Sunday, July 11, 2010
this part of the blog post is always formatted differently...
Let me start off by informing you that after having a nice American meal last Sunday (hot dogs, burgers, fries) we were finally able to catch/kill a rat that had been plaguing one of the girls' rooms at our guest house. They can now sleep without worrying if they are going to wake up with a rat nibbling at their hair (which happened to one girl the night before).
Monday through Thursday we walked to UNZA during the afternoons to either share the gospel with random students, or meet up with people we had shared with previously. One of the days I went sharing with one of the staff guys, Jonathan, and we were able to meet a student named Chanda who I met up with later in the week. He told us all about how he had been growing in his faith since he had been at UNZA because of his involvement with a christian fellowship on campus. We planned to meet on Thursday at 14:00 and when I went to his room he had left me a note saying "Kevin and company, I was here at 14:00. just left for a bit, will be back at 14:20. PLEASE wait. Chanda" I was really encouraged that he cared enough about our meeting to leave me a note making sure we still met. Many times members of the team will be stood up with appointments they make to meet with students.
Jonathan also is my discipler for this project, meaning he is an older guy who will spend time with me one on one to talk about God, life, etc. He's pretty awesome and is only a few years out of college so he can relate to a lot of the things I am going through, and has been pretty wise with the advice he has given me. He's also hilarious and a ton of fun to be around. Just another way that God has blessed me this trip.
Two days in a row this week I spent my entire day on campus in a conversation with Jehovah's Witness (a different one each day) about what we believe to be true. The first day we talked about what happens after people die. JW's believe that there are 144,000 who will be able to be in the presence of God after they die, and then the rest who have believed will remain on earth in a world cleansed from unrighteousness. Those who have not believed will just cease to exist (they do not believe in Hell). The second day we had a really good/long conversation with another JW about the trinity. As I think i have mentioned before, they do not believe that Jesus is fully God, or that the Holy Spirit is fully God. Part of this might be because the bible they use has certain differences (i.e. John 1:1 says that the Word was a God instead of the Word was God). We talked about these discrepancies and pointed out that JW's had predicted that Jesus would return the 70's and that never happened, and other errors with their doctrine that are quite easily disproved. Nonetheless he did not budge on his position, and he refused to believe that the trinity existed. While the conversation was seemingly disappointing, it really grew my faith in that I was more sure of what I believed and more sure that it was the truth.
Speaking of the trinity...I did some research (in Jesse's copy of "Systematic Theology" by Wayne Grudem) about where we get the whole idea of the trinity, as it is never explicitly mentioned in the bible. It is really really interesting but basically the scripture indicates three truths. 1. God is three persons (father, son, holy spirit) 2. Each person is fully God 3. There is one God. The term trinity is just a way to express it. The tricky part is explaining this to someone who doesn't believe in it, especially because there are no perfect analogies for it. There are a ton of imperfect analogies for it (water, egg, person who is father, teacher, son) but these are in fact all perfect analogies for heresies, which is something I never knew. The most common heresy is Modalism which is the belief that there is one person of God, but 3 different manifestations which lines up with the 3 analogies I mentioned above. After learning this I grew to love God even more than before; it is pretty humbling to just faithfully believe that God is who he says he is and that He is more complex than we can logically express, but extremely beautiful.
Friday we had a free day so a few of us met up with a girl from UNZA who took us to a market where I purchased a fake AC Milan jersey, and a pretty legit (looking) Barcelona jersey. It was quite the adventure!
Saturday we were very blessed to go to the orphanage and spend the afternoon with them. We were also joined by some people we met on the plane ride from London to Nairobi who were traveling to South Africa for the world cup. They stopped in Lusaka for the weekend and wanted to see the orphanage. One of them was the son of the Nigerian ambassador to Zambia, and he plans on connecting his mom with the orphanage so she can help them with her connections ( she used to run an orphanage). God sure works in crazy ways! The afternoon was a great, half of us played games outside with half of the kids, while the other half was inside putting on skits from bible stories and other activities for the others. I was outside doing games like duck duck goose, red light green light, etc. I also got to give away roughly 30 beanie babies that my mom so generously sent with me, which the kids LOVED. thanks mom!
Last night we met up with our friends from the plane at a restaurant to watch the 3rd place game. They told us that yesterday was the best day of their summer because of their time at the orphanage, and this was after they just saw some world cup games! We had a sweet time watching the game with them, and even got in some good conversations about faith and other stuff like that. I can only say with confidence that 1 of them was a believer, although most of them probably go to church, and one was agnostic, but searching. Hopefully spending the day with us and seeing the orphanage will be used by God to work in all of their hearts.
In other news, I saw Toy Story 3 for $3...heard that lebron is now in miami (NOOOOOO!) and I am pulling for the Netherlands tonight. God has still been doing great things in the lives of people we meet with, and in our own hearts. I've definitely started to love God more and more throughout the entire project, as well as grow in my compassion for the people who are far worse off than myself, and those who do not know Jesus. I've also been growing in that I can't always explain everything about God logically, and that I have to believe it on faith. But that shouldn't be a surprise because I am saved by grace through faith.
also sorry for any typos, i don't proofread
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