the harvest is plentiful!

We had a wonderful blessing at our youth group today! To start things off, one of the boys came early to talk about salvation. he has been in church for awhile, and knew alot of verses, but it seems like none of the churches here ever explain salvation to anyone, or do any kind of discipleship. he was very eager, and ready to accept the Lord. Once we got started, we were a little disappointed because our attendance was down significantly from last week. But it is Valentine's day, and everyone here has a habit of going to the beach on holidays, and so we were thankful for those who were there. There was one older guy (most of the people who come are in their early teens, but he seemed at least 20), who came in late. the whole time i was trying to figure out where i had seen him before because he looked kind of familiar. He stayed through the whole service, even playing the goofy game we had planned. After it was over, he came up to talk to Mr. Owens. It turns out, he had been one of the guys on the beach when we had the baptism! We had explained briefly why we were there at the time, and handed out some tracts, inviting them to come to church at our house. Well, he tracked us down today! He said he had been reading the tract all week, and he wanted to have what it was talking about! Mr. Owens talked with him for a long time, wanting to make sure he really understood it, and he became a Christian! It is amazing the way the Lord is blessing and allowing us to see so many people turn to him, especially in the midst of all the darkness that is here! And lately, we have been seeing a lot of darkness. The other day, we went to a craft market. One of the most prized objects for sale was a strange looking doll, with straw sticking out of its arms and just a blank oval for a face. They told us it was a "traditional welcome devil." why anyone would want a devil as a welcomer is beyond me, but they say it has nothing to do with religion, it's just tradition. but the more we learn, the more i feel like that is half of the problem here. There is such a tradition of animism here that people don't even realize what it is anymore! they just figure because it's tradition, it's ok. well, today we had to drive into town (actually, to pick up my computer, which had to have a new hard drive put in because my old one crashed, which is a whole nother story that i won't bother getting into right now). But on our way there, we passed a huge procession going on in the middle of the road. It was like a parade of men dressed in blue and white chekered clothes, beating sticks on the ground. There were also three of them in costume. One looked exactly like the "welcome devil," one resembled it, but his face was covered in seashells instead of cloth, and the other was wearing another red and white costume that also covered his face. We asked Moses, our driver, what was going on, and he said it was a celebration of one of the societies here. apparantly there are many different "societies" here, but no one can really tell us exactly what they are all about. But there was an article in the paper a few weeks ago about a girl who was mutilated as part of an initiation for one of the societies, and that none of the policemen would go to help her because the society threatened to put a curse on them. So it seems as if there is more to it than what everyone is letting on. Moses told us that they really don't have any purpose, but that it was nothing religious or bad, that it was just tradition, but then he also told us that he wouldn't have anything to do with any of the societies, which makes us think there might be something he isn't saying.

I forget who said it, but a quote we heard all the time in missions classes was, "the darker the night, the brighter the light." and praise the Lord how true that is! Surrounded by darkness and spiritual oppression, God's light is shining into the hearts of the people. Please continue to pray for myself and the other missionaries here. We need it now more than ever. Whenever the Lord's work starts to grow, especially in a place where satan has such a stronghold, you can expect the battle to rage, and we are already starting to see evidence of that. Please pray for the discipleship of the new believers, and for continued growth in the body.

"with all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for wich i am an ambassador.....that in proclaiming it i may speak boldly, as i ought to speak." ~Ephesians 6:18-20~