I’m going to try to do a blog post even though I don’t remember how.  I added photos to my facebook account and I want to add them here too.

**The photos are of a village trip we took a couple months ago. It was awesome.  We went to Ziga (a village where we’ve helped drill a well, done pastors trainings and started children’s clubs).  We went there for an all night prayer meeting to pray for what God has in store for them in 2010.

We put the kids to bed at about 10 or so on a mattress in the back of the truck parked close enough to the prayer meeting to where I could get to them easily.  Then I (Heidi) joined them at about 1am.  Joel prayed and participated in the whole prayer/preaching evening.  He said it was awesome even though some of the speakers only spoke in Moore.

The next morning he took the opportunity to meet with the pastors and children’s pastors to encourage them to also get a vision for what God wants to do in their children’s ministry for 2010 and to make some goals.

** Another photo album I’m posting is of a women’s retreat I had the great pleasure of attending called “Women of the Harvest” retreat.  Its a American magazine for women serving in foreign missions.  They now do retreats all over the world.  American missionary women can register for it and only pay $90 + their transportation costs and they get to attend an amazing, pampering spiritual retreat at a resort in their region.  You can only go once in your life, so this was the time for me.  I had an incredible time!!!!

I have to say, I didn’t realize how refreshing it would be to just get alone with the Lord and focus on Him.  Even when I’m hiding in my bedroom trying to have quiet time after Jakob’s gone to school, I’m never really alone.  My housekeeper is in the kitchen, Joel is doing something, I just know Silas is about to wake up and cut my devotion time short…  My mind is racing all over and its hard to get quiet with the Lord.

We had an awesome speaker named Becky Harling, and she had some great encouraging messages, and then she had us find a spot in the room to pray and be quiet before the Lord, or she put us in small groups to discuss what we learned…  It was just SO good to soak up the presence of the Lord and REALLY focus on Him with no distractions.  It was also wonderful to see the ocean.  I drove about 5 other ladies down with me, and after driving for 2 days (its an 18 hour drive to the coast), when we finally saw the ocean, I got all giddy and started bouncing in my seat and actually cried!  Ha ha.  I missed it so much.

Women of the Harvest brought in ladies to do pedicures for us, massage, morning workouts by the pool, personal prayer ministry, and beautiful haircuts.  I  signed up for them all!  I had such a wonderful time.  I recommend it to any American missionary woman.  Go to this retreat!

63 Outreaches, 3 Teams, 21 Evangelists and 8 Days.

Sprinkle in 5 different vehicles, 2 generators and African timeliness, and you also have a recipe for disaster…

This is how it happened:

Operation Christmas Child invited me to train all the Children’s Pastors who were participating in this years outreaches - 65 churches.  The training was awesome!  130 showed up (2 from each church) and it ended with us laying hands and praying for over 30 of them who felt a call to full/part-time children’s ministry.

Then I had the crazy idea - why not train some of them in drama, skits, puppets and create teams so they can go to each distribution and really make the distribution of shoeboxes an extra-special event?  This would also ensure that the focus of each distribution will be more on the Gospel, less on the gifts.

We got 21 volunteers, so Heidi and I paired up with some of our “Give a Kid a Christmas” veterans to train them in 3 days.  Heidi took the Jesus Skit, Issaka and Gregoire took the “Sin Chair skit” and I took the puppets.  We also spent the 1st hour of each day to explain basic discipleship.

All of that was great…  But then we had to find a car, sound equipment, costumes, food, water, gas, etc… for each team.  Sound easy?  It’s not!  But God is good, and thanks in large part to our home church: Newspring, we are able to work it out (they sent 2 speakers, a generator, mics, and of course, a Ford F150).

Then we split all 65 outreaches among the 3 teams (Lightening, Gideon and my team, Ebenezer) based on proximity to each other.  Each team chose a rendez-vous point, then we had to confirm each outreach with each pastor.  Anyways, it’s been a circus!  But we have successfully completed 8 outreaches already.  Here’s our 1st great testimony:

At one church a lady stood up, in front of the entire crowd, after the Gospel presentation and said:

“Before we had great hate in our hearts for you, the pastor, but now, we understand, and we are letting our hatred go.”

Wow!  The community genuinely felt the love of God and for the 1st time understood the Gospel message (told in stories) and are now opening their hearts to the church.  That is EXACTLY what Operation Christmas Child is all about, and that is what Vision 2020 is all about.

More to come!

Here are a few pictures from the training that Heidi and I conducted for the Evangelism Team.  There’s also a few pictures from Joel’s team’s very 1st outreach.

More explanations in the next blog.

We have 4 more days till the outreaches start!!  Would you pray with us for this year’s outreaches?  We have been ready to go for several weeks now, but because we want to join our outreaches with a medical clinic, we have been delayed a bit.  The doctor we work with began the authorization process in July, but the government has been dragging it’s feet.

We decided that no matter what, the show must go on…  So we are starting on Monday.  But we need to cover this in prayer!  Would you please urgently pray that:

1. Doctor Peter can get the authorization by the end of this week.
2. We can assemble the drama troupe and retrain them in time.
3. We can find enough volunteers for the packing and wrapping.
4. We find favor with all the school directors - there will be 5 or 6 schools next week.
5. For protection against sickness and equipment failure.