The Latest

The past few days have been comprised of numerous great experiences. I preached a sermon, had a sleepover in a village, and worked on a soccer team. I will go into detail for each.

Casa de Mama Milka

Milka is a great lady. Her job is to help tend the cows at the dairy farm. She never speaks english, which makes our relationship a little limited, but I really love her none-the-less. She invited me to her home and I accepted the invitation gladly. I really wanted to see Kano and get to meet all her family and such. The time I spent there was a struggle for me. I usually am such a tough guy and little usually bothers me, but I had some problems being there for the overnighter. Nothing too dramatic but it was really tough to eat the dozens of mandazi (african donuts), sodas, fishy tasting tea, mound of rice, mound of ugali, and kuku (chicken) all to myself. I wanted to puke by the end of dinner. Hakuna matata. I tried to get to know them as well as I could in half a day and I actually really liked one of Milka's sons a lot. His name is Charles I believe. He told me he had just killed an antelope the other day as he pointed to the tail hanging from the ceiling of the hut. If I ever go there again I am going spear hunting with him no matter what it takes. The highlight of the visit was a little girl named Bella. She ran in my arms and smiled to the heavens. Then she fell asleep in my arms as I ate my eight coarse meal. The low point of the visit was the spiritual bondage/ darkness that manifested mostly at night. They pray at night and beat on a drum for the "Holy Spirit" to come into the village, but some sort of demonic presence could be felt instead. The village is run by a Catholic cult called Legen Maria or something like that. I have never felt such clear demonic activity (except for that one time in Vegas) in my life. It was a little hard to fall asleep. Even though there was a little difficulty there, I was glad I went to the village and hope to go back.

Sermon

Bwana asa fiwe (Praise the Lord) I was so blessed to preach. Wycliffe, the pastor, told me 40 minutes to an hour and I went too long. I was nervous I wouldn't have enough to say, but aparently God gave me PLENTY of words. We had to stop it a little short as the kids were getting out of Sunday school and people's bottoms were getting a little sore. Oh well. I think people were blessed by it and God was glorified so that is all that matters. I spoke on "work" and how we need to first know where we sit in Christ and that will enable us to work for Christ. God is so good!!

Soccer Update

I am playing soccer everyday I am in town with the street boys and we have another friendly match tomorrow with another team. We lost last week so we are hoping for a victory tomorrow. The boys are warming up to me more and tomorrow we are going to have a team meeting. I hope that God gives me the right words and it brings us all together. I just found out that my church is donating some money to provide soccer balls to the boys!! I was so stoked and it is such an answer to prayer. Praise God for that. I think that it will really encourage the boys to have team balls and to feel like a real team for once. I hope to lead them in drills as much as I can, but more importantly I hope to soon develop some sort of daily devotional we can have together as a team so that they can come to know God more. We need to have a team first and I am working on it as much as possible. A few boys are very consistent, but some of the boys barely come. I pray that are meeting goes well tomorrow. Please pray for these boys and that God would do more than I could think or imagine because we know that He is able.