Miracles in Africa

As we discussed yet another magazine article about an African country last evening, Shannon and I discussed the fact that miracles are common occurances in third world countries. Last evening's article was from the August issue of Charisma magazine. It told the story of a young toddler being raised from the dead through the prayers and praises of two young men in Zambia. Also, a young brain-damaged child with a disfigured face completely healed through prayer in Malawi. Shannon and I have also been reading together a book called Always Enough:God's Miraculous Provision Among the Poorest Children on Earth by Rolland and Heidi Baker. I would highly reccomend this book to you if you want to read about what God can do with orphans. The Baker's have a large ministry serving orphans in Mozambique. The book shares amazing stories of God miracles-multiplying soup in a pot to serve over 200 from a pot of soup made for 4, sick and disabled people healed, and young untrained orphans, through their innocent and trusting prayers, raising the dead! Why do these people experience the same miracles that many of us in America pray for all of the time? Sure, we occassionally see these type of things here but it is not as common. Shannon and I discussed a lot of things. Is it because we are too dependent on ourselves-that we, Americans in general, don't have the complete and total dependence on God that these people do? We don't know. I can tell you though that from what I saw of so many people in Africa and Shannon saw in Haiti, is that these people often have discovered that God is the only thing they can depend on because nothing else is for sure. We can't help but wonder if we all lived in greater need-of food, housing and security-if we wouldn't be seeing more miracles in our home country. Shannon and I are just praying for ourselves that we learn to be more dependent on God. We need to trust him more for our daily needs. Will you pray with us for a wave of that dependence to wipe across the entire nation of America?

I also want to share with you about a piece of artwork we recently discovered. It is a painting of around a dozen children of all diferent colors, sizes and ages, standing together. It shows just thier beautiful precious faces. Several look to be needing a change of clothing and a bath. The title of the artwork is "Today's Orphan's, Tomorrow's Leaders." Our goal, as well as the goal of our leadership, is to raise as many Tanzanian orphans as we can, to be healthy, educated and godly leaders one day. Please pray with us as we work toward that goal. By the way, for my 19th wedding anniversary, I received that piece of art as a gift from Shannon. It will be getting framed and will go with us to Tanzania. It will hang in our home as a constant reminder of why we are there.