I wanted to take a minute and share a story from church this morning, but first I have to do a little explaining so please keep reading.
Over the last few months I've been kind of (or REALLY) burnt out on asking for help. We constantly have someone at our gate needing help, someone in our village needing help, and something going on in our home which falls outside of our budget. I often feel like a broken record when I'm asking for more and more money and it is even harder for me when I feel like it falls on deaf ears. We have so many needs, it is overwhelming and quite defeating to me personally most of the time. But, I keep being encouraged to reach out, ask for help, share the needs, allow others to be part of the blessing here. I'm not going to lie, some days, actually most days it is incredibly hard for me. Often times I don't even share the needs, just take care of what we can and hope the money is there in the end. Not the best way to handle it, I know, but I can only post asking for money so many times before many people just start skipping my posts all together.
For the last few months we've had a fundraiser up for a sound system for our church...in one way I felt like this was a "silly" ask, but since we had to make the church bigger it was actually a need for us. I've also never been to an American church without a sound system so it didn't seem too extravagant, but I always dread posting and asking for more money. We do have access to a sound system we can rent weekly, but that always comes with its own set of challenges and really we just needed our own sound system. So we created a fundraiser for a sound system and waited. The fundraiser actually never was completed, but we had to move forward with purchasing a sound system as renting one was just not working the way we wanted. 3 weeks ago we (and by we, I mean Karson) installed the sound system and we've been working out some issues since then, but it is working and the back of the church can hear Jeff again.
Today as Jeff was preaching through John 16:1-6 I saw an older man pushing his bike down the road with some items tied to the back. Our roads are pretty wet since it is rainy season so I thought it was just too tough for him to ride it down the road. As he got closer to the church he just stopped. I thought he was taking a break until he rested his head on the things that he was carrying on the back of his bike. Now I'm wondering if he is sick or something, but he is still standing so maybe not. Several minutes go by and I asked Karson to have someone check on him to make sure he was okay, as he was still just standing there and not speaking to those passing by.
Upon being checked on we learned that he was just enjoying the Word. Now I'm not claiming that he was saved by a sound system, but I am saying that he was able to hear the Word today because we had a sound system. I don't know why he didn't just come to church, I don't know his story at all. But this situation reminded me that God take take things and do something with them, use them for His good! Wether that is "only" $5, broken people, speakers, the guy running the sound system...whatever it is He can use it to draw others to him.
Thank you for continuing to support the work here. I know the neediness is overwhelming. I know you are probably thinking "More money again?", me too. You are probably even thinking "How much more can possibly be done?", again, me too. But God continues to lead in these directions and we continue to say yes, even when we don't necessarily want to because we feel like this is what He has for us. Thank you again and again for helping others hear the Gospel here.
