We recently had a mission team from Michigan here with us that was the last mission team of the year. As I’ve mentioned before it was a great year for our missions department. We hosted more teams and brought over more people than any other year and when we have more mission teams that means more people in the villages of Qwa-Qwa, Intabazwe, and Kalinioni to share the gospel. There were so many stories from teams this year about God doing amazing things, but this was my favorite…

On our second day in Qwa Qwa, my group saw a woman sitting on her front step, eyes covered with her hands. We introduced ourselves and found out her name was Maria. Her eyes were horribly bloodshot and had a slight cloudiness over the pupils. She said she had been in pain for over two years. And then she pointed to her feet and told us she couldn’t wear shoes because her feet had been painfully swollen for a long time. We asked if we could pray and she said, “If you pray for me, I will be healed.”

We were all instantly encouraged by her incredible faith, and we prayed for her. When we finished praying, she told us the pain was gone! We were so excited and told her that we would keep praying, because by the end of the week, she was going to see us coming, clearly.

Sure enough, we went back the next day, and her eyes were no longer cloudy, and there was still no pain. And then the next day, God had healed the pressure, and the blood vessels had relaxed and her eyes were no longer bloodshot. She thanked us repeatedly and told us she thanked God for bringing us to Africa. We left with our spirits high and our hearts encouraged by God’s healing grace. He is not just alive and moving, He is alive and moving in the small corners of the world, like Maria’s house in Qwa Qwa. We thank God that Maria can see perfectly and pain-free again.

Oh, and she can wear shoes again, too.

I’ll be home for Christmas this year! I’m coming back in December and then staying a couple extra months for some chill time as well as trying to built up my support base. I don’t think I’ve been back for Christmas in about 2 years, so I’m really excited about that. I’m going to be in Jacksonville and Orlando until the end of February, so there is going to be plenty of time to catch up with everybody. I know there is a lot of people I haven’t connected with for some time, so I’m really looking forward to that.

I haven’t been to a Christian concert since college, so it was great when Kelly and I got to take the interns to Passion back in August. I say concert, but that’s not really what it is. It’s more of a conference. It’s an entire day long that has a few seessions of teaching, but also lots of worship.

One of the things that I never really get to do out here in Africa is enjoy corporate worship. There’s nothing like enjoying worship in a group of 5,000 people, all with a passion for God. And who better to lead worship than Chris Tomlin! It was the first time I’ve heard him live and he didn’t dissapoint. Another band that was there was FEE. I’ve never heard of them before, but they turned out to be great! I’m pretty sure they’re going to have a huge following in the coming years.

Along with the worship Lioue Giglio did a few sessions of teaching. I teach a class to the interns where we use a lot of his videos so I’ve seen his teachings a lot, but it was great to see him live. He just has a way of teaching the word of God, that makes me wonder if he’s teaching out of the same bible I have. It was powerful.