A Week in the Village

We just got back from a week in Nyawa, a Tonga village. It was about a 6 hour drive from Livingstone. It was a really great week. The people were expecting us and when we pulled up to the village, the whole village was there yelling and singing and cheering. they sang us songs and gave us a very warm greeting. We set up our campsite and slept in tents the entire week.

God really opened a great door for us the first night. One of the headmen Solomon, said that one of the boys in the village was sick. Jacob (The area manager for Overland) and Tom (Our Zambian translator), went to pray for the boy. He was laying in bed with a very rough heart beat, babbling random things. They prayed for him and after a few minutes, he sat up and told everyone he was fine. A lot of the old women thought he was lying at first.

We spent most of our days serving the people by helping them harvest maze and ground nuts in the fields. One day, a few of us helped an old widow by building her a table for her pots ... cutting down trees with axes, stripping rope from the tree bark ... my hands look like they got caught in a meatgrinder ... but they toughened up throughout the week.

We held two soccer games on separate days and had large meals of Nshema, Rape, Goat, and chicken for the entire village afterwards (We killed and prepared our own chickens and goats). We had the intention of going door to door doing evangelism, but the people were out in the fields all day. That's why we spent most of our time working in the fields along side them. We held several large meetings and gathered the village for preaching. There was already an established church there, but it was very legalistic and didn't stick much to the Gospel. A number of people made decisions to follow Christ or to rededicate their lives to Christ.

At each of these meetings we laid hands on people and prayed for them. I've never seen so many straight up miracles in my life. We prayed for dozens of people and they were all healed instantly. This really opened up a lot of doors because the rest of the week people were being brought to us for God to heal them. I really felt like an apostle in the Bible. Just last night, a group of people brought us a deaf boy and the Lord healed him instantly. There were a few demon possessed people as well, but I stayed away from that, cause I really didn't know what to do .. I just watched. The Lord really did cool things there.

The people bid us farewell this morning with gifts ... we got about 11 pumpkins, bags and bags of nuts, and they tried to give us a goat, but we didn't have room on the truck. We got home this evening and I had a shower after an entire week without one. I really appreciate toilets, too!

There are so many stories, but I can't write about all of them now. The expedition was great, and as AMT continues, the students will get more and more responsibilities on the expeditions. The final expedition, we will lead on our own without any Overland staff members. I'll write more later! Leza Mubotu (God is good!)

~Phillip.

ps. so what's everybody doing in Louisville?