South Africa Day 4

God is in Africa too.

Really.

I just spent about nine days in Pretoria, South Africa, where God used our team to do some amazing things. For each of the next several days, I’m going to post my journal entries from the trip, starting with the first day, and ending with the last, excluding travel time. I hope the Lord uses these to touch your life like he did mine. Enjoy.

Fourth Day: May 21

Today it was my half of the team’s turn to go out in the community while the other half got to experience the labor side of things. I’m not going to lie—it was really funny to think about Marshall, Pete, and my sister doing manual labor. But they did a good job.

Anyway, I ended up paired with Katie Reno for the biggest part of the day. In one of our first visits, we went to see a lady who was well-known in the community; her house was in the very center and she was stricken with high blood pressure. Katie felt led to give her Bible to the woman, even though her understanding of English was minimal. We then prayed for her to be healed of her ailment, read Psalm 23 over her, and asked the Lord to give her clear understanding of His word. Katie felt like if that woman was healed and received Christ, the whole community would be led to the Lord because of the location of her house and the word of her testimony. When you see the picture, it is her “house”, remember it in prayer.

After visiting with several more houses, we went across the street to a shopping center where we ate lunch. It was one of the things that hurt me the most about South Africa. We could literally cross a street and go from extreme poverty to extreme normality. So many unmet needs contrasted with so many luxuries. Unbelievable. But God reminded me: it happens at home too. We have so much we take for granted.

Every day.

Following ministry, we went into Johannesburg and ate at a restaurant called Carnivore’s. It was amazing! They just kept bringing us meat—everything from chicken to crocodile to kudu. Most of the guys loved it, most of the girls were tolerant of it.

Anna, Katie, Jenna, and I are teaching the 4th grade tomorrow while the rest of the team works with pre-schoolers. It should be interesting/fun. We practiced and went over both the doctor skit and the sin-chair human video—they should go over well in the school assembly before we break off into classrooms.

I am exhausted.

Prayer for tomorrow: Patience, gentleness, kindness, discernment