AND HE HEALED THEM.

The very last picture is of a kid named Julius. I met him at Sister Teddy's school. It is a boarding school (if you can call it that) run by a former nun. She used to only take in deaf, blind and crippled. Now she also takes in former LRA members who have escaped. She has about 120 kids, half are LRA and half are handicapped. We spent 4 days at Sister Teddys... the very first day I was drawn to Julius. He didn't socialize with the other kids or smile. He just sat in the corner with a sad look on his face. Julius is 14 and when he was 12 he had to witness his dad (who was going mentally crazy from AIDS) chop up his little brother with a machette and then turn on him. Someone intervened before Julius was killed. The brain damage left him deaf, mute and paralized on his entire left side. I knew from the moment I met him that the Lord would heal him: body and spirit.

The last day a few people in our group decided to lay hands on Julius and pray for him. We spent more than an hour just calling out to the Lord. I was literally sweating I was in such a spiritual battle for this child. I could feel the battle surging and must admit I was about to give up when.... I felt something. My hand was on his back and I began to feel the vibration in his voice. That's when one of our team who was on the front side of him cried out that he was talking, a few moments later we communicated with him and discovered he was hearing.... we knew there was only one thing left to do. Keep battling and wait for the Lord to heal his paralysis. So we began calling out to the Lord again and a few minutes later his body started to shake.... he started straightening his hand on his left side. I've never seen anyone healed in front of my eyes... I've heard of it, but never seen it. I had no idea what to do. So I just sat and stared as he marveled in his new healing. This teenager had been mute, deaf, and paralized for 2 years and now the Lord had intervened. HALLELUJAH!

This picture was taken after his healing...look at that smile. As we left the school compound for good we looked up to see Julius standing at the gate waving bye... he had the biggest smile and just as he was shutting the gate we saw him jog over and kick a soccer ball with the other boys. OH PRAISE HIM...

"Then the news about Him spread throughout Syria. So they brought to Him all those who were afflicted, those suffering from various diseases and intense pains, the demon-possessed, the epileptics, and the paralytics. AND HE HEALED THEM"
-Matthew 4:24

Hola from Africa...except they don't say Hola!

Greetings from Kampala Uganda. We arrived here early this morning. It has now been 6 airplane meals and 3 days without a shower since I stepped foot on American soil. Kampala is in the capital and I just paid a dollar to use a computer in a little print shop for 30 minutes. We whitewater raft the Nile tomorrow and then it's off to the village of Kitgum for the rest of my 2 week stay.

One of the more funny things about my trip so far is my frequent slippage of the Spanish language. For some reason, when I'm around people that don't speak English I switch straight to Espanol mode and start spitting out "holas" and "como estas's". Nevermind that they might speak French, Portugese or Acholi. I have slipped so many times and feel like such a dork.

My 30 minutes is almost up. But I just wanted to let everyone know I'm here safe and please pray for my trip. Pray for everyone on our team and that God would open our eyes and ears to his purpose here. Blessings.

When you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. - Hebrews 4:7

Last night we took some of the Rock Island kids who are 15 and older to a pre-screening of a new movie called, "Miss HIV" It was very interesting. Much of the movie was about the AIDS epidemic in Uganda. This caught my attention, considering I fly out for Uganda in less than 24 hours. After the movie we took all the kids to dinner. It's always special when we can eat a meal together.

After we got back to Rock Island I ended up giving one of our youth girls a ride home. We'll call her "Ava". Ava came into our office on Wedesday night in tears over several issues. One was family issues at home, one was being picked on by other girls (it's a jealousy thing, Ava is very beautiful) and the last was that she is desperately seeking the Lord and all her friends are dragging her down. She is trying to find a way to get away from all the negative influences around her. After giving her some female advice, Ron and I laid hands on her and prayed for her. One of the things I prayed for her was that she would come to really KNOW God, not just about Him.

Okay, back to the ride home. So last night (Thursday) I'm taking her home and she asks if she tells me something weird, will I think she's crazy. I tell her of course not, everyone thinks I'm crazy anyways. So she goes on to tell me that the night before (Wednesday) she woke up in the middle of the night from a dream where God had told her to read Psalms 27:1. The interesting thing is that because of her lack of biblical background she didn't even know how to say Psalms, it was just spelled out in her dream so she spelled it for me and asked how to say it. She said she got out of bed, found her bible and read the scripture and then prayed. It's really hard to explain to kids about the voice of God but that was definitely it with "Ava". I just encouraged her not to ever feel weird and to listen when she thinks the Lord is speaking to her. I am excited about this knew breakthrough with "Ava" and I pray that she will have more intimate experiences with the Lord. I also pray for these experiences for all our kids. I don't want the bible to just be this book that has big words and confuses them, I want it to be ALIVE.


"The LORD is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?" Psalm 27:1

Empty Streets

Rock Island doesn't normally meet on Wednesday nights, but last night we had some of our friends we met at Youth for Christ camp over to hang out for pizza. We had a great time.

This is just a quick group picture we took last night of some of our kids. Some nights, when we have lots of kids, I get kind of overwhelmed. But just think... every kid in this picture voluntarily spent their night at a Christian youth center. NW 10th, 9th and 8th streets were empty because all the kids were in Rock Island. That's a good feeling.

Update

It occured to me that none of the Rock Island staff have blogged in a very long time. Ron is on family vacation right now in Florida and Luke..well we all know he doesn't blog much. I leave for Africa a week from tomorrow. The day after I get back from Africa I close on my new house (July 31), so that is my excuse. I've been making an attempt at being organized for those two big events.

Here are a few updates:

- Last week some of the youth kids informed me that we need to take more field trips. With camps and stuff like that we only scheduled one to White Water in August. I told them to make me a list of stuff they wanted to do. Some items listed in the list of about 50 things were build a pool in the back of Rock Island and go to the lake. Ha. I then had to explain to them why it would be unwise to take 20 kids who can't swim to the lake and how if we put a pool behind Rock Island there wouldnt' be a basketball court. They quickly erased those things. They had some good ideas like camping, fishing, putt putt and Redhawks game. We are going to make an attempt to fulfill some of those wishes in the few weeks of summer left.

- We are starting a new girls bible study this week at Rock Island. I'm leading an in-depth study of what it means to be a Proverbs 31 woman. I've been reading Proverbs 31 every night for about a month as a refresher. It's good for me...helps me to know areas I personally need to work on.

- This coming Wednesday we are going to do lice treatments on all the elementary kids. There is an outbreak and I'm pretty sure at least 20-30 of them have major infestation. I'm surprised I haven't gotten them in my 5 years working at the mission.

- We started language tutoring this month. It's just the beginning of this program. We are using the Let's Start Talking format which uses the book of Luke as a textbook. We are starting with only 3 students and 3 tutors. I'm sure it will grow alot in the months to come. Pray for Olga, Socorro and Ana as they attempt to learn English for the first time.

Blessings to everyone!