'The hunger for God can only be satisfied by a love that is face to face, person to person. It is only in the eyes of another that we can find the Icon of Christ. We must make the other person aware we love him. If we do, he will know that God loves him. He will never hunger again.' Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Catholic social activist.
We had wonderful Sunday worship at the Maua Methodist Church . . . we attended the Swahili service . . . about 2 hours of music, song and scripture. We delivered the pictures from our Club Mad and the children loved them. They made recriprocal pictures and we will be bringing them back to our Club Mad Children when we return. After church we hiked up to a local waterfall surrounded by fields of tea and strolled through the busy market full of people enjoying their Sunday afternoon. When we returned we opened our notes from our AUMC Youth and were so pleased with their prayers for us. The children and adults were beautiful, spirit filled and so very friendly and gracious.
We began our Monday morning with daily chapel at the Maua Methodist Hospital, where we learned that the hospital was built first in the late 1800s and the church grew out of the chapel that was held there on a regular basis . . . what a wonderful testimony to evangelism through service a la Methodist Church. The pastor reminded us of God's calling to Abraham to 'wake up from your comfort zone and go, trusting that God is always ahead of us in the calling. He encouraged us to walk by faith and be ready to be used by the Lord. What an appropriate message!
On our hospital tour we learned that there are 1700 AIDS orphans supported directly by a United Methodist Advance program and over 4000 in a weekly feeding program. We learned of a wonderful empowerment ministry through ZOE Ministries that works with over 1000 households with children who are victims of the AIDS epidemic. The purpose of this ministry is to empower the children/youth to become self-sufficient through providing basic food security; education about HIV/AIDS; micro-financing loans that encourage the development of community businesses and legal intervention on behalf of AIDS orphans to ensure their retention of their family land. We toured the hospital, saw a new-born baby, and witnessed the arrival of a woman brutally attacked. We spent the remainder of the day unloading the surgical supplies we brought with us, preparing a staff house for painting this week and sent 3 persons to see the results of the ZOE ministry project. All in all, we are very blessed, thankful that God called us to this place and exhausted by the day. \please continue your prayers and we'll be in touch again tomorrow. God's greatest blessings to you!
No comments:
Post a Comment