Village Ministry

(CLICK HERE to view the video)

This week we've been hosting some friends from Texas and, while they were here, we held a few outreach events.  The link above is a short video of our time spent ministering to widows and orphans in Ngangula (home of our future ministry centre) and a village near the chieftainess' palace.

Instead of sharing all of the details of the afternoon, I thought I might share just one encouraging testimony.  We started the day by meeting Chieftainess Mwenda and driving to two villages within her chiefdom.  After handing out clothes and blankets to the widows and orphans at the first village, we had a time of prayer.  We were actually behind schedule and just planned to say a "blanket" prayer for all in attendance, but there were many who requested that we stay and pray one-by-one.  This meant that the people in the next village would have to wait, but we felt like the Lord was in it.  So, we stayed and prayed.

We ended up breaking into groups of 2-3, each with an intrepreter, and began praying for everyone who remained behind.  (On a side note, it was so refreshing seeing Chieftainess Mwenda volunteer to be one of the intrepreters.  Culturally, this is not normal, because it gives a connotation that the interpreter is placing themselves underneath the one speaking, which a chief should never do.  But she did and I'm sure it spoke more to the heart needs of these people than anything we could have said or done.)

One lady, whom Kerri and I prayed for, complained about poor hearing and back pain.  Specifically, she said that she had a constant ringing sound in her ears and that her back and leg hurt her so much that she couldn't move very well.  As we prayed, I put my hand over one of her ears and literally felt like God was doing something.  We then prayed for her back and said Amen.  When we opened our eyes, our interpreter asked her if anything was different.  She said that the ringing in her ears had stopped and that she could now hear much better than before.  But she also said the back pain was still present.

So, we decided to pray again.  Our intuition was saying that if God wanted to heal one thing, he probably would heal the other.  So, we asked her if we could pray for her again.  As we were praying for her this time, her back popped.  And when we opened our eyes again, her demeanor had completely changed.  She was smiling from ear to ear.  Our intrepreter asked her what she felt and she said that her back popped and the pain went away!  She began bending twisting side to side and bending over to touch her toes.  Then she started dancing!!!  Needless to say, we were completely encouraged.  Isn't God awesome!

The next post will be about another really neat thing that happened this day.  In the mean time, we hope this story will encourage you that God still is in the business of healing, and that He can use ordinary, imperfect people to minister his love to those around us!