The time here in Mumbwa goes fast. Yesterday morning we joined in a prayer meeting for the sick and afflicted souls. There came people from more than 150 km. away to be prayed for. Among the sick was also the intellectual obsessions with significant behavior that is beyond the ordinary human logic. Here in Africa, there is often a simple form of diagnosis, and a lot of complaints that people have; is rellated to the balance of mind and the various pressure around them. The practice of prayer is probably something different from home, but you should not take the cultural differences and judge them based on what’s happening back home in Norway. Jesus also said to his disciples, that certain things could not be driven out without fasting and prayer.
The meeting in the evening was filled with praise, and the audience was quite full, even though it was a midweek day. People here are working throughout the day, so they have not the oportunity to gather before the evening. Life in the cities here are quite similar to home. If you come into the countryside, then the practice is at once different. There one takes the time to gather when the opportunity is there. Everything else can wait until later.
When we traveled from Choma to Mumbwa, we stopped outside Lusaka. Bro. Mawino had arranged to talk to a nephew. He stood there on the road waiting for us when we passed on the highway. Yesterday Bro. Mawino told that the same man had died during the night. I know that people die all the time, but sometimes these things come a little closer to you. It was quite a young man, and no sign could tell that there was something wrong with him. One is reminded that life is fragile, even though sometimes we may act like we have hundreds of years before us.
When we travel around as we do, we notice that there are large natural needs. Some of our friends know that they do not have much of what they normally could have had as basic things in life, and sometimes you can read their expression. Then one would whish one had substantial resources at their disposal. But even so it is often like this in our own lives. Man has needs. You work with what is most nesesarry, and then get to the other things as we are able to work it out. Through this we learn to appreciate what we have. It’s easier for a hundred souls to fill one persons human need, than for one soul to fill a hundred people’s needs. May the Lord bless all of you on through the day.
All is well with us.
