I am sitting here drinking a Novida Pineapple Schweppes beverage that keeps threatening to overflow with all of the carbonation and it is delicious.

 

We have just finished hospital ministry, praying with people and just talking to them while they are cooped up in the unsanitary impersonal space that is an East African hospital.  The saddest thing here is that most of the illnesses that are exhibited in the hospital are preventable.  Unless people are told the simplest of ideas, then they do not know them.  Children are burned because they are not kept away from hot pots or spilt oil.  People contract HIV/AIDS because they have not been told how it is transmitted or how it will affect them.  Malaria kills thousands because people do not realize that the only insect responsible for the disease is out at night from dawn to dusk and bites them inside of their homes.  Education stops death.   

 

Yesterday Kathleen, Kyle, and I crossed two rivers on foot and then walked up the side of a mountain to teach about the environment at a primary school.  What was this much needed message?  Plant a tree!  In America, everything becomes so complicated; do this, do that.  In Kenya, you fix the environment by planting trees, restoring nature.  Amen.  I shared part of Leviticus 25 while we were at the school because there God calls for the redemption of the land, which is really as He claims, His land.

 

2 Corinthians 3:17 says that where the Spirit of God is there is freedom.  In Colossians, Paul questions the church on this matter.   Why are you subjecting yourself to the rules of this world if you have been freed from them when Jesus nailed those very requirements to the cross?  Galatians 5 says that Christ set us free for the sake of freedom, and to use that freedom for love.  I want to be free, and I want these people to be free.  Sometimes I feel as trapped here as I do at home by tradition.  I do not want to stand up and close my eyes every time I pray.  Yes, on rare occasion, I admit that I even laugh during prayer.  No I will not agitate someone for not being perfect.  Correcting people when they already know that what they have done is wrong, does nothing.  Sometimes you just need to dance.  Sometimes I need to be alone with God and no one else.  If I do not go to church every single Sunday, God is not going to strike me down because He is the author of freedom and He wants us to thrive in it.  God is not about religion; religion is about God.

 

Also noteworthy: Our whole team currently has a clean bill of health after that little spat with typhoid.

 

Proverbs 24:10  If your faith falters in times of trouble, then there was not much to you to begin with.

 

Thanks to the Chisum family for bringing us little pieces of home.  And thanks to everyone at home who allowed me to be away.