This week has been a good one….VERY hard for me, but good. Pam and I have been leading. It has been nice to have some order to the schedule and more than 30 minutes of free time at a time. We have put all of our events back to back so that we get all of our free time at once. It has been terrible to try and go to town to check the internet or take a nap with so many small blocks of free time. This has made everything a lot easier for me.
In our scheduled time we have been doing a lot of things in the local community. We have done some prayer walks, painted a few houses (and each other simultaneously), as well as hosting a bible study a couple times a week. Vanuatu is a great place for our team right now. We were doing a team building exercise Tuesday and all the neighbor kids (and a few adults) came over and watched (and kinda got in the way)…but they are SO eager to learn what we’re doing and what we’re about.
The culture here is different than the other islands. Similarities include: Boys and girls can not be together 1 on 1 otherwise they assume you’re sleeping together, no garbage cans…they just burn it wherever, they are very shy until you know them, girls are required to dress VERY modestly, and how eager they are to listen to what we have to say because we’re white. Differences include: Guys can wear basically whatever they want to…even for ministry and church, the people here STARE at us wherever we go and watch everything we do. If you do one thing somewhere, and walk to the other side of the village, you do not need to tell them, because they already know. The missionaries here call it coconut wireless. News about anything we do (good or bad) travels faster than you can walk. It’s really creepy. So we need to watch our actions extremely closely.
We are still praying about where God has called us for the last month of our trip. We are thinking about Samoa because it was the original plan, but we have not heard from God yet. Our plan is to focus on prayer until we hear what God wants. This last week I have had a heavy heart. Not a depression, not a sadness, not self pity or anything similar. It has had a few different forms this week and some of you know about that…and I thank you so much for your prayers. The specific forms of heaviness have gone away, yet the heaviness has remained. I know that God is doing this intentionally and I’m not sure why yet. So please pray for me that I can learn to hear God’s voice. He wants me to understand this heaviness beyond any circumstances. Your prayers have been changing my life, and I’ve been doing my best to change the lives of all those I encounter. So thank you for all you have done for me.
In our scheduled time we have been doing a lot of things in the local community. We have done some prayer walks, painted a few houses (and each other simultaneously), as well as hosting a bible study a couple times a week. Vanuatu is a great place for our team right now. We were doing a team building exercise Tuesday and all the neighbor kids (and a few adults) came over and watched (and kinda got in the way)…but they are SO eager to learn what we’re doing and what we’re about.
The culture here is different than the other islands. Similarities include: Boys and girls can not be together 1 on 1 otherwise they assume you’re sleeping together, no garbage cans…they just burn it wherever, they are very shy until you know them, girls are required to dress VERY modestly, and how eager they are to listen to what we have to say because we’re white. Differences include: Guys can wear basically whatever they want to…even for ministry and church, the people here STARE at us wherever we go and watch everything we do. If you do one thing somewhere, and walk to the other side of the village, you do not need to tell them, because they already know. The missionaries here call it coconut wireless. News about anything we do (good or bad) travels faster than you can walk. It’s really creepy. So we need to watch our actions extremely closely.
We are still praying about where God has called us for the last month of our trip. We are thinking about Samoa because it was the original plan, but we have not heard from God yet. Our plan is to focus on prayer until we hear what God wants. This last week I have had a heavy heart. Not a depression, not a sadness, not self pity or anything similar. It has had a few different forms this week and some of you know about that…and I thank you so much for your prayers. The specific forms of heaviness have gone away, yet the heaviness has remained. I know that God is doing this intentionally and I’m not sure why yet. So please pray for me that I can learn to hear God’s voice. He wants me to understand this heaviness beyond any circumstances. Your prayers have been changing my life, and I’ve been doing my best to change the lives of all those I encounter. So thank you for all you have done for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment