CoD V1.3: Unit 2- Prayer and Spiritual Warfare
Wow, it's been a loooooong time since I've blogged! I've certainly gotten some flack for my lack of news, but being the huge procrastinator that I am, I just kept putting it off until the next weekend... the next weekend... the NEXT weekend... well, the elusive next weekend has finally arrived! And so here I am, once again deeply apologetic for how long it's been since you've heard from me! I'm sure that'll change - next weekend...
So where to begin?
Well, I guess I'll begin with the end of last year- November, December - the beginning of our unit on prayer and spiritual warfare. We learned so much! Now, I don't really want to bore anyone with a bunch of long-winded theology, so I'm going to try and post a link to my end-of-unit paper on Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, for anyone that's interested; and on here I'll speak about everything that's happened since then. Just as a little plug for TIMO though - I've become such a huge fan through this last unit (not that I wasn't before!). We've had to read many, many things (well, not really THAT many, the curriculum picks up a lot more now... still), but I appreciated tremendously the fact that TIMO (well, the TIMO powers that be really, TIMO not being a sapient entity) didn't just throw us a bunch of information, say: 'This is right, this is what you should believe', and leave it at that. They threw us books from all kinds of different angles and viewpoints on a particular subject (prayer, healing, spiritual warfare...); challenged and encouraged us to read them, pray over the issue, examine the issue Biblically, and let the Holy Spirit lead us to our own convictions. Now, these books were spread through the whole of the last four months, so we might have read a book and then had to wait a little while for the balancing view (like that hilarious time when I thought I should go around healing people by slapping them on the forehead and shouting: "Be healed!"), but we generally had the balancing viewpoint quick enough to prevent most of us from making big blunders (thankfully the sick people were too weak to beat me up... their family usually had to chase me away).
Seriously though, I don't think I've been so encouraged, challenged and stretched in so short a period ever before. Loved this unit!
So what did happen through our time of learning about Prayer and Spiritual Warfare? Well, for one thing we struggled a lot as a team. We struggled with sicknesses and diseases including stomach problems, rashes, allergies, fevers, malaria, etc. One of our little boys started waking up screaming in the middle of the night with night terrors, and nothing could really calm him down. This lasted for several weeks, but then we had a concerted time of prayer for him as a team, and after that it went away, and he hasn't had it since. We also struggled with team unity and love, but that also drove us to pray harder, and now we're solid again. We also struggled with homesickness and culture shock - usually the 6-month mark is the worst, and we hit that around Christmas time, which just aggravated it. But again, we were driven to pray all the harder; to seek God and lean on Him, to trust Him for His purposes in calling us here, and that has certainly helped.
Through these months however, we also started reaching out with God's word to our neighbours. For Christmas each unit invited a few friends for lunch. Jer and I invited our friends Moi, Ramadhani, Mr Kingo, Mr Lucas and Mr Kombo. We made them some pilau (spicy rice) and chicken, which they loved, and then read them Luke 2 from the Swahili Bible, speaking briefly about the real meaning of Christmas. Had a great time just hanging out, and some good conversations after. Most of the other units did something similar.
The Men of Christmas Lunch, L-R: Ramadhani, Mr Kombo, Mr Kingo, Yours truely, Mr Lucas, and Moi (seated)
You guys may also remember Dullah (Abdullah)? He was my homestay host through my second week here, in August '07. Well, Dullah is one of Tim's best friends and his kinda foreman through the building of our homes, and now for the wells that Tim's building for the village. Tim had been working here for an year and a half before we got here too, so he's had a chance to get to know Dullah well over the last couple of years.
Well, around mid/late Novemeber '07, Dullah came to Tim and said he'd had a strange dream. He was sleeping in his bed when he saw a bright light shining. The light was so bright that he woke up, ran out and threw up, and had a headache after from the brightness. His wife didn't see anything. This happened a couple of times. So Tim spoke to him about another man who had a vision of a blinding light, and told him a little bit about Saul and the circumstances surrounding that vision.
Well shortly thereafter, Dullah came to Tim and told him that he wanted to begin learning the Bible. He'd been observing Tim and Emily and the team, and had seen that we really seemed to believe what we claimed to believe. So Tim started storying the Bible with him - going through a series of narrations in Swahili that spoke about the stories of the Bible. In fact going through the redemptive arc of the Old Testament and it's promise of a coming Messiah, and examining the promise fulfilled in the New Testament. In late January/early February, by the time they'd finished the whole Bible in highly abbreviated form, Dullah said that he was done with Islam, and he was now trusting in Jesus for his salvation, and promptly went around the village saying that he was a believer. He is the first Zaramo man in our villages to put his faith in Christ. Now Dullah's brother is a teacher at one of the local mosques, so we had no idea what to expect (according to the Qu'ran, a man's family are bound to kill him if he leaves Islam), but we've had no trouble so far, by the grace of God.
Dullah
In Mid-February Dullah had a dream- he dreamed that a wrinkly old man, bent over with age and leaning on a walking stick came to him in his room as he slept. Dullah saw him and sat up. The old men leaned forward and said:
'So, I hear you've become a Christian now?'
'Yes, yes I have', Dullah said.
'Give me your hand young man' the old man asked, and grasped his hand in a firm shake. 'Don't you leave your new faith. Don't you leave your new faith!'
And then he was gone.
As a result of the change in Dullah's life, his wife Mama Laimu (they have a son named Laimu) and his best friend Ramadhani (same guy who was at my place for Christmas lunch) have decided to also start meeting with Tim and Emily for narrations. They should begin in early March, as soon as we're back.
One of Paulina's friends, Mama Halima (has a child named Halima), has also asked Paulina to start teaching her the Bible. Paulina's KiZaramo isn't quite good enough yet, so Mama Halima and Paulina are also joining Tim and Emily.
Meanwhile Duane's best friend Rashidi, whose father is the premier witchdoctor of Mzenga and once invited Duane over for a chicken sacrifice, has also come to Duane and asked him to teach him the Bible. Rashidi speaks some English and Duane was teaching him some more, so he and Duane have just begun English narrations.
God's Word moves forth in power, even in the midst of our great weakness. And we praise Him all the more for it (2 Cor 12:9-10).
So where to begin?
Well, I guess I'll begin with the end of last year- November, December - the beginning of our unit on prayer and spiritual warfare. We learned so much! Now, I don't really want to bore anyone with a bunch of long-winded theology, so I'm going to try and post a link to my end-of-unit paper on Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, for anyone that's interested; and on here I'll speak about everything that's happened since then. Just as a little plug for TIMO though - I've become such a huge fan through this last unit (not that I wasn't before!). We've had to read many, many things (well, not really THAT many, the curriculum picks up a lot more now... still), but I appreciated tremendously the fact that TIMO (well, the TIMO powers that be really, TIMO not being a sapient entity) didn't just throw us a bunch of information, say: 'This is right, this is what you should believe', and leave it at that. They threw us books from all kinds of different angles and viewpoints on a particular subject (prayer, healing, spiritual warfare...); challenged and encouraged us to read them, pray over the issue, examine the issue Biblically, and let the Holy Spirit lead us to our own convictions. Now, these books were spread through the whole of the last four months, so we might have read a book and then had to wait a little while for the balancing view (like that hilarious time when I thought I should go around healing people by slapping them on the forehead and shouting: "Be healed!"), but we generally had the balancing viewpoint quick enough to prevent most of us from making big blunders (thankfully the sick people were too weak to beat me up... their family usually had to chase me away).
Seriously though, I don't think I've been so encouraged, challenged and stretched in so short a period ever before. Loved this unit!
So what did happen through our time of learning about Prayer and Spiritual Warfare? Well, for one thing we struggled a lot as a team. We struggled with sicknesses and diseases including stomach problems, rashes, allergies, fevers, malaria, etc. One of our little boys started waking up screaming in the middle of the night with night terrors, and nothing could really calm him down. This lasted for several weeks, but then we had a concerted time of prayer for him as a team, and after that it went away, and he hasn't had it since. We also struggled with team unity and love, but that also drove us to pray harder, and now we're solid again. We also struggled with homesickness and culture shock - usually the 6-month mark is the worst, and we hit that around Christmas time, which just aggravated it. But again, we were driven to pray all the harder; to seek God and lean on Him, to trust Him for His purposes in calling us here, and that has certainly helped.
Through these months however, we also started reaching out with God's word to our neighbours. For Christmas each unit invited a few friends for lunch. Jer and I invited our friends Moi, Ramadhani, Mr Kingo, Mr Lucas and Mr Kombo. We made them some pilau (spicy rice) and chicken, which they loved, and then read them Luke 2 from the Swahili Bible, speaking briefly about the real meaning of Christmas. Had a great time just hanging out, and some good conversations after. Most of the other units did something similar.
The Men of Christmas Lunch, L-R: Ramadhani, Mr Kombo, Mr Kingo, Yours truely, Mr Lucas, and Moi (seated)You guys may also remember Dullah (Abdullah)? He was my homestay host through my second week here, in August '07. Well, Dullah is one of Tim's best friends and his kinda foreman through the building of our homes, and now for the wells that Tim's building for the village. Tim had been working here for an year and a half before we got here too, so he's had a chance to get to know Dullah well over the last couple of years.
Well, around mid/late Novemeber '07, Dullah came to Tim and said he'd had a strange dream. He was sleeping in his bed when he saw a bright light shining. The light was so bright that he woke up, ran out and threw up, and had a headache after from the brightness. His wife didn't see anything. This happened a couple of times. So Tim spoke to him about another man who had a vision of a blinding light, and told him a little bit about Saul and the circumstances surrounding that vision.
Well shortly thereafter, Dullah came to Tim and told him that he wanted to begin learning the Bible. He'd been observing Tim and Emily and the team, and had seen that we really seemed to believe what we claimed to believe. So Tim started storying the Bible with him - going through a series of narrations in Swahili that spoke about the stories of the Bible. In fact going through the redemptive arc of the Old Testament and it's promise of a coming Messiah, and examining the promise fulfilled in the New Testament. In late January/early February, by the time they'd finished the whole Bible in highly abbreviated form, Dullah said that he was done with Islam, and he was now trusting in Jesus for his salvation, and promptly went around the village saying that he was a believer. He is the first Zaramo man in our villages to put his faith in Christ. Now Dullah's brother is a teacher at one of the local mosques, so we had no idea what to expect (according to the Qu'ran, a man's family are bound to kill him if he leaves Islam), but we've had no trouble so far, by the grace of God.
DullahIn Mid-February Dullah had a dream- he dreamed that a wrinkly old man, bent over with age and leaning on a walking stick came to him in his room as he slept. Dullah saw him and sat up. The old men leaned forward and said:
'So, I hear you've become a Christian now?'
'Yes, yes I have', Dullah said.
'Give me your hand young man' the old man asked, and grasped his hand in a firm shake. 'Don't you leave your new faith. Don't you leave your new faith!'
And then he was gone.
As a result of the change in Dullah's life, his wife Mama Laimu (they have a son named Laimu) and his best friend Ramadhani (same guy who was at my place for Christmas lunch) have decided to also start meeting with Tim and Emily for narrations. They should begin in early March, as soon as we're back.
One of Paulina's friends, Mama Halima (has a child named Halima), has also asked Paulina to start teaching her the Bible. Paulina's KiZaramo isn't quite good enough yet, so Mama Halima and Paulina are also joining Tim and Emily.
Meanwhile Duane's best friend Rashidi, whose father is the premier witchdoctor of Mzenga and once invited Duane over for a chicken sacrifice, has also come to Duane and asked him to teach him the Bible. Rashidi speaks some English and Duane was teaching him some more, so he and Duane have just begun English narrations.
God's Word moves forth in power, even in the midst of our great weakness. And we praise Him all the more for it (2 Cor 12:9-10).
posted by dan at 3/08/2008 01:47:00 a.m.
3 Comments:
Hey baba, where's the link?
yeah where's the paper you wrote dude?
Dan,
I just got back from two weeks in Tanzania trying to find all who are trying to minister to the Zaramo. I am part of a non-profit that wants to support the ministry, training, and spiritual development of the Zaramo. Please email me at pastorpaul@peopleplace.org. We did want to talk to Tim Tanner while we were there, I wonder if that is the Tim you are referring to in your blog. We visited with Steve Lyon while there if you know him.
God bless,
Paul Arnold
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