June 12, 2005 - Appetizers!
Hello everyone,
Today we started at 6:30 am with preparing for our devotion time at 7 am -- and breakfast at 7:45. We also had to pack up and move out of our rooms in the Grace House. Grace Christian Church uses these rooms for their Sunday School classes. At 9 am we went to worship service with Grace Christian Church, Pastor Brian Biedebach's church. There service was very similar to ours in America with praise songs -- "Shout to the Lord", "Amazing Grace", "Here I Am to Worship", "He Is Exalted", etc. This was a very s
pecial time of praise and worship for the team.
Pastor Brian then spoke on 1 Corinthians 16 and our personal role and responsibility for functioning in the body of Christ, submitting to Christ and to each other. Pastor Brian is a very gifted communicator and loves the Lord. After this service we had tea and coffee with the church group and then proceeded down to the Zulu service at 11 am. This is the church plant and congregation where we are helping to construct the pastors house and also some work on the orphanage building.
Currently this group of believers meet under a tin roofed shelter. Mercy Bible Church is about five miles away from Grace Christian Church and is next door to a Zulu settlement of over 50,000 people. Pastor Vuyo (Zulu pastor) spoke in English today for our benefit and had a Tulani translate into Zulu after each sentence for his people. He spoke on Romans 1 and clearly communicated the gospel and our great need for Christ's salvation through grace. There were approximately 35-40 Zulu attending and quite probably, many did not the Lord.
After the service we had lunch, a true African lunch, prepared by the Zulu church. Our menu was beef, chicken, Pap (corn millet), and salsa. For an appetizer we had Mopani Worms (caterpillars) and tripe (cow intestines and stomach). I know that many of you are probably wishing that you could enjoy the appetizers with us?! There were quite a few left-overs. It seems like everyone was waiting for the main course. I think I'll stick with mushrooms and onion rings for my next appetizer.
After lunch we played a game of soccer with the Zulu church. They are definitely better at soccer than we Americans. However, it was a lot of fun for everyone. Thankfully we divided our teams up with approximately 1/2 Zulu and 1/2 Americans on each team. 90% of the goals were scored by the Zulu's. In fact, Pastor Vuyo is very good! After the soccer game we returned to Grace House and are resting and preparing for the evening service at 6 pm.
Thank you everyone for your prayers and support for our team. We especially need prayer for our brick layers to arrive on Monday morning and for strength during the week. We have 5 1/2 days of construction ahead of us.
Thanks for your prayers.
God's Grace to you all,
The Skunk Poem by Pastor Vuyo (6.7 MB)
Greetings from Pastor Jeff (10 MB)
Also view Traci's June 12 Letter
& Jeff's June 12 Pastor's Journal
Also view Traci's June 12 Letter
