Day Nine

Today's blog comes from none other than me! 

Door to door ministry is always a mixed bag for me. If my perspective is not where it should be, I find the hours of walking to be monotonous, and the endless stream of people either accepting or rejecting what I have to say exhausts me. I remember the three months I spent in East Africa six years ago, and how much of that time I spent doing door to door ministry. Mostly, with this less than stellar perspective, I remember how much I never wanted to do it again. When my thoughts go in that direction, I start to think the same way in the here and now.

If my perspective is where it needs to be, then I love the time spent walking around, and while I am still exhausted at the end of the day, I am motivated to keep going by all of the good things I have seen happen. This is where I have been working to keep my perspective. The Lord has blessed that work by meeting me there and giving me joy for the work whether people will hear me or not.

When all of the groups went their separate ways yesterday to go door to door, I went with Pastor Jackson and two of the ladies from church down the path behind the guest house we are staying at. Most of the time, we ran into individual people, which I liked better because large groups tire and sometimes intimidate me. Many of the people we spoke with were receptive, although there were a few Muslims who wanted to hear nothing.

The last stop we made before returning for the day was to visit a family. They accepted the Lord, but the whole time I shared with them, the mother sat with one of her sons in her lap. He was completely lifeless,  almost like something else was in control of his body, and she was constantly adjusting him in her lap and wiping away drool as we spoke. We prayed for him, and invited her to bring the child to church this afternoon so he could be prayed for. My thought (as well as Pastor Jackson's) was that it had something to do with witchcraft. After praying for him, Pastor Julius told us that there is an illness that behaves in a similar way, so it may just have been that the boy was very sick.

There are so many stories of things I have seen, things Patty and Pastor Rich and Mary Jo and Doris have seen that we don't know how to condense them or how to put words to some of them. Through it all, though, our perspectives have been good and in the right place. I've seen each of us step out and do things we did not think we could, and God is doing so much through those things. Tomorrow is our last day going out in the community, and I look forward to seeing, hearing about, and sharing some of those stories on the blog.