Today, Thursday, Collin and Shannon and the team should have arrived on Maisome Island in Lake Victoria. Maisome Island is a mid sized strip of land. I believe it is about 10 miles long and 2 miles wide. It has no electricity or vehicles, no cell phones or regular phones. In fact, as I write this they should be sleeping their first night there in preparation for the next 4 days of ministry and teaching. With them on the island, now seems like a great time to share with you the story of Pastor James that I mentioned in my blog about 2 months ago.
I met Pastor James when I was in Tanzania two years ago but Rev. Debra met him prior to that as he had come to her pastoral conferences in previous years. While we were there in 2004, Rev. Debra invited him for an evening to share his testimony with us as he was a former witch doctor. We wanted to know more. As he does not speak English, we needed Pastor Richard to translate for us and he very willlingly did. Pastor James grew up in a family of witch doctors. His grandfather and father both trained him in thier ways and he lived as a witch doctor until he became saved. After becoming saved, he went to bible school and became a minister and has a large Christian congregation on the island now.
One story he shared was about a time he and several others were planning to steal a man's goat. This man was very rich there on the island and had a fenced in home with a gate. Because they knew he was rich the planned to steal his goat, figuring he didn't need it anyway. Pastor James and these two others "did their magic" as he said which involved the casting of spells and using diferent items to pray curses on the individual. They went to the home after dark and as the first of the group entered the gate a bright dot of light came and literally pushed the lead man backwards and spun very very fast over his face. The man inched through the gate on his back with this light spinning over his face. Once his feet had cleared the entrance, Pastor James saw the light zoom into place over the roof of the home after making the sign of the cross over it. Pastor James said they were very afraid but went to their home and did "stronger magic" before returning the next night. The next night Pastor James took the lead as it was known among the men that he had stronger powers than the others. As they approached, he said they looked for the light and it was still there over the house as it had been when they left the night before. As Pastor James entered through the gate the exact same thing happened to him as had happened to the man the night before. He too slunk out of there on his back. The next day, he and the two others went to a witch doctor that was the most knowledgable and powerful of all they knew. When he heard the story and they asked what they could do he asked which house this had happened at. He responded that the family living there were Christians and that none of their magic could possibly overcome the power of this man's God.
What I find puzzling is why, witch doctors, even though they often are aware of our God's higher authority, still remain in their ways. I guess it is similar to non Christians. So many of them are aware of God, they can see what He can do, but they don't want to be held accountable, to live by an authority higher than thier own.
In 2004, while in a remote village, we were witness to the salvation of an 80 something year old man. He had been a witch doctor all of his life and walked for 10 hours to come to hear what we had to share with him after his grandson, a minister, asked him to come.
Please be in prayer for the team as there is much witchcraft and scorcery on the island. Our God is bigger than all of that but we still need to stand as spiritual defenders of those reaching out to the lost that are being used by satan.
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