April 9

I am blessed. My time out in the villages has been amazing. I already have some good stories to tell.

Zambia has a national holiday that they call TB day. It is a day that recognizes tuberculoses. They will usually have gatherings at the health clinics to share on the causes, symptoms, prevention, and some other stuff. They also do some cultural dances, skits, and singing. I attended one of these gatherings out in Nyawa. I was the only white guy around, which is often the case when I am out in the bush. There were probably about 250 people there and a lot of the leaders of the community. The whole ceremony was pretty nice other than the cultural dancing. The kind of dancing they were doing was very sexual, even worse than club dancing in the states. Sexual perversion has a stronghold on most of Zambia. Unfortunately this dancing is what the people got most excited about. Even small kids were trying to imitate it. My heart ached for these people.

The chief (Chief Nyawa, the leader for the area and about 425 villages) showed up and was the official opener of the ceremony. He pulled up in his vehicle, (all the chiefs of Zambia were given a vehicle by the government) got out, shook some hands with a few people and went into a room for some privacy. Five minutes later I got summoned to go greet the chief because he wanted to talk to me. So I went in this little room with about 3 other people. I talked with him for a while about what I have been doing. He then realized that I have been the white guy riding around on a bicycle throughout his chiefdom. Then he started asking questions about what we were doing this year. I told him a good bit and told him that if he wanted more details that he would have to speak with Jake, the sector manager. After all of this he expressed his desire to take us out to the western side of his chiefdom because there are no churches and no one ever goes out there. He wants his whole chiefdom to be Christians. He is not only allowing us to do the work of the gospel out there, but he is also supporting it. Thank you Jesus! So after we got done talking some cold cokes appeared from nowhere in the middle of the bush and we enjoyed the cokes and just had some fellowship. After a while we went out to the Ceremony that was still going on. The chief asked one of the pastors to open in prayer before he gave a speech. These ceremonies are often long and drawn out so I started getting bored. Then God spoke to me and told me to be praying for the chief so I did so. Then God told me to get ready to pray for all of these people and so I did. Then moments later the chief gave his closing remarks and asked me to get up and give a closing prayer. Haha. I get so excited seeing the leaders of these people honoring God and realizing that He alone is what is going to bring change to their people.

One random night there was a crazy lightning storm just off in the distance. I love watching lightning, but there was something different about this storm. There was something tugging at my spirit. I asked God why this was and he told me to pray for the people of that area. I started praying and then had a vision. I saw multiple witch doctors that were controlling the storm. I saw people in bondage because of these controlling spirits. I saw the compassion that God had for his people and I spent time interceding for these people.

We have had a lot of progress being made in the Nyawa Chiefdom. We now have 12 zone managers overlooking about 60 villages. They are discipling people and making sure that bible studies are being ran in each of those villages. Recently we had a problem with one of our zone managers. He ended up getting very sick and went to the hospital in the city. They took x-rays and found nothing wrong with him. So he turned to the witch doctor for answers. He told us that he was going to the hospital so hearing this news wasn’t good. We weren’t for sure if this was true so me and a pastor went to his home and asked his son, who has his own family and home in the same village, where he was and what he was doing. His son told us that he was near the hospital but was seeing a traditional healer (aka witch doctor) and hadn’t returned yet because they had to arrange payment of a cow before the witch doctor would let him return home. So when we finished out in the villages that week we went to the hospital to find him. We found him and questioned him. He denied everything. We didn’t tell him about the fact that his own son, and everyone else he knows said he was seeing a witch doctor. So our original plan of action was that he would no longer be a zone manager. We can’t have someone who is a spiritual leader for these people being involved in witchcraft. We were going to continue to disciple him and allow him to stay in charge of managing the gardens for us in the area. But now that he is denying the whole thing and we have proof that it is true, we can no longer have anything to do with him until he repents and turns back to God. The bible says to first approach personally, if he does not repent bring in another brother or pastor, and if there is still no progress bring him before the church or counsel, if he will still not repent then cut him lose and have nothing to do with him. So these are the steps we followed. If, in the future, he repents and comes back to us we will have open arms. We already have another man that is being raised up and discipled to fill this position. God has given us much favor in these areas. I think this whole issue will strengthen us in the end.

I had the opportunity to travel in with some friends to Lusaka, which is the capital of Zambia. They needed a male to go with just to feel better about traveling. So I decided to make the best of this opportunity and do Project 237 while I was there. I spent a whole day there. It happened that a lot of the political power buildings were on the same stretch of road. I prayed in preparation for this trip, and as well I prayed just before reaching the area. After praying and asking God to prepare me for this mission I searched the area and found myself before the Supreme Court building. I went through the gospel decree with some people, and then looked for a good place to post it. I asked permission from the secretary to post the Gospel decree at the Supreme Court. After reading through it and agreeing with it, she allowed me to post it right on the reception counter. It was the only paper posted there, so it caught the eye of everyone that came in. After being amazed at the favor that God was giving me already, I went outside and started praying. The presence of God poured over me. I lifted up the nation of Zambia in prayer and spoke on many things that the Lord lead me to pray for. After this amazing encounter I decided to do some evangelism. I just stopped random people walking by and shared with them about Jesus. Almost all of them claimed to be Christians so instead of just leaving it at that I asked them to pray with me. Together, about 5 times with different people, we prayed and lifted up Zambia once again. Of course there were also quite a few that got scared and came up with excuses like they were late or something. A couple of them really got into it and were excited about it. I had a great time doing this and look forward to working more in the future with Project 237. If you want to know more about Project 237 look it up at http://www.cotr.com/missions.htm