Thursday, January 13, 2011

Preaching in the Congo

Thursday evening in the Congo:
I'm posting this from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in south, central Africa. I've come here for 2 weeks with a team to minister to the people and pastors here. I wanted to give you a short update of what I'm experiencing here.

We traveled today from Kinshasa (capital city in the southwest corner) to Gbadolite (northwest corner), where the CEUM (Covenant Church of Congo) conference is being held. Today we learned that they expect 3,000 people to attend the conference! Please pray now for pastors and wives who will travel, some for 3 days to get here.

The team is well -- the joy of the Lord is sustaining us, praise be to God. While our lodging is quite nice (compared to Congolese standards), we will be without running water and a steady nutritious diet for the majority of the remainder of our time here. (Tonight we had a delicious meal of rice, goat stew, and pon-doo -a spinach-like staple.) Please pray for God to sustain us supernaturally. Pray also for openness to the Holy Spirit's guidance for our roles here. We have prepared well, but sense that God has other plans.

These people are amazingly beautiful and the work of PCC is abundant. Today we saw a clinic that the Lamplighters Sunday Bible Study class raised funds to renovate 2 years ago. I was in the termite-infested, dilapidated old clinic previously. The new one is twice as big and beautiful! I watched for an hour as many very sick people were carried in for healing. Thank you for your part in giving through PCC! More to come as I have internet access.