That is a little bit of a play on words, you see we spent today (Sunday) at Pastor Saturday’s church. Let me back up to say that yesterday we did get to go out to our property & check on our trees, and we got checked out in the process. A whole crowd gathers when the “muzungus” (non-Africans) come bouncing down the road in our vehicle! This morning I was reading in Zechariah 4:
6 So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.
7 “What are you, O mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it! God bless it!’ “
8 Then the word of the LORD came to me:
9 “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it. Then you will know that the LORD Almighty has sent me to you.
10 “Who despises the day of small things?”
It was a witness in my heart of what God would say about the Home of Innocence & Acres of Hope. I shared it with KaLia and she pointed out how it’s also like the trees we planted there. They are very small now, just beginning, but they are going to be very fruitful, in her words, “They are going to have huge fruit- the biggest fruit ever! God knows!” Can you, like me, hear a little girl prophesying over the lives that are going to be changed there & become so “fruitful”?

This morning we set out for Pastor Saturday’s church. It is not far from where we stay, but you must turn off the main road and travel over several narrow packed dirt “streets” (they would seem more like wide trails to most of us). This is the “land of a thousand hills” and so many of the roads travel up and down the hillsides. We bumped up and down along these roads, rutted and full of giant holes from the rains washing them out. We weren’t sure of exactly where the church was, but we had the windows down & heard it before we saw it. There was only one other car there besides ours (and no one else came in cars later either). The building was a simple rural style- cement floors, cement walls, corrugated tin roof attached to timber trusses. The light inside came from a window or two that had it’s wooden shutters open, and two open doors. There was also a single flourescent lamp at the front of the church (but it flickered on & off, almost to the beat of the keyboard being played). It was 9:30am, and even though Pastor Saturday had told us that service was at 10:30, there must have been a pre-service praise & prayer time already in progress when we got there. For an hour they sang and the song leader threw in some preaching too. It was all in the Kinyarwanda language, but when they began to cry out to God at once, I could feel the Spirit of God there & knew we were all one family. Then at 10:30 they had some more praise. They had a worship team of about 10 people up on the platform, and they began to really praise Him. They (along with the congregation) started clapping, then moved onto jumping, and then dancing. A couple little kids got up there to dance along, and we tried to coax Nate into joining, but he was not feeling comfortable doing that today- although he did a few dance steps at our seat. It was around 11:15 or 11:30 when Mike got up to preach. He shared with them some of his testimony, how he came to know Christ and then later to really live for Christ. He pointed out to them some basic but powerful truths from God’s word for them. We praise God because at the end of the preaching 12 persons came forward to pray to receive Christ. We are so grateful to God for drawing those persons out of darkness and into light. I am also grateful that my kids were fairly behaved (Nate had a few moments of not-so-behaved) during our 3 hours of church, much of it in another language. I didn’t even have to take Nate out this morning (he eventually fell asleep at noon).

Just wanted to bring you into our world this morning. Your thoughts and prayers toward us keep us together in our hearts, and we thank you for being partners with us in this work. God is so good to bring you alongside us- thank you!

God Bless You,
Lisa