October 7, 2012
Sunday 7:00am
We woke up to another beautiful day—not a cloud in the sky. Stacy made a comment that they do not make clouds in Africa. The compound is breathtaking. We got up early to shower and dress up for church. The showers were not as bad as I thought they would be. We had hot water, which is a blessing. Watch out for bugs though! Windows are open in each shower and at night interesting bugs crawl in!
Another group of African boys is staying here for a conference run by Mormons. They are nice people, we met them last night, but we talked about how it is a spiritual battlefield over here. Breaks my heart. I hope somehow Jesus’ light can shine through us somehow to the boys. I am sitting on the back porch on this beautiful day, watching the boys across the way playing football. Will write later after breakfast and church. Looking forward to experiencing an African church service.
Devotion- Sunday Morning
Matthew 23:1-12
“The greatest among you shall be called to be servant.”
Don’t be proud and do things out of selfish ambition. Don’t put yourself on a pedestal. Don’t set people up as experts over your life; letting them tell you what to do. Simply be yourself. Don’t let man’s law replace God’s Law.
In Bible times, Rabbis wore many ribbons/stripes on their sleeves to be seen by man. This made is known to others that they were Rabbi. They lost the true meaning of being a Rabbi though. They just wanted status and to be seen by men.
We must take down the mask. You only have One Father—your Heavenly Father. Don’t call anybody else Father. Do you want to stand out? Then you must step down. Pride is a big thing in my life. We put our pastors up on a pedestal, but we forget who is teaching and serving the kids in Sunday school. We must serve in ways that we can give ourselves away.
Where are you getting your life?
n Must be from God—not work status. Be careful, we must honor God first when we are complimenting others. Do not puff each other up. When a pastor gives an amazing sermon, He is not the best pastor. We should say, “I appreciate your obedience to God, He really spoke through you today.”
Our culture makes it hard to not make ourselves out to be more than we are. We want our kids to be the best. We put pressure on ourselves. We must be on guard and watch what we say and how we say things. Think before you speak. “The greatest among you will be your servant.” You should not serve to get something out of serving. Serve because God tells you to. So often, it is about our motives. What are our motives? Keep them pure by seeking to serve with no strings attached. Serve by modeling it and inviting people to do it along side of you. Model Jesus accurately and keep your motives in check. Do not do things just for yourself.
Do not tell everybody how you are serving. When you do this, your reward is people asking what you are doing to serve. Who is your audience? How can we take what we have been given, Jesus Christ, and give it away to others. If you just serve and you are obedient to God, God already thinks you are great! He is the only audience that matters.
In Romans it says, do not be conformed by this earth’s way of thinking. Be transformed by renewing your mind. We must always take the lowest seat. God’s ransoming power is connected to serving; taking care of others first. You always end up being blessed when you do this. How can we get away from the artificial light? Once we get away from the artificial light, we can see God’s glory. We don’t take the time to just look up. Take the time to look to God and ask Him to lead you to Him.
2:00pm
Can I just say, AMEN! WOW! God never ceases to amaze me! Church was unbelievable; a time filled with God’s presence everywhere. We got to the city hall in Ramaroka about an hour early. The village doesn’t have a church and we are starting work on the church this week, so we are meeting in the City Hall. We also will be doing our VBS in the same hall this week as well. Since we got there early we got to look around outside the building. Children soon flocked the area outside the gates of the hall next to a fallen down tree. We all hung out around the tree, laughing, taking pictures, and climbing on the tree. One little boy really gravitated towards me. He must have been 3 years old. I ended up holding him up until church started and he even sat with me during most of the service. His older sister later found him and took him from me. The children were all so beautiful! Their skin and their eyes are just unexplainable. Their laughs brought all of us to laughter—Ive never experienced such pure joy playing with the children. All the children were so kind, shared with each other, and looked after one another. Church service reminded me a lot of the Nicaraguan service I attended on my mission trip to Nicaragua this summer. I loved the fact they had a translator and Doug spoke beautifully. God really spoke through him and used him in mighty ways to reach out to the people at church. He told a story about Jesus, and how he is our Savior.
An African choir of middle school and high school aged kids performed for us. A group of them ended up sitting behind and beside me. I ended up meeting a lot of them, sharing my bible with them, and taking pictures with them. The church wanted to welcome us with the choir. My team all got up and went to the front of the church to introduce ourselves individually. I loved how we got to see everybody that was there and make the experience more personal. They wanted to know why we were there, what we did back home professionally, and our names. They also wanted to know if we had ever been to Africa.
It is so amazing to watch them praise and worship. They give it all they have—it’s a mind, body, and soul experience. One that I have never experienced before. I looked around and saw most of my teammates with tears streaming down their cheeks. I hadn’t even noticed I was crying. Loving the Lord fully is something that is so real for them. They don’t have abundant resources like we do, yet they are willing to praise and thank God for keeping them alive. It is just incredible. Pastor Mike then told the congregation what we were doing as a team and how we wanted all the orphans and children of the village to come spend the week with us to learn about Jesus. At the end of the service, children and adults were invited to come up to the front to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The whole congregation held hands and prayed over the ones who went up front. I held Rose’s hand, a young girl who I had met during the service. There was no color, no differences between all of us in that church. I realized in that moment we are all children of God. Despite our differences of where we live and what color we are, we loved the Lord. Period. And we were all their to bring praise, honor, and glory to His name.
I met a young man about my age sitting next to me who later became a coach in our program with the children. He wanted me to point out my favorite passages in the Bible. I underlined a few such as Colossians 3:12, Philippians 4:13, and Romans 8:28. He was so eager to learn about these passages and thanked me for underlining them for him. He had such a kind spirit. He told me his name was Happy. Many of the choir members wanted to get pictures with us then. Doug had to call us together to let us know we had only a few minutes with them before we needed to leave to go to Tshukudu. We got to pray over people who came up to the front. It was an amazing experience.
The orphans had been promised a meal today following the church service, but because of a funereal the meal fell through. It broke my heart to see the despair on the children’s faces. Most of the kids were so well behaved during the two hour long service. They all sat criss-cross on the floor and listened to the whole sermon. I can’t imagine that many children behaving in that way back at home without a supervisor. It was also neat to see how the younger kids got up when the older kids needed the chairs to sit in. They were so submissive to what the older kids told them.
God really showed me how truly blessed I am, how those people saw me as a blessing, coming all the way from America to help and to love on them. I need to bless and serve others more in my everyday life. It is so rewarding. I have so much to give, yet I get caught up in my selfishness. I must learn to give my life away, little by little, day by day. I’m going to fall short, but how can I love more? How can I do more?
I loved saying bye to everyone at the end, knowing I would see most of them for the program we were giving.
We are now on our way to Tshukudu right now. We just stopped to take a bathroom break—nicest gas station I have ever been to. They had a fresh vase of roses on the bathroom counter even.
Meri ended up making a funny comment in the bathroom. We heard, “I feel like I have two sausages in my shoes!” We all died laughing.
9:00pm
We made it to Tshukudu Game Lodge. Just when I thought the day couldn’t be topped, God blessed us with an incredible afternoon. We got to the Lodge, after driving down windy dirt roads of the preserve for 25 minutes. We quickly got dressed into longer pants and tennis shoes and put our stuff in our rooms. Each one of us has our own little hut, with 2 twin beds and a bathroom. The rooms are themed and lined with animal pictures, animal print bedding, and straw roofs. We met our guide, David, who was born and raised on the Preserve. His family owns it and he was amazing at what he did. We all climbed into a high rise jeep, with many benches to sit on and headed out to the Bush. The Bush is incredible, something that you would see on The Lion King. The first animals we saw were Cape Buffalo. The rhinos came around shortly after that. One of the rhinos looked to have injured his leg, so David got out to take a quick look at it. The rhino didn’t like that so much and it backed away from us. We then ran into an elephant family; father, mother, grandma, and one year old baby. They were beautiful. They were knocking down trees and stripping the bark off of them. David told us that they eat a thin layer of the inside bark. It was incredible to watch them. Becky, the mother, came over the our jeep, practically within arms reach. David talked to her, he could make all the animal sounds which was incredible. Becky was friendly and put on a show for us. Allrix, the father, became irritated with us and Becky tried to calm him down. David told us and showed us what all they were doing and what each sound meant. He told us Becky was telling Allrix that we were being friendly and we weren’t going to bother or hurt them. Tomecio got pretty scared and I looked over to find her practically on my lap. We laughed about the whole situation.
We left the elephants and headed to a watering hole, where we found hippos. David told us that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal. We were very surprised by that. Hippos can be very aggressive and you must be very careful around them in the wild. We did not get too close to them. They did make noises and yawn for us though. We got to watch the African sunset, which was incredible. The sunsets here are ones like those that I have never seen. They are deep red and breathtaking. I have never seen a sunset so beautiful. The sunsets here have all the colors of the rainbow in them. It was getting dark, but we searched for the lions then. Chris has to hold a light and shine it back and forth in front of the jeep while we drove. David stopped the jeep and revved the engine. Doing this normally makes the lion roar, but we never ended up finding them.
Tomorrow we are going on a walk in the bush with big cats, the cheetahs. I am so excited to see them!
We came back after the amazing ride to get ready for dinner. We drove about ten minutes to the other end of the preserve, where the dining hall is. Wow—is all I have to say to the amazing dinner we had. We got to eat outside, at long candle-lit tables, surrounding a huge open fire. Dinner was served buffet style, but we all had a great time talking about our day and laughing about the events of the day. We had lamb, buffalo stew, potatoes, pop( a sticky rice kind of dish), butternut squash, green beans, and salad. We laughed and laughed about “Favor” jokes, banana spiders, and David’s big guns! Johnny even chimed in!!
One of the other guides, Richard, asked during our dessert if we wanted to see wild porcupines eat. He led us to the bush to see them, which was cool. We also got to see the Southern Belt constellation. I have never seen the stars look so bright and close. It is unbelievable the way the sky looks at night. Nothing beats an African sky.
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