Preaching, teaching, hospitals, sports and more.

Rwanda! 

This month is full!

Full of preaching, teaching, testimonies, construction projects, sports and evangelism through house and hospital visits.

These past 2 weeks our team as already covered it all!! 

Three times a week we have a church service with our sermons prepared and ready to preach as well as the testimonies. Praise God!

The world race is big on teaching us to practice ATL, Ask the Lord. What we do with ATL is spend an hour or so, or even a time set aside to ask the Lord what he is speaking. We ask him if he would show us a picture, a word, or verse pertaining to what we are doing, such as going out to the community to evangelize. We would ATL for his direction, discernment, and/or something that would lead us to the person He needed us to encounter and share with that day.

I’m currently learning ATL with sermon writing. Preaching is new to me. I’m thankful that the World Race gives us tips and resources for us. God’s word says in 2 Timothy chapter 4 that we are to be prepared to Preach the word of God whether the time is favorable or not. And because we are serving in a different culture, we also have to keep in mind who our audience is that we are preaching to. So asking the Lord is the most prominent thing we do. We are learning to hear God’s heart and voice clearer. We become more confident in knowing that what the Lord is saying and what he is leading us towards.  It is a special process of growth on our spiritual journey with the Lord.

So far on the race, I have preached twice. The first time was 3 weeks ago in another country for a youth service. The second time was this week at a healing service. The Lord put on my heart to talk about faith, forgiveness and prayer. The entire week I was nervous or anxious that the sermon I was preparing my seem choppy when I would speak. On the morning of the day I was preaching, I woke up in total peace. The Lord had reminded me all week long, what I was called to do as scripture say, and that in my weakness He is my strength.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

I came on the race expectant that the Lord would have me preach. A friend I had just met, who hardly knew me or my personality, basically prophesied that I would be speaking in front of crowds. The week before I left home, she looked me in the eyes and asked me why I was afraid to speak in front of crowds.

How else would she had known that I had a fear of public speaking? I absolutely believed the Lord had put that on her heart to encourage me. My response was that I was comfortable to teach a Sunday school classroom of 20 kids but not in front of adults. She then sweetly responded, “Adults can be babies as well, spiritually. They need to be fed the word just as much the children need to be fed. Adults need spiritual growth too.” The Lord had comforted me by reminding me of her encouragement just before I left for this trip.

Now that we are in Africa and halfway through the race, I know preaching and evangelizing opportunities will be more common for my team. I really desire the Lord to grow me in these areas so I want to be able to be intentional about my time and focus on Jesus.

Please pray that the Holy Spirit would guide my words for evangelism, preaching and that I will hear him in preparing sermons. Pray that I can focus on listening to Jesus and being responsible with the extra time I have to use for preparing messages and testimonies.

On Thursdays, my team walk with a team from the church into other villages near ours. We do door to door house visits. House visits has become one of my favorite ministries. The first week we talked to a family about the gospel and the family came to Christ. We saw 6 salvations that Thursday and we prayed healing over a lady. “E” is a mother and is caring for her family. She has an injury in her knee and I want to ask my friends and family if you would pray healing for her knee and pray that her husband would receive salvation.

Last Friday, our team did something new! We went to a nearby hospital and we were invited to pray for all the patients in all the rooms. Then yesterday, our team helped the church yesterday by giving free health screenings. Our team leader is a nurse, and he was paired with another nurse from the church. Together they reviewed each person’s vitals, blood sugar, asked questions about family history and gave them health advice and tips to them. People from the church were so blessed and happy that we were there to provide free health screenings for them. We even had some people from our team provide prayer for them while they waited to be seen. It was so amazing!

On Friday evenings, we play sports with the kids from the school in this village. We play football, which is soccer, and many other games with them.

There are just over 300 kids that attend school in our village and a few mornings each week our team splits up into each classroom to teach. Teaching is new and different for me as well. But I’m still learning and allowing the Lord to teach me new things. Although teaching may seem terrifying at times, I’ve been able to feel the Lord’s peace through it all. AGAIN! 

Sometimes trying new things can be uncomfortable, but pushing through and allowing God to work through us turns out to be beneficial and good. Trying out new and uncomfortable things gives us time to realize we need God and to be dependable on Him. It makes us realize that we cannot get things done on our own human effort, but we are in need for His strength to carry us through. Being dependent and confident in Him gives the Lord great joy. He is our Heavenly father and wants us to be able to trust him as a father. He loves us so much that He is wants to be here for that. And through it all, the experiences and dependency of the Lord, and seeing his unconditional love in everything, is the spiritual growth we hope to have with the Lord.

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with the knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve what it excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. 

Philippians 1:9-11