Outreach & Eighth Week

OUTREACH

Last weekend we went on an amazing journey into the bush. We joined Heidi in a village that had never heard of Jesus before and shared His love and healing power. Amazing healings took place as we prayed for people, and a lot of people gave their lives to the Lord for the first time. Heidi bought a piece of property there and we prayed over it, built a fence with the Mozambiquans. She plans on living there a few days a week and getting to know the people and the culture and language. After she left we had a great time just getting to know the villagers and see them in their element. This little village is way out where there is really no road nearby. They are self  sufficient and we even had duck and shrimp for dinner one night! We had a blast and hope to return to it one day.

EIGHTH WEEK

This week has been a realization that this school is soon coming to an end. We have not finished yet however, and have a lot to learn still. One day we learned from one of the missionary couples who separated us in gender and we talked about sex. It was a great time of honesty and insight as far as what God intended for us in relationships and why we behave the way we do. We listened to a podcast by Kris Valatton from Bethel Church in Redding, CA and I highly recommend you check it out. It’s on purity. Just a few notes:

-The top 3 reasons for divorce are 1. Sex, 2. Money, and 3. Communication. All the things we DON’T talk about in church.

-The church as 1% higher divorce rate than the world – most likely because we don’t talk about it.

-70% of 18 and over don’t have their virginity when they’re married.

We have been meeting with the Mozambiquan bible school students and asking them questions and them asking us questions and here are some more things we learned about the culture:

-They don’t emote when healed by prayer because when they experience healing by witchdoctors (traditional medicine), they pay more the better the healing they receive.

-The men choose a ‘woman’ to live with for 3 years and they even have children. After the 3 years if they decide she behaves the way they hope, they will get married.

-Moslem men have an average of 5 wives that all live in different huts and they live with a different wife every week.

-Here it is common to pay for things or give tithe/offering with chickens, rice, and peanuts.

Heidi taught on Luke 1:26 about how Mary found out the news of her ‘favor’ that she was carrying and how it mirrors normal pregnancy. She shared the news and not everyone was sharing in her delight. She had a choice to carry it or get rid of it. It took time and cost to carry the favor. Heidi was showing us that when God puts something in us, like a mission or a call (which we all have), we choose to keep it or abort it. If we choose to keep it, it will be uncomfortable and take a while to show and probably make life hard for a while, but when we birth this thing, we will forget all of that just like a mother does when she sees her baby for the first time.

Heidi also preached on Matthew 6:9-10 about us being a “sent out lover.” She asked the questions, ‘What does the kingdom of Heaven look like where you live and where you are going?’ That is something for us all seek an answer to.

Since the Solemn Assembly is going on as I type, some international leaders of The Call have come to organize and put it on. Stacy Campbell is one of them. She has been teaching us this past week also and I have so enjoyed it! She is very practical and logical and just overall normal. She is a housewife from Canada and on the side her and her husband do ministry. She talked to us about getting our hearts right for today’s event and learning to live and walk in the greatest commandments which are to love God with all your soul, mind, heart, and strength. She also taught on praying the bible, which is the title of her book. She said she started doing this and started to see God move. I didn’t realize this, but Jesus only prayed once on his own behalf. John 17:24 where he asked that all people would be with him where he was. This was also the prayer of David which is why we call him a man after God’s own heart. So she shared how things started to change in their town/country when they started having solemn assemblies (Joel 2) and that is why we are having one here.  She gave 7 steps for building a prayer life and they are below.

1.     You must learn to pray

a.     Practice

2.     Determine to work at prayer

a.     It is aggressive, not passive

b.     You have to work at it

c.      You are heard by the attitude of your heart

d.     Laying down is the worst prayer posture

3.     Set a time and a place

a.     You’ll never do it if you don’t schedule it in

4.     Pray to God

a.     Put yourself before God as he is, see what the bible lexicons saw before the throne

5.     Learn the language of the spirit

6.     Pray out loud

a.     Any relationship you’re building is started with language

b.     After a long time you can quietly relate (pray)

c.      So you know when you stop

d.     It is hard to think about something else when you’re talking aloud

7.     Silence

a.     Allow time at the end of your prayer to listen

So there is more to it, but I thought that was interesting and certainly helpful! The other thing she taught on was prophecy. More specifically she taught on ecstatic prophecy and it’s roots in the bible and translations from Hebrew words in scripture. She said she got saved in a regular church and when her husband and her planted a church they always preached against people (like her now) who prophecy and manifest in the spirit. However, it suddenly came on her one day and she has since researched it and found all this valuable information confirming what she has experienced. Then she prophecied over some of the students. She has many resources available, I highly recommend checking them out.

So that’s pretty much it. We’ve all been working on our prayer lives and focusing on Jesus and preparing for today. I’m taking a little break to write you this, but this is an all day event. We’re starting to get ready to come home. We have a one more week here and a 10 day visit to Maputo and we’re then looking forward to coming home. The baby is getting big and so am I!! Love you all.

XOXO,

Darryl & Mimi

Seventh Week

This week started out with a call for repentance. We had a breakthrough with unity amongst each other but it was time to now repent of offense so we could go further with the Lord. We all felt something was holding us back in the past. So we went to those who had offended us or we held negative thoughts towards and asked for forgiveness and blessed that person. It was powerful and challenging. As Shara  said, “the one to the cross first wins.” This is true. Often we wait thinking it’s the other person’s responsibility or shrug it off, but this will really mess up the church. Honestly, this has been really eye opening and one of the most interesting things we have learned at this school. Not only are we learning how to live in unity with a different culture, race, religion, but also with other people from other nations that carry all kinds of others along with them.  Jesus calls us to have a pure thought life.  As he taught that not only should you not murder, but any who hate their brother in their heart have committed murder already – in this light, we need to have more consideration of how we think. Our thoughts determine our actions. From the overflow of the inside, the outside expresses. It was hard, humbling, and wonderful all at the same time. We also learned that when you are involved with others in Christ, there is this spiritual warfare. The bible says in Proverbs, ‘where there is strife, there is pride,’ and that is what we had to do, put down our pride and get right. One of our friends shared with us how this preacher is a hunter and once out in the wilderness he happened upon a bear family. All he had with him at the time was a gun and knew it wouldn’t be enough so he just emptied the gun into the male bear and ran. However, once he did that the male bear thought the female bear was attacking him and he started attacking her. This is a great metaphor for how it is as Christians. One of us gets attacked (spiritually) and we then attack our wife, husband, brother, sister, friend, etc rather than the thing shooting us. So it’s something to work on. Instead of drinking from the fountain of the enemy, when negative thoughts come into your mind, fire good thoughts and blessings for that person right back into the barrel. It’s a great practice that we are learning better late than never!

We didn’t get much teaching from Heidi this week because we had village feeding and then outreach during her teaching days. However we did learn from this guy named Charles Stock who is the head pastor the Life Center. He taught us a lot about the spiritual realm. I’m about to run out of battery on my friends lap top so I have to post this. Will write more later. Love you all! It will include the most amazing outreach experiences of this past weekend. 

Sixth Week

Sixth Week

Adjusting to the culture and climate of Mozambique, we have enculturated quite well. However, we miss our family, our friends, our home, and American food.  Last week we ended with our 4^th of July feast with our home group which included a Scot and a Canadian. It was a blast, but we all realized just how much we missed home.

This week Heidi was having a hard time. Having just returned from the Middle East, she had endured quite a bit of persecution. So she skipped a few verses in her series on the Beatitudes and went right for Matthew 5:10-12, “Blessed are those who are persecuted…” She shared about many times in her journey about how she has been persecuted and God has brought her through. It encouraged her to remember those things, and it encouraged us not to give up when things get hard.

The second time she taught us she went back to where she left off at verse 8, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” She shared stories from the children she has cared for over the years. One of them was about a little boy who had no family to take care of him because they all died. He came to live and go to school at Iris but he was intent on staying true to his roots as a Moslem. He insisted to them quite beligerantly about how he refused to convert. Heidi took him aside and told him he didn’t have to become a Christian to live here and go to school here, that they would all love him just the way he is regardless of his religion. She went on to say that almost instantly once she revealed to him that he had a choice and it was his choice to make, he told her, “OK then, I really want this Jesus, pray for me!” Heidi encouraged us to look for Jesus in the children, the bible school students, the villagers, etc. Here are a few other points that I took down in my notes but that don’t necessarily go with the theme, as we get off topic quite a bit at times:

-                    Not one of the students or staff present raised their hand when asked if anyone received Jesus in an evangelism meeting.

-                    The hungry always get fed, but not always as soon as they ask. This is a spiritual metaphor for dry times.

-                    Spend time with the broken in hospitals, mental institutions, nursing homes, the homeless, the poor… not to teach them anything or to fix their problems, just to spend time with them and love them.

We also learned from a guy named Paul Black, from Fredricksburg, VA. He taught on the difference between the soul and the spirit. He talked about how once we became followers of Christ, we were predestined to become more like him. That is our destiny. Basically, the difference between the soul and the spirit is that the soul is focused on me, and the spirit is focused on Christ. It’s up to us to discern between the two. He also taught on slavery verses sonship. This was some amazing teaching and he teaches a program called the School of Enoch. He said if anyone was interested  in having him come teach this to their church to contact him. The website is www.cornerstonefellowship.net - we should do this Stephen!  

XOXO,

Darryl & Mimi

P.S. Thank you for all your comments! It blesses us to know you are reading and how it is blessing you to experience with us. I know some of you have had trouble with posting comments, but I know you're reading - thank you. :)