An unworthy but willing messenger

On Thursday I went to Child Restoration Outreach again with Makyla, Logan, Carrie-Anne, and Darby and saw Steven, a street kid that I met months ago near the church, that had been chased off by police from living there so I hadn’t seen him in a long time.  Our team has begun to think about what we want to accomplish before the trip ends and the loose ends we wanted to tie up.  I had been praying on Tuesday about seeing Steven again, so it was so sweet to see him there that morning.  He came right up to me and was excited to see me as well – it’s encouraging to see the impact I’ve had on him and how he has been encouraged just by me sitting and talking with him, letting him draw in my notebook and just showing him I care about him.  I felt a burden to make sure the Gospel was presented to him that day because I’m not sure if I’ll see him again.  So we sat down and went through the Bible and I asked if he had any questions at the end.  He asked some good questions about forgiveness and it was really encouraging to see that he was engaging with what I was saying.  He thanked me for taking time to go through it and while I’m not sure where his heart is with God, I was really thankful for the time we had.  As we left CRO he walked with us towards the church and showed us where he works making sandals out of scraps of old tires.  I’m really hoping to see him again this week.

Jaspher was released from prison last week!  We met with him in his home community and it was again great to see the doors God is opening through him.  Logan, Carrie-Anne, and I went with him to talk to 3 of his relatives because he wanted them to hear the gospel and at the end of our meeting they said they wanted to “get saved” so we led them through a prayer.  The gospel is such good news.  Something I am seeing more and more is how totally unworthy to carry it I am, and I’m sure I messed up in delivering it, but it carries power.  Praise God.  One of the women, Fiona, was pregnant, so we prayed with her for a healthy delivery.  On Sunday morning we saw Jaspher at church and he told us that she had given birth the night before to a healthy girl named Kevin Logan after her Grandma and Logan from our team! (Kevin is a girl’s name here; the baby was going to be named John if were a boy haha)  So later in the week we visited Fiona and Logan’s new namesake and got to hold the baby which was fun.  It was also cool to see just how thankful she was for us meeting with earlier and praying for her.

On Monday we did an outreach program at a branch of VOC in a poor community.  The church is in the same area where Jaspher lives; we’ve been meeting with people in that community for several weeks – we invited all the youth in the area and everyone else with whom we had been meeting.  The program ended up being really chaotic – we performed some songs, a dance, and a skit and then I preached the gospel, but the whole time the bootleg sound system was acting up and all the kids there were really loud.  I felt really distracted while preaching and wasn’t sure if the message was hitting home, but was reminded (yet again) that this work isn’t all about me.  If God is pleased he can bring about a lot of great change from that program even with all its faults and if God wasn’t present then even the most slick presentation that brings the audience to its feet is worthless.  My team really encouraged and affirmed me, saying that the few adults in the audience really did seem to be engaging and we had a chance to meet with some after the program and answer questions and pray with them which was good.

I was also really encouraged by speaking with a few of our friends who also work at VOC (Sam and Doreen).  They mentioned that our team has done an exceptional job of maintaining our energy and passion throughout our time here.  They were expecting us to have an excitement at the beginning that would die off after we had been here for around a month, but said they were very thankful for the way we had kept our zeal for serving God by serving people. (Gal 6:9-10, Rom 12:10-11).  They said we have truly loved the people here and they can see the impact we have brought to this community.  Needless to say this was a real encouragement for me.

Prayer requests:

Focus, passion, and God’s favor for our last 9 days here – we leave Lira early on May 4.  

Please pray that we would make the most of our time here, be able to meet with and tie up loose ends with those we’ve been seeing, wisdom for how to leave a lasting impact as we prepare to say goodbye.

Please also pray that the new believers in this area would seek and find Christian community and that they would grow in wisdom and knowledge through the Holy Spirit.

For emotional strength as our team says goodbye to people we’ve been pouring into for 3 months.

thanks so much – grace and peace to you.

-john