Oct 2
Dear friends and partners in God’s service,
I greet you all in the name of Jesus our Lord. I hope this finds you all doing well.Grace and I still thank you for your warmest welcome to your country. You all were good spoilers to us and we still have those great memories of your good country and the things we did together. So thank you for being such great friends. Ian and Tash thank you for being our first link to your good country, church and people. And thank you for still being such good friends. We have not written much this time;
but that is because we are also recovering from that great journey of ours. So know as you are recovering from running with us, we are also recovering from running with you. Again that journey has never left us the same. It has made very nice prints on our hearts. Now we have a lot of good things we have learnt from you guys and we shall always treasure them, but in the same time there is a lot we appreciate from our side that we did not appreciate before. So every where there is both good and bad. That is what we have learnt. There is a lot to throw and a lot to retain and probably share with other. I am just being wordy, but my main reason of writing today was to share with you about the stories got today.
One is about one of the church enemies before, and today he was again repenting before so many that he has been wrong, that the church is a good thing. Some of you have heard the story of the chairman LC2 of Mooni. If you did not know, this man’s wife got saved a while ago, and he sent her away with a beating and she left everything including her children. The devil is punishing the man so much. Today one of his yesterday one of his children died, and he has lost several in his family lately, his life has been sickly and a few other problems like the children fighting with his wives as well as his wives fighting each other and him. The members of the church attended the burial and assisted with every work and gave some financial support. He was overwhelmed with the love the church people gave him, he took one our repenting for every bad act he did to the church and to his wife before. He has not confessed Jesus as Lord yet, but he told people that he is considering it. we still don’t know God’s timing but we know he is on the way, and already spreading the good news of Jesus. Keep praying for him. His name if Issa, which is translated that Jesus in Arabic.
The next story is about a woman I met on the way bleeding. On the way down from the burial of the LC2’s child I got a woman crying and seeming very helpless. I asked why she was bleeding. All other women and people gathered told me that it was her fault. That she knew that her husband is Muslim but she choose to become Christian in his absence. (this is not in any of our churches). I still insisted that she tells me herself, which she did. She told me that her husband is a soldier and had left her in the house for over two years. That one time her young child became very ill, she did not have food in the house and no money on her for treatment, but when she took her child to the hospital she met some Christians who prayed for her child as the Doctors were not helping because she did not have the money (we pay for every treatment we get, so when people don’t have money they suffer). And when those Christians prayed, her child got healed immediately. From that day she confessed Jesus as Lord and saviour. When her husband came back she did not fear to tell him that she chose to take Jesus. He did not wait but started beating her and forcing her out of the home. She does not have family as her parents died a while ago in the battle, so where she is are the only relatives she had as she explained( I did not know the woman before).
I drove her to police right away, and the police acted there and then. They have got the man and have asked him to put her into hospital. Now she is on treatment and the man is in jail as we talk.
Other women in the neighbourhood who were shouting that she is wrong changed their shout immediately, by the time he was taken they were saying that take him, he is bad, let other men know that we have a voice, and now we have learnt where to go when we are treated badly. I mean I laughed.
For your information this is not new. Women in my community have been told that they have no choice and no voice, it is the men who can make every choices, theirs is to obey what men tell them.
They even don’t know that when you are beaten you can go to police and police shall help. So now some know where to run when battered.
Many people live in fear of being rejected if the change to Christianity. Some confess Jesus but they remain silent, so it becomes like the cheep living in the same pen with wolves. So it is the sheep to put on the skin of the wolf. Pray that there will be freedom of the women to choose the faith they want.
That is for today my friends. Know the struggle still continue, and you can pass the storied to others for prayers.
God bless you all.
Vinnie
