DAY TWO

Today was another great day. There were a lot more people than yesterday. Uncle Rich preached on many important topics, including the responsibility of a man to protect his family from bad influences. He told the story of David and Goliath (and had some people help act it out) and how men must stand up to the giants in their lives in the name of the Lord. And….there was a lot of other things, but I’m about ready to fall asleep. Please keep praying, and enjoy the pictures below. God is doing BIG things here, and it’s so exciting being a part!!!!!

this is the group that just kept talking way beyond the time limit…. Pray for changed hearts and courage to follow through on the decisions the men made during their discussion time.

Dr. Des, who came with Uncle Rich

praise God for the men who came!!

these kids are excited by the camera…but really, it is remarkable how still they sit to listen, and how well they answer and ask questions afterwards!

this is before all the benches filled up for the music festival part of the day. It looks like nice Sunday picnic weather, doesn’t it? It was HOT! Praise God that He’s kept the rain away so far this week!!

the first choir that sang (I’m in there!)

this is Goliath and David

challenging and encouraging the men in between choirs

Pray for open hearts, clear skies, good health (especially for Uncle Rich), accurate interpretation, and for the Holy Spirit to work mightily….

 

There were many more choirs (and hence there are many more pictures!), but I think it’s time for bed.

We praise God for some Uganda missionaries who came to help with the audio recordings, filming, and picture taking. It’s amazing how God has brought together so many nationalities and missions and churches to do this conference!

THANK YOU to all who are praying! This conference is more than what I hoped for! It is bringing transformation! As a last picture….. here’s one of the many reactions to the teaching/singing today;

 

Blessings! And keep praying!

Finding My Life in His

This post is kind of a summary of the last months, I suppose. There are the pictures – the moments of joy and beauty and colour that we tend to isolate and hang on our walls. But there’s also the string of words, the unbroken prayer, the daring to live in the hard, hidden times that weaves it all together. 

I found this beautiful Puritan prayer… and I marvel at the mystery of how He really does fill all of our lives: the boring, the repetitious, the terrifying, the sorrowful, the difficult, the stressful are all just opportunities to be filled to all fullness in Him. I marvel at how He doesn’t stop at being the Father of good gifts (and we get such good gifts here – just look at the beautiful faces below!), but He creatively involves Himself even in the messes we make to form this glorious radiance of holiness in everything….

acting out Palm Sunday

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high,

Let me learn….that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,

Passover: we “killed” our lamb puppet and applied the blood

let me learn….that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all,

that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine;

let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in my valley.

Amen.

This story will be told in pictures. We made a trip thirteen kilometers out of town two weeks ago at the request of a Pastor we know to give a “seminar” after the dedication of a new church. The details were vague and our expectations vaguer, but it turned out to be one of those God things.

the ‘angara’ – palm leaf shelter everyone sat under (so it wasn’t that great of protection from the HOOOT sun, but it was better than nothing)

the road was incredibly beautiful – I was awestruck! Words cannot do it justice, nor pictures, and we didn’t even try. Here is the only picture taken on the road.

you would be scared too if you had never seen a white person before….

singing anyone? oh, yes please! and we sure tickled ‘em pink with our dancing! (us girls even sang them a few of our Bana Basi ya Kopela songs, and that was a huge hit)

 

this is what we toss rice in, but now it’s being used as an offering basket

most of the young ladies there were already married – at age fourteen or fifteen, most girls are out of school and have babies

the houses all decorated

Jonni challenging the young men to be responsible!

Dad revealing some parenting secrets…

the front of the audience, where all the little ones sat

aren’t the colours beautiful?

setting up for showing the film ‘Courageous’

Whew….believe it or not, I actually still have more pictures! But I think this is enough for today?

There were girls willing to walk the fifteen kilometers twice on Saturdays to come to the lessons. We told them it was impossible, and they asked, “how then will we hear?”

There were young men asking questions on marriage and responsibility and being true men.

Please, please keep praying….

Pictures!

Thank you everyone for your prayers! Every Saturday is a new challenge, a new adventure. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what it looks like….

this is where we meet - that whole building is one long room. Behind us is a radio station (see the tower?).

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. – Augustine

Her name's Rithe and she's everyone's friend! This puppet is such a huge hit with the girls....

My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. -Spurgeon

(The above picture is ONE side of the room. The other side has around the same amount)

If you want to see more pictures full-size, please check out our “photo album” at

http://www.shoutofjoy.wordpress.com

When God’s Heart Breaks

“Helping Traumatized Children” was written in bold, dark letters over the top of the page I was scanning. Those words, “traumatized children”, are nothing new for me. I’ve always known vaguely that such problems exist. But now there I was, seated in a corner of a neatly painted room, listening in on a Trauma Healing workshop, and unaware that I was going to be given a glimpse of the horror trauma brings to a child’s life.

As I listened from my little corner to story after story being told, I was appalled at what children suffer:

One man began talking of how a mother called him to see her boy, who she insisted was possessed with an evil spirit. The man took time alone with the young boy, asking him questions. He discovered that the boy was traumatized with a series of events. “He woke one night to see a shadowy figure standing over him and his siblings, feeling them, and when he cried out, it ran away….He saw his house go up in flames, with everything inside…he saw the head of a soldier who hadn’t been paid and was despairing of life in a pool of blood where the soldier had killed himself….he saw two LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) soldiers -” here the man was interrupted and the conversation went on, but I in my corner was sitting shocked by what I had just heard. How could such a young child endure all those memories? The man continued speaking; “as I talked to him, I had him draw pictures of everything he had seen. They were very detailed. After we had talked about it, the boy went back to living normally again. It wasn’t an evil spirit.”

African parents often don’t take the time to listen to their children talk about their problems. One man left his family at home. While he was gone, a fierce thunderstorm came and a bolt of lightening struck the house, killing the mother and severely burning the children. The children spent two months in the hospital convalescing, and after this incident they became fiercer. The father beat them when they behaved badly, but that only intensified the problem. After a few months, the father attended a trauma workshop at the church where he realized that his children were traumatized. It had never occurred to him that he should talk with his children over what had happened, as the people at the workshop were telling him to do.

Suddenly that long word “traumatized” had jumped off the page and taken the visible, real form of a hurting, confused child. It was no longer a problem the big, wide world had to deal with, it became the tortured face of a little girl who had seen her parents murdered.

My cowardly heart shrank back from these horrible stories. But the words continued to fill the room and I listened to them because I had no other choice. Because deep down I knew that the God who created each of these children and knew their names before the beginning of the world hears each of their cries, and for that reason so must I.

I couldn’t help putting myself into the stories, trying to understand what these children went through….If I was a young child, what would go through my heart when I see my little friend shot down dead at my feet? When I’m thereafter traumatized, act sullen, and am told that I have an evil spirit and kicked out onto the streets? When people refuse me? When I have those terrible memories swirling constantly in my heart, but never allowed to be expressed? When I’m kidnapped for the army as a young child, and then when I’ve been returned even my parents are afraid of me? I heard of an eight or nine year old boy who was stationed at the airport, holding a machine gun. Can you imagine how God’s heart must break?

Child soldiers, orphans, children who are traumatized– and their family concludes that they have an evil spirit….the heart of God breaks.

My eyes were opened today to a problem I wasn’t aware of before. Pray that the church in Isiro will also be able to see the hurting children in their midst and to love them…for Jesus’ sake.

Pictures!

When I started this blog, I promised my younger sister that I would use a lot of pictures (that being the blog she enjoys reading most). As I look over the posts this last month, however, I don’t find many pictures. So this post is for giving you more little snaps of these beautiful, laughing people. Keep Congo in your prayers!!

It may be a very bad thing that I needed God to die for me, but it is a wonderful thing that God thinks I’m worth dying for.

- Lewis Smedes

one of our friends

Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.

-Jonathan Edwards

My soul, admire the boundless love of God to thee and others of the human race.
Worms are bought with the blood of the Son of the Highest! Dust and ashes
redeemed with a price far above silver and gold!

-Charles Spurgeon

another little friend who has left town to go to family - we miss her happy chatter so much!

Immediate fruit may come, for God worketh marvellously, but whether it does or not,
your plain duty is to sow. Reap you shall, but meanwhile you must be satisfied to go
on sowing, sowing, sowing, even to the end. Reaping is your reward, but sowing is
your work.

- Charles Spurgeon

the road

The way to Heaven is ascending; we must be content to travel uphill, though it be hard and tiresome, and contrary to the natural bias of our flesh.

-Jonathan Edwards

Group Picture

Our Day of Joy!

Yesterday was the closing ceremony for the month-long journey we’ve struggled through.  At times, the going was tough and it was hard just to keep on keeping on. The soil of the girls’ hearts seemed to be rock hard and at times we despaired that the seeds of truth we were planting would ever take root and grow. Looking back, I see so many opportunities God gave us that we ignored, so many pains we should have taken but instead shirked, so many words that could have been spoken or shouldn’t have been, that I’m amazed that God brought us through anyways. Amazed and humbled that He would not only bring us through, but also give us the love-gift of yesterday to keep our goals high and our vision clear. Because yesterday was a Day of Joy.

It started with cooking. We had invited all the parents of the girls to come to a closing ceremony, and in Congo you can’t have something like this without cooking up a grand meal for all the invited ones. So we cooked! It took hours of hard work to sort the pondu (manioc leaves), steam it (and burn our hands in the process!), pound it (a LOOT of work), peel the garlic, roast and pound peanuts till they became powder to put in the pondu, chop tomatoes, green onions, spinach, etc. and cook it all on charcoal fires, peel and clean the cooking bananas, re-heat our palm oil, sort the rice, wash the rice, cook the rice…..you get the idea. But it’s always fun doing it with friends, and even if Michelle washing clothes in the middle of us made it a bit more complicated (and the food a bit more soapy!), we perservered and had it ready in time for the parents arrival.

pounding pondu with Anyesi

Even though a lot of parents didn’t show up, we had a wonderful time together. Dad and Mom both gave little speeches encouraging the parents in their important job, and Anna and I explained what we had done with their girls during June and what we were planning to do in July. We asked for advice and permission to continue, and received both.

Nono's father

We gave each of the girls a certificate of participation, and a little gift. Signing the certificates (for the FIRST EVER time in my life) beforehand, I had this sudden qualm of terror as I asked myself, “what right do you have to do this? And what on earth have you gotten yourself into, Maaike?” The verse from 1 Corinthians came echoing into my mind; and who is adequete for these things? But our adequecy is from the Lord…. I kept my eyes on Jesus for the rest of the day. He is the one who makes this possible, carries this through…. all the same, it was exciting (and a bit strange) giving out the certificates.

We knelt in the center of the floor, and the parents surrounded us to pray. It was powerful. We were so grateful to the parents for their support, gratefulness, and encouragement.

prayer

We then invited our parents to eat the huge feast we had prepared, as well as feeding some friends who Jesus sent along to help us with our three huge pans of rice! Even after we all had finished eating, we gave out three pans of food to other families, and still have enough to eat today. Somehow, by the end of our ceremony we also had so much more joy than I thought possible. Even more joy than we had rice! All us girls had fun laughing together as we ate, sensing that somehow we had been bound together into a sisterhood in Christ. Almost all the girls mentioned how they had always just went to church then put their Bible away for the week, but now are reading it every day and thinking about what they read, too. That was what made the joy so beautiful, so real, so earned - the fact that we had laboured together and learned together and because of that, we could laugh together. There are changes in the lives of those girls, in the lives of Anna and I. That is the most beautiful, unbelievable thought and I cannot wrap my mind around it! It is a sign of the working of the Holy Spirit, the seal of God’s approval on our month of labour. It wasn’t in vain. The sowing was hard, but we had a faint taste of the joy that will come in the harvest yesterday. I can’t wait for it – can’t wait for the harvest. Can’t wait to find out what fruits all those little seeds bore. Can’t wait to see how God was working it all for the good. Can’t wait to see how the tears we shed in the planting were used to water and soften the hard soil. Can’t wait for the joy that will be on that day….. so much joy!!

We Kneel

left to right: Anna, Anyesi, Maaike, Grace, Nono, Michelle, Gloire

Let this be thy whole endeavor, this thy prayer, this thy desire –

that thou mayest be stripped of all selfishness,

and with entire simplicity follow Jesus only.

-Thomas a Kempis

Gloire

Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God. – Andrew Murray

Today, we are fasting the whole day and praying for the coming month and all our plans. Pray that we truly would be ready to sacrifice anything for the kingdom of God. We had a good time kneeling together to pray. We read passages which described God, and marveled that through the blood of Christ we can talk to this great God, and He listens!! We agreed that His answers can vary, but we trust that everything in our lives is there for a reason, for our best, and His glory. What refreshing truth!

Anna!!!!

The greatest thing anyone can do for God and man is pray.

-S.D. Jordan

Anyesi; sweet, shy, faithful (also the youngest in our group)

Prayer does not fit us for the greater work;

Prayer is the greater work!

-Oswald Chambers

the sun was bright on our eyes

 

Prayer is weakness leaning on omnipotence.

-W.S. Bowd

kneel with us!

 

“The essence of prayer does not consist in asking God for something but in opening our hearts to God, in speaking with Him, and living with Him in perpetual communion. Prayer is continual abandonment to God. Prayer does not mean asking God for all kinds of things we want; it is rather the desire for God Himself, the only Giver of Life, Prayer is not asking, but union with God. Prayer is not a painful effort to gain from God help in the varying needs of our lives. Prayer is the desire to possess God Himself, the Source of all life. The true spirit of prayer does not consist in asking for blessings, but in receiving Him who is the giver of all blessings, and in living a life of fellowship with Him.” Sadhu Sundar Singh

THANK YOU FOR PRAYING!!