My ...Our ALMIGHTY God!!

"I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised." Ps 145:1-3 The rest declares my feelings as well!

This last weekend I was greatly encouraged in the Lord. Once again, our weekend was different than we had planned, but our Lord always knows what we need right?! Definitely! My mom called me and told me that she knew we were heading in the right direction by making changes. Our team really needed to hear that. It is very easy to worry about this when you have no idea what you are doing! Her phone call was an answer to prayer!

Angela received a email right when we were feeling like we needed to change our "lessons" from her cousin who knew nothing of what we were doing. It was over 200 pages of material on the study of the gospel. Her cousin called it "the milk and meat of the gospel!" It is very good. Yet there are complications such as the laguage barrier. It uses big words and difficult concepts and we were unsure of how to get these across in an understandable way. Well let me just say God has been opening my eyes to the "ALMIGHTINESS" (a new work I think!) of Him! I feel as if I am dipping my toe into an endless pool! It is so refreshing and I want to keep diving in! Why have I never realized that the Almighty God is ALMIGHTY in my life and through everything! Wow!! I will never be able to fully grasp this but I pray God will continue to open my eyes to this each minute of every day!

I do not need to worry about this language barrier. He wants me to depend on Him...He wants to use me as an instrument and speak words into the hearts of these young ladies! I am hear to love them as He has loved me.....unconditionally and all the time! Our first day of camp back at Sarasungu was supposed to start on Monday. I had such peace and was genuinely excited about camp! We showed up and no girls! We looked at eachother and came to the conclusion God knew we had not prepared enough. The beauty of mistakes....is the beauty of His love and grace. Every time I make a mistake I am faced with God's acceptance of me no matter what I do. We talked to Mr. Dion and decided we would come in and announce the beginning of camp Tuesday morning in each class. We went home and began to get down and dive into His word preparing our lessons.

Tuesday.....AMAZING!! That is what Tuesday was! God, my Almighty Father, working! Using us and letting us reap benefits of it! I have not had such joy, peace, and excitement as I had yesterday yet this trip! It was nothing that I could have done...He showered on me His grace!

Tuesday morning we woke up at 5:30 or so. Showered and shoveled porridge down! We had a long day ahead of us. We packed lunches and extra clothes, our bibles and our journals. We left for the University, a missionary friend (Irene) works at. We had a lunch with her students 2 weeks ago. They had mentioned us coming back, so Irene planned a lesson that involved us. (It is a univeristy for teachers.) Class began at 7am and it was a blast! I was in a group of 3 young men who were interviewing me about education in the U.S. to see if we have the same issues they have. Working with these students is so fun, because we are the same age and exchanging great information about our cultures. It really helps in understanding their culture. At the end we pulled asided the girls after the boys left and asked them if they woud like to get coffee next Friday. The excitment on their faces matched our excitement! One of the girls squealed and said yes! So we have a date!! God being ALMIGHTY! Crossing the cultural barriers and allowing us to have a relationship with these young ladies!

We left the University and headed to Sarasung. We waited for their next classes to start and began to make the anouncement in the classes. Several girls said they were coming! It turned out well. We decided to forgo the charge of $N5 because we just wanted everyone to be able to come and decided we would pray that they would find it still important to show up to. We still have enough left over money for drinks for this week too! Last minute decision and it went well!

We left there to go to the Goldney's house (a missionary family who is about ready to return home) to go dig up some mud to help patch up Dophelia's mud hut. Dophelia is a girl from Sarasung who has a very rough life and lives in a hut (very dangerous) by herself. It gets very cold here and she has lots of holes in the mud walls. So we dug and filled up the back of our bakkie (our pick up truck). We took it to here house and visited with the people in the village while Richard Goldney went for containers of water to make the mud. We got to visit the women in their huts! They are so sweet, they were volunteers at the OVC project! Then we played with the children. I was chasing this one little girl and she ran by these ladies. One of the girls I knew from camp and stopped to talk to her. The young ladies were brading eachothers hair and the older woman was punding maize into flower. The older women don't speak much or any english. But she motioned me over to try pounding then sifting the maize! It was so fun....these women are SOO strong! One day we saw a women carrying a table on top of her head!! Crazy! She laughed at me! I finally got it down more! :) Wish I could post some pictures! The girls were cracking up at me!

By the time Richard made it back with the water, it was time to leave for Sarasungu. I cannot even explain how much fun camp was! Wow! These girls are amazing! We played kick ball and talked about Who God was and what sin is. I could see these girls having fun and then really taking it all in during the teaching time. It was amazing! Again....God being ALMIGHTY! Those are difficult concepts and they were really understanding...at least some of them were. God totally helped me think of words that they would not understand to explain in small group! He is so willing to do everything for us! Many girls came from last time and we had some new ones! Julia, Fillemon, Lydia, Beatha, and Patrina all came from my group last time! Please continue praying for them, they think it is so neat that you all are praying for them! We cap it at 50 girls and we had 47 sign up!! Amen!

After camp was over we headed back to Dophelia's hut and helped with mudding the holes. We had so much fun! Dophelia showed me her love by coming up and rubbing my arms down with the mud! I was so muddy! She was so happy to have help on the house! Also some of the kids that wander helped us...they kept laughing at the the "chindelay!" But there is a girl who has special needs and it was so neat to see her so happy helping us. At the end of the day when we were carrying back buckets, I kept ramming my freezing cold hand into the Jenna's bucket. She was walking behind us and just started cracking up after I hit the bucket! It was so neat. She gets looked down upon a lot and no one plays with her! It was a beautiful laugh!

All in all....God is beautiful and very much ALMIGHTY! He broke through so many barriers. He filled me with joy that no one could have given me but Him. I am learning, every so slowly, but He is opening my eyes! He just wants to be my ALL. He will be my peace, joy, and excitement. He will fill me with words that really point to Him! He will set up opportunities for us to build relationships! He will be Lord of my life if I just let Him take it!

Please continue prayers for us that we make have our eyes opened to Him and His leading. We have yet to completely fill our last week here...but it's Africa and things happen last minute. It is much easier to see how Almighty He is and in control He is here in Africa... because you may plan everything out and 95% will not be what you planned when the actual time comes around! At home, most plans go somewhat well, but here....planning doesn't exist! So yes that we had a camp on Tuesday shows His Almightyness! Please pray that we do not let Satan push us down, to think that we are doing anything when it is ALL God. Please also continue your prayers for us in the health department. Jenna and Stacey are stil feeling sick. Thank you so much for your prayers!

I love you all and appreciate all your prayers! More will come later! We did go to the hospital today but intenet is going now!