Repost from August 4, 2016
We've been doing a lot of evangelism this month with two of our newest church plants. They wanted to have a film projection this last month, so we had activities scheduled throughout the week to lead up to that. A couple of days at each location were scheduled for door to door evangelism. I have a story that I use almost every time I do evangelism mostly because it tends to work no matter what religious or educational background someone has. As you can imagine, that gets very boring for me, but I have to keep myself interested in the story or nobody else will be interested. We get all kinds of receptions here. It can range from anything from rapt attention to slightly hostile. Because on the surface people tend to slightly interested in talking to me and figuring out exactly what I am up to on their turf, I have a hard time knowing at the outset how the telling will go. It's those extraordinary encounters that keep us talking. One of the volunteers that was here this last month got a chance to preach and he used the parable of that soils. One of the encounters that happened recently fell so neatly into one of those categories that I saw it happening nearly from the first. Odette was a perfect example of a rocky soil. Odette is a young lady in her 20s that we found at work selling lunch. She gladly accepted us. The way that Odette listened to the story was any storytellers dream. She was involved, excited and mesmerized by they whole thing. As soon as the story was over, she wanted to know where our church was. She prayed to accept Christ with no hesitation. She promised she'd come watch the film and come to church. She asked us to pray right away that her husband would come to Christ. That was the last we saw of her. She will be followed up on. Someone will go visit her multiple times, but unfortunately this or something like it happens more often than not. Each time someone is so excited about the gospel, I hope that they will be the good soil that produces a harvest, and sometimes they are. I had a little whisper in my spirit about Odette. As I was so excited about her response, I felt that nudge. I pray that the gospel will take deep root in her heart.
We had another really strange day this week. I spent the whole day going from one doctor's appointment to the next with different people. Ben is learning to ride his bike and I had gone out with him to help him practice around 5:00. We weren't out long and on my return, I was greeted with the bad news that my African sister's husband was being rushed to the hospital with abdominal pain. Mike took off in the truck to join them, but I stayed home with the little boys. I'm not a very good stay at home person, but I knew the pastor needed Mike's support more than mine. As Mike rushed them from hospital to hospital, I prayed and waited for word. Getting good care here is very difficult if you don't have lots of money to spend on it. The pastor needed a simple ultrasound, but he was in agony for nearly 18 hours before getting that done. God's healing hand was on the pastor and even before he got his ultrasound, the problem resolved itself so that he went home from the hospital soon after his long awaited ultrasound. Meanwhile on the other side of the city, we had our own emergency. All evening I was waiting to see if I was needed. With no news, I just kept waiting at home and as the evening wore on, it became a little too dangerous for me to take an hour taxi ride, so I just stayed. Near 11:30, I heard a strange noise coming from Ben's room. I went in to find Ben barely able to breathe. I called one of our single girls that are here working with us to come sit with Ty and ran Ben to our closest hospital. Fortunately it is a 2 minute walk away. For some reason Ben had what seems to have been an allergy induced asthma attack, although that has never happened before. He had seemed stuffy and had a little cough before bed, so I know it didn't come on fast, but since he was asleep, I didn't realize he was getting bad until it was really bad. Thanks to God's healing hand on him as well, one nebulizer treatment took care of the problem. I think we can do without more weird days like that.
Being flexible is an absolute requirement around here. Even in our ordinary activities, nothing is ever normal! ;)
With love,
Heather
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