johnny snides week 5

First of all I wanted to say sorry for skipping the blog last week.  Jordan and I chose to climb Ngeta "mountain" on our day off instead of blogging – which was a blast.  We rode boda bodas (motorcycle taxis) to this big rocky hill/mountain and climbed up to the super windy top for a sweet view of the surroundings. 

Here are a few highlights from this week:

Makyla and I got to make dinner with the hotel staff.  We made rice, beans, and chapati (flatbread) in this tiny little kitchen – cooking over charcoal fires.  It was so much fun!  Margaret and Jennifer (the Ugandan ladies who showed us how to cook) are so funny – it was great to just spend time with them.  So now I have a few more recipes to try out back home (side note: everything here is fried with a ridiculous amount of vegetable oil).

On Sunday we went back to the prison and I got to "preach" for a while.  Since the last time we were there they got a heavy dose of prosperity gospel from this other pastor I felt led to talk about love of God vs. love of money.  (1 timothy 6:3-10, Matt 6:19-24, Matt 7:7-12, Gal 5:22-26, and John 3:16  – I didn't make it through 1 Cor 12:1-11 and Luke 6:17-26 but those are also good)  I basically just talked about whether we are serving God because of his love for us and with love for Him or because we want to get rich.  Then I talked about the gifts that God does want to give us and how he has already given us the greatest gift through his son.  It was cool just to get to speak the truth and mix in the gospel and I hope through the Spirit's power some people's hearts were brought closer to God.   

I also wanted to give a more thorough update about some of the Jehovah's Witness stuff from the past two weeks.  (In case you didn't know we are having weekly meetings with 2 Jehovah's Witnesses – sharing the truth about Jesus/God/Holy Spirit).  The meetings have been going fine and while we haven't seen them just immediately change their hearts – I wanted to tell you about some of the things I have been learning/ways I have seen the Holy Spirit working as we meet with them.  First, I am getting more comfortable with sharing my faith.  It can be awkward to engage someone in a conversation about God, but the more I'm doing it, the more comfortable it becomes and I'm realizing that these conversations are of eternal importance and so it is completely worth pressing through the awkwardness in order to start talking about the most important thing in the world.  Speaking with the Jehovah's Witnesses has also helped me to examine and better define what I believe and why I believe it.  If you're a Christian and I asked you today why you believe that Jesus is God, could you give me a good answer?  Do you really know where in the Bible we can see that Jesus is God and not just some great teacher or miracle worker?  What about the Holy Spirit? – could you show me that the Holy Spirit is the 3rd person of the trinity and not just some force God uses?  Questions like these are so basic, yet so important.  Sometimes I feel like I don't care enough about those questions because people aren't asking me them on a daily basis – but having the Jehovah's Witnesses question me has given me an urgency to really have a more solid grasp on what and why I believe.  I would encourage you if you are a Christian to do the same – think through your faith enough that you could give a solid response if someone tested you – examine the Bible to see if what people tell you is true (Acts 17:11).  

I also have realized as I'm sharing the gospel with people just how amazing it is.  We just take the story of Christ for granted, but somehow trying to share with the Jehovah's Witnesses has shown me in a fresh way just how crazy God's love is.  The idea that the God who made the universe would come to earth as a man and show the greatest love by dying for us is ridiculously awesome.  This notion that God came to earth and limited himself to a man's body doesn't cheapen the awesomeness of God as Jehovah's Witnesses may claim – it honors his character – greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends – and that's what Jesus (God) did – amazing.

Another awesome experience happened to our group last Friday.  We had some team time where we were going to listen to the Holy Spirit and pray for and encourage the 4 of us who were going out to meet with the Jehovah's Witnesses.  Personally I had just been feeling weary that week and wasn't prepared to meet with them the next day.  As we prayed for each other and read Bible verses over each other and just gave words of encouragement this storm rolled in (our first African rain!) and it started getting really windy (Acts 2 anyone?) and this rain started falling down.  For whatever reason this made all of us really excited and happy and joyful and we started singing and then just did more encouragement for one another in the rain.  It was just great.  I was given such a refreshed Spirit and walked out the next day with so much more peace and confidence than I had the day before.  I love Jesus!  I encourage you to do the same this week – ask for more of the Holy Spirit and speak encouragement to someone else – it's a good thing.

thanks so much to all of you for prayers – i love (or at least really like) you all.

-john