoever has
the most bible degrees is the closest to God. I have finally figured out that
being a child of the living God has ABSOLUTLY NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU! By HIS
grace you have been saved. Simple. I strived for the last 8 months not even
knowing it trying to earn being a child of God until I finally realized there
was nothing I was going to do for God to love me more! That is why the Bible
sais he gave us a spirit that cries Abba Father which means Daddy. We are
called to be more intimate and affectionate with our heavenly Father than our
earthly father. If your mom and dad were decent at all they loved you no matter
what you did. That doesn’t mean they didn’t discipline you but that means
whether you were the best child in the world or worst they cared and had
compassion on you.
Then last week Amy Lancaster came in for the next 20 days!
Her ministry is called We Will Go in Jackson Mississippi where she lives in the
red code district in an old Crack House reaching out to the drug addicts with
her 3 kids and husband. If you think God’s greatest plan for you is to live in
a nice brick house with a nice family and be comfortable while going to church
on Sundays and Wednesdays and nothing else you’re serving a different God than
me. But anyways she came and talked about cutting the devil’s head off with
prayer and fasting last Wednesday. It gave me a whole new idea on making war
with evil. Which brings me to my first testimony.
If demons scare you than you might not want to read this
paragraph. But we were worshipping on Sunday at church and it was slowly
dismissed. There were only a couple of us left there at the end when a man
dropped to the floor and started to manifest a demonic spirit that was inside
Him. A couple of us began to lay hands on him and pray as his eyes rolled back
and began to scream like what you would see on an exorcism movie. I was at
first a bit freaked out but than I shut my flesh up and realized that according
to the Bible satan has been disarmed and has no power over me or anyone with
Jesus. For many of us it was the first time dealing with a demon-possessed man
but after talking with a local he kind of smiled like it was no big deal and it
was common. We prayed for a while for the man and he was manifesting and
shaking on the ground for quite some time so I took a video with my camera if
any of you would like to see just face book message me or something. I don’t
share this to be cool, I share this to let it be known that in the African and
Easter World it is completely normal for demons to manifest and be set free by
Jesus. I later found out the man’s family was involved in witchcraft, which is
a huge problem here. To lighten things up here is a different testimony.
Every weekend a group of different students get to go on an
outreach to certain unreached villages that may have a believer in it but have
never been preached to. I don’t want to go too deep into details, as I will wait
until I go on the outreach myself and give personal experiences. But after
talking with many people there were many powerful moves of God that occurred.
Blind men were given sight, deaf people received hearing, and most importantly
many many people gave their lives to Jesus!!!!!!
The students are becoming more and more like family every
day going through all the heart changes and experiences together, it is so
awesome to see. I especially love hanging out with my two Mozambique Pastors
Tarde and Omar! Haha Tarde is 58 years old about 5’3 and maybe 100 pounds and
is one of the most lovely men of God I have ever met. He gets up at 4-4:30am
every morning and reads his bible until about 8am. The hunger in some of these Mozambique people is amazing! Omar is 22 and speaks way
more English than Tarde so me and him joke around all the time. Both of them
wait for me to ask them if they want to listen to my Ipod everytime I come
home. Hahaha Tarde will literally listen to the same song 50 times until the
ipod dies and he loves it. They are so happy when they get to listen it’s
amazing. They also where the same 2-3 shirts and 2-3 pants everyday, so if
anyone would like to donate to men of God it’s a great opportunity! Tonight we
have family dinner with our house and I am excited for some chicken haha!
As I begin to close this blog I just really wanted to take the time and honor you guys and thank you so much for reading this! I have plenty of open time here and if there is anything I can intercede for you or anything like that please let me know you guys are seriously all so awesome and I hope you can take just one thing from this. I still
kept it quite vague this week letting you all in on more of the basics but I
will get deeper and deeper as the weeks go on! I love all of you so much and I
am so thankful for each and every one of you taking the time and reading this
when you didn’t have to! Have a wonderful day!
OH AND PICTURES SHOULD BE ATTATCHED!!!!!
Hey, Joshy. Welcome back to the blog.
ReplyDeleteOkay, first the English teacher in me wants to say, "AAAAAHHHH".
Second, fyi....
sais: Sa·ïs [sey-is] noun
an ancient city in N Egypt, on the Nile delta: an ancient capital of Lower Egypt.
Third, I love you.
Fourth, you mentioned that we could send clothes. Can we really do that? If so, how can we go about doing that? What else is needed?
I look forward to your next blog. I'm feeling envious of your Christian experience. I, for one, would love to see the video on the gentleman who needed the demon exorcised.
God be with your spirit. xxoo
Hi Josh...I'm enjoying your blog so much! I look forward to checking to see if you've posted each week.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a Facebook, but maybe you can show me your video when you get home.
I, too, would like more info on donating needed items. There is no doubt in my mind that each of my family members has more than we need, so let us know how we can help!
Looking forward to your next post !
Cindy R.