Tuesday Night Outreach

Not everything works out as planned.  The first night that the team from Honiton Community Church arrived, we had scheduled a Jesus Film outreach in a village about 45 minutes north of where we live.  The team arrived at 4:00 pm and we set off for the site at around 5:00 pm.

Once we got there, we quickly went into setup mode and got the screen up, along with some solar lights.  Then we connected the generator, amp and speakers and finally the projector.  But therein lied the problem.  We tested all of the electrical a few days before the outreach, but we didn't test the projector on the generator.  As we quickly found out, the generator was not strong enough to push the projector.

Luckily, at least that's what we thought, we had a backup projector that arrived with the team.  The only problem was that it didn't make the journey from our home to the outreach.  So, Luke made the hour and a half round trip back to our homes to get it.  When it arrived, we realized something else, although this new projector would work without the use of the generator, it required some software to be installed on the computer before use.  So, you could probably understand we, as well as the 250+ people in attendance who had walked long distances and waited many hours, were a bit frustrated that we had to cancel the event.

It wasn't all a loss though.  While we were packing up, one of the members of the team shared with those who hadn't left yet that God still wanted to minister to people that night.  So, him along with the rest of the team and 6 translators, broke up into small groups and prayed for several of those in attendance.  We also committed to the crowd that we will be back on Friday, May 25th to show the movie, and this time with equipment that works properly.

On an interesting side note, we learned that when the church arrived that evening for setup, there was a local witchdoctor walking around the site that the movie was to be played.  Our being there is a definite threat to his work in the same community.  So, it leaves one to ponder whether he had something to do with the perceived mishap that evening.

So, although not everything worked out as we had planned, nothing was a surprise to our Creator.  He still accomplished his purposes in the lives of many that evening and His message of Jesus crucified for the sins of the world will be made clear to the Tonga people of this community next Friday!