Africa- Finally!

Today I have a treat for all you wonderful patient people- I am finally going to carry through with my promise to share with you all my stories from Tanzania! Exciting, no? So here it is- relief from your long months of agony (to be completed in a few installments)!

Sunday July 5
This was our first official day of ministry. We were broken up into groups of two or three to go minister at various churches within the vicinity of Moshi (the city we were in, in case you hadn't gathered that). The plan was to go to our churches and then come back to the hotels and have the rest of the day to recoup. That is not at all the way my day actually went. The pastor of the church I went to wanted to to take me and the guy I was with to a rally that the local pastors had put together and we, being the intrepid team that we were, agreed. So, after a rather adventurous lunch at the pastor's home, we made our way to Machengo field where we found an already enormous crowd awaiting us. The alter call that night brought forward 700 people. Even more came forward wanting physical healing. And so it was that I- tired and overwhelmed and hungry, having never seen anyone actually healed when I prayed for them- was released into the oncoming crowd to minister. And you know what? God is really awesome. When you step out and do something crazy he backs you up. I stepped out into that crowd not feeling the least bit brave and he used me. The first woman I prayed for that night had failing sight and hearing and she was healed. After that I found myself surrounded by people wanting prayer, most of whom were children with vision problems and God healed each one of them.

Monday July 6
I went into town with another member of our group and spent the day wandering around doing street ministry. We ended up with a young man- a street vendor- named Kelvin translating for us. He stopped to translate for the first man we prayed for and then accompanied us for the rest of the day. As we were walking we ran into another street vendor (a rather obnoxious one if I may say so). Upon learning that we were there to pray for people he gave up on his attempts to sell us his wares and led us to a man he thought we should pray for. THis man was an old, crippled beggar. He couldn't stand and his fingers were gnarled and deformed- as though he had leprosy. His fingers didn't grow back out (how awesome would that have been?!) but he was able to get up and walk when we finished praying for him. Kelvin was deeply touched that a man who hadn't been able to walk for years would be able to get up and walk after we prayed for him. I kept telling him that he could do the same thing- pray for people and see them healed- and that he could do far more than we could do becuase he lives there and speaks the language. I hope he took it to heart. Our street vendor friend then led us on to pray for another person, a elderly muslim man with bad knees. We prayed for him and he slowly stood up, stomped one foot then the other, looked up with a huge smile and started jumping around. By that time we had a whole group of street vendors surrounding us. They can be extremely obnoxious at first, but once they see you praying for people and talking about God, they forget all about selling anything and follow you around just wanting to hear everything you have to say. (The muslim man's son also followed us for a while, but only because he wanted to trade with me for my shiny purple GMA bracelet- the bracelet which I couldn't trade because it marked me as a member of the ministry team.) I think the thing I found most touching about that day was Kelvin. He never once tried to sell us anything (he, in fact, saved us from an argument with some other street vendors), he struck me as being a very honorable young man, and he was so hungry for God. Before going back to the hotel we bought him a Bible.

So, there is installment one, installment two will hopefully be posted tomorrow.