Sierra Leone Day 3

I woke up this morning pretty early, still working out my sermon in my head. We left at about 9am to go to Pastor Andrew's church. Most of the team went to his church (about 12 of us), and 5 or 6 divided up among 2 other churches. The building was like a large brick warehouse with a corrugated metal roof. Stepping into the building was like stepping into a sauna! I've never sweat so much in all my life! All of the guys were dressed in long sleeved shirts and ties, and the girls all wore dresses with sleeves that went below the knees.
I guess we must have been gluttons for punishment, because when worship started we all began to jump and dance around in the back with all of the children. About half of the people in the building were young children. Ryan held Heidi, pastor Andrew's daughter, and when he set her down there was a perfect imprint of her body in sweat on his shirt, if that gives you any idea of the temperature.

Ryan got up and introduced our team and gave a short intro leading up to my sermon topic, which was vulnerability. I basically shared the journey of vulnerability that God has taken me on this last year. I told them that we have no intimacy without vulnerability and vulnerability is all about risk. Shame is the fear of not being worthy of connection, and it's what most often keeps us from intimacy.
Vulnerability, I learned, is not just about sharing your faults and struggles, it's doing something with no guarantee of success, investing in relationships that might not work, sharing dreams, passions, ideas and fears, and even just admitting when you aren't doing okay. I also shared how God had been teaching me what it means to be vulnerable with Him. It seems like a strange concept, since He knows everything about me, but again, it all comes down to risk. Am I willing to risk possibly being disappointed by God? Am I willing to risk praying for healing? Am I willing to risk stepping out when the Holy Spirit prompts me? Am I willing to risk looking foolish for his glory? God has shown me that I have as much intimacy with Him as I'm willing to risk. I urged them to make a covenant with God to stay soft in His hands and to commit to remaining vulnerable even when it feels like our risks sometimes leave us disappointed.
Unfortunately, they didn't plan on having an interpreter, and asked for a volunteer that had any kind of high school education to help translate. Because Krio is composed of a lot of English, I could tell that he wasn't always translating well. For example, every time I said "risk", he said "rest". I also felt like he may have censored a few things. In the end, though, I trust in the Holy Spirit's ability to translate, and 1 Cor 1:21 says, "...for God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe", which makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing.
Afterwards, we lined up and asked the Holy Spirit to give us words of knowledge about things He wanted to heal among the congregation. I felt like God wanted to heal stomach problems, so when it was my turn, I called out the word and several people lined up in front of me to get prayer for stomach issues. Without a translator it was difficult to understand the exact problems, but two women I prayed for said the pain left when I prayed. The third person I prayed for was a man who had heart problems. I was fortunate enough to have a translator at that point, and so when I prayed for him, he started taking deep breaths and his face lit up. He told me through the translator that his breathing had improved quite a bit. I'm guessing that he must have had congestive heart failure or something of that nature. Other people saw back pain healed, and one lady's leg even grew out!
After church we went to a place called the Country Lodge, which was a former President's home that was converted into a resort. We were served a 7 or 8 course Lebanese meal of humus, lamb skewers, meat pies and other interesting and delicious foods. We were all allowed to order dessert as well, even though dessert was about 8 American dollars each! We really suffered for the Gospel on this trip...

We got to see a few monkeys from the restaurant balcony, but I didn't get any pictures as they were fairly shy. Andre, Ann-Lis and Anthea's brother, was at lunch with us and he generously paid for the entire meal, which must have been quite a lot of money, with about 24 people. We relaxed at the restaurant for the rest of the afternoon until evening. At one point Honey, who has a natural gift for engaging people in conversation and sharing the love of Jesus, struck up a conversation with a woman. After a while she learned that the woman's husband is a middle eastern ambassador to Sierra Leone! What's more, this woman graciously invited our team to have breakfast with her and her family during our stay! Unfortunately, it never ended up working out because of scheduling issues, but we still got to bless her and her family.

From left to right: Pastor Lake and his wife Hannah, Andre, his son Dominic, and Cynthia

We got back to the hotel to discover they had dinner ready for us even though we were all stuffed. The guys and some of the girls ate a second time, and I had a fruit cocktail and went to bed thoroughly satisfied. Food and pleasant weather are two of my love languages , and we enjoyed both in excess today (yes I made those love languages up, but they should add them to the list, don't you think?).