souledgeboys

AFRICA 2011

2011-03-30T04:54:00.000-07:00

UPDATES TO APPEAR FOR SE 2011 AFRICA on this blog!

Laurence's blog for part 1 of SE 2011

2011-03-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

Laurence, our Assistant leader has his own blog at http://www.laurenceabroad.blogspot.com/ this year. This documents his journey as Fitness trainer and discipler in the Canada section of the course amidst dealing heroically with a broken collarbone!

Here is one of Laurence's posts

" Routine

So Week Two has been very fun too, though definately different. The guys have had to settle into their routines, which they have done so with great aplomb. This routine includes;

· Early up 730

· Meditation time

· Breakfast

· Morning session

· 2.5 Mile Run

· Gym

· Lunch

· Afternoon Session

· House tidy/Ranch Duties

· Dinner

· Youth Group/Kids Club/Chillout

So although great fun, hard work and long days. The guys have taken to the course really well and seem keen to learn. It's been a week of a lot of adaptation and they have done well!

So on tuesday we had our first cell group at the house, which is a youth scheme Soul Edge runs in Correlation with the local church. Tom and Josh led the worship and did very well. On Wednesday we had Kids Club at the church which was a very bizarre experience! Very hyper kids, must be all the snow! Thursday and Friday were normal teaching days.

We have eat very well as usual, this week we have had a mix of home made burgers, home made chilli, home made pizza, lentil and chicken stir fry and pasta amongst many others. We have also made our way through many classic films such as Rocky, Jurassic Park as well as the more modern films like The Prestige, Wall Street II and Iron Man 2, have also worked them very hard in the Gym and I think they are now starting to see the benefits of it, minus the blisters!

In terms of my health I hope I am doing slightly better, the collarbone is still very painful but I am moving it better, though I think thats to do with the new medicine (oramorph) as much as anything! Lets keep hoping and praying for a quick recovery! On Saturday the boys went snowboarding while I watched on from the cafe and worked on some talks of mine (I gave my first one on Monday and it went well I think) Then on Sunday we were fortunate enough to tag along Cayote hunting. Joel just missed so we were unfortunate to come back empty handed!

This week we have Gun Orientation to expect which will be fun, then a hunt at the weekend.

SE boys Africa April Update

2010-04-13T20:04:00.001-07:00

The tires of our 4x4s pounded along the dirt track, dust billowed into the air and encircled the rugged desert mountains all around us. I stepped on the gas as we sped around corners, trying to soak it all in. We were headed out to spend 4 days in West Potok (a district of Kenya), where we were to build a school in a remote village which had been steeped in witchcraft for many years. All of us were filled with excitement and anticipation as we bounced along the road.

Our trip really started the day before as we loaded the vehicles with food, water, exta fuel, and camping gear. We would be roughing it; cooking and sleeping outside. Our departure day started with alarm clocks going off at 5 am and4x4s rumbling out of Kitale at heading out at 7:00am. For most of the morning, the trip was relatively uneventfully as we wound our way through the mountains on a little dirt road. However, nearing noon, as I was driving behind one of the pickups, I noticed something really didn't look right... all the trucks ground to a halt. Upon inspection, we found that the back axle of our Toyota had slipped on the leaf springs and moved in such a way so that it was totally out of alignment. Tools, jacks and spare parts were unloaded from all the vehicles and we set to work.

At first, it really didn't look promising but eventually we started to make headway. Dirt covered and dripping in sweat, we finally got the bolts loose so we could move the axle. We discovered that we were missing a leaf spring (a slightly crucial piece of the vehicle!), and that is why the axle had moved. Because of this missing piece, it was impossible to be able to tighten up the leaf spring unit in order to prevent the entire back axle from slipping. So, with true ingenuity, we found a panga (a large African knife) under the seat of one of the truck and decided that if used in combination with a wrench (or "spanner" in British vernacular), it would give us enough thread to tighten things up. ( I might add that the Canadian and the South African proved most useful when it came to this little job). With this truly creative fix, we were finally back on the road... though we were now aware that we were lacking a leaf spring and thus had to baby the repair job along.

We arrived as the sun was high in the sky and burning hot!! Brett (our South African friend who'd organized the trip,) had been invited by the chief to speak at the local church. We knew that it would be different and expected it to be primitive, but it still came with a bit of a shock. The church was meeting under a roof made up of a few branches tied together to create some shade and the pews were simply sticks held up by other sticks. Despite the fact that the setting was unlike any church we'd seen before, we could all feel the presence of God in that place. We started to worship with them and everyone was really excited. In that place, we prayed for our brothers and sisters to be filled with the Holy Spirit and it was cool to see the Spirit fall on them and fill them. We also got to see a mama and few others get healed. We couldn't help but grin when one of the mamas got healed and started dancing and smiling. It was wonderful to see. There was something about the entire time we spent at the church which felt very significant and it was amazing to see their raw and beautiful faith.

Two hours later, r we were almost at our destination just as the sun was setting. The last 12 km into the village was hard going. River beds cut through the desert "roads" were deep and had created big ruts which trucks with bigger tires did fine with, but our van got stuck in one of these river beds. Being a guy, I couldn't help but feel an odd sense of excitement as I watch the van sink in the sand. Somehow seeing it stuck made it more real to me that we were going into an unreached land... that we were living an adventure. I couldn't help but smile, knowing that this was going to be an exciting trip. The men piled out of the van and after some digging had it pushed out. We didn't get far and the truck with the missing leaf spring broke down again. Because it was getting late and the sun was going down, we decided to take the two other vehicles and go and set up camp and leave a team to repair the truck and follow after.

Camp went up quickly and soon there was a crowd of people gather to see all the mzungus setting up their tents. It was a big deal for us to be there... and we could feel the excitement in the air. After camp was set up, I drove back to check on the repair crew. By the time I got there, they had it almost back together. After measuring and guessing at where the axle should sit, we tightened things up and headed back to camp with the sun setting behind us and lighting up a breathtaking landscape.

We sat and ate dinner in the dark and talked about the climb the next day. The chief had invited us to climb up on a sacred mountain. The plan was to get up very early and climb the mountain in the morning, pray from the top, and break curses off the land. After a planning session, we watched the village elders kill a goat in honor of the team being there. A man saw us there and then ran and got a goat saying.."I never thought i would see white people here!" (Though Brett our South African friend had been there with teams before, the large group of mzungus seemed to create such a stir.)

Even after getting up very early, we still didn't manage to leave until later. When we finally hit the trail at 7am, the sun already felt very warm and continued to increase as we climbed through the morning. The ascent was tough but prayer at the top was really powerful, and it was also the fulfillment of a dream that the chief had had after a 40 day fast. We could feel the significance of what we were doing as we stood at the top of the mountain praying with the chief for his people, his land, and breaking off the power of the witchcraft and demonic sacrifice that had been done in that place.

When we got off the mountain, the team was wiped out as it had been a long hike, but we decided to start some of the construction. The guys dug deep and began working on chipping out the latrine until dusk. Most of them had blistered hands and were really tired, but spirits were high because the team kept on encouraging each other. That same day, we had a number of people come to us wanting medical aid. We did everything we could for them, but had limited supplies and medication. Some of them who we treated had severe ear infections. They reported to us the next day that they were better, which is almost impossible but after observing them, I found that the infections were totally gone! A number of men came forward for medication because they had injured their backs. I told them to get prayer first and 5 out of the 7 got healed. We knew that they were actually healed because they kept on smiling and jumping around. After that, the entire team was pretty excited. Totally exhausted, we went to bed.

Again, the next morning, we got up early at 5 am to start a day of construction. If I'm honest, it was a struggle to pull myself out of bed but after a strong cup of coffee, the day looked a little better. The sun was soon up and we began the all-day fight against the heat. First we started with digging the holes for the posts which were approximately 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep. Because the ground was so hard, rocky and dry, this task alone was slightly epic with some of the holes taking most of the day. We had a team of three guys working on it steadily all day with bars on these holes, and another team working on the latrine much of the day. By around 5 o'clock, our "poop hole" boys were down six feet through a lot of hard ground and rock and all the holes were finally dug. At this point, we shifted the entire team into putting the structure up. We stood the frames up before dinner and got ready to pour cement. We had to pump water by hand from a well at the bottom of the village and fill a tank with buckets for making the cement. After dinner, we were finally ready to pour the cement. It took until 10:30 at night to finish, but we managed to get all the cement poured so we could put the roof on in the morning.

The next day was another early start as we had to pack down camp and finish the structure. Pack down went well and we had the vehicle packed and ready for a 11:30 departure however finishing the roof proved to take longer. We had a team of guys work on the roof while another team did a small medical treatment station and prayer. It was hot and the people kept on coming. After an hour i couldn't tell how many people we had treated or how many were left to be treated cause the line stayed the same size. At the end we started to work rapidly to try and finish off. One of the first little girls we treated was a girl that had a seed stuck deep in her ear. Her parents had tried to get it out but had only pushed it deeper. Even with people holding her down and using the light of the sun we couldn't get it out which we discouraging but we pressed on and teated everyone we could those we couldn't treat we prayed for. Charlie was a hero and keep praying full of energy and passion despite the heat and being physically spent from the trip.

With some relief we rolled out of the village and headed home. We continued on with the theme of adventure as we were late leaving and were aware of a danger of being on the road at dark and also still had to nurse a damaged vehicle. Finally we made it to "civilization" in Makutaung and to be honest, never had cold Cokes and chapattis tasted to good. Sun burnt, blistered, smelly and tired we rolled into Kitale nearing dusk. Despite some physical aches and pains, we definitely fell into our beds that night with a strong sense of having been Jesus' hands and feet. And really, there cannot be anything better.

Thank you so much for all your support and prayers.

Soul Edge Boys Team 2010.

Blog No. 2 for 2010

2010-03-04T17:43:00.000-08:00

Right, after a few weeks of procrastination I have finally summoned the courage to tackle the epic task that is the soul edge blog. A lot’s been happening during our time here and during week 4 and 5 where we headed up to Kananaskis country and attended the Canon conference in Lethbridge are no exception.

I’ll begin with week 4, K Country:

Josh and Joel woke us up early on tuesday morning having packed out the trailer the night before with thermarests, sleeping bags and enough carbs to last a week hiking and camping. We loaded into Misty the van and began the day of travelling to get to The Blue Bronna wilderness camp. The journey was pretty fun, though with 14 guys and Kiri it’s very cramped. Once again having both Rich and Tim bring their macs was a huge blessing as we let the hours pass by watching films and numerous episodes of The Office. The obligatory stop off at Starbucks also makes the experience more enjoyable. I owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Maddock for the introduction of Caramel Apple Spice (Venti obviously...)!

After a good 6 hours of driving we arrived in Calgary to get lunch at subway and buy knives... the two being mutually exclusive. This was a source of great enthusiasm for all the guys, through there were a few moments in the dar afterwards where brandishing knives probably wasn’t the best idea...Sam also got a cool one, more of a piratey looking knife with a wood and golden handle! Very cool...

We continued on into Calgary for a bit to go to MEC, which I now hold as my favourite shop of all time. It has EVERYTHING to do with anything outdoors! You can actually see the Erb’s eyes light up when they walk through the door...

We left MEC loaded up with snowshoes and for some of us, new clothes (It’s very easy to spend money there!). From MEC we set out on the final leg of our journey...one that should have taken us-according to josh and joel- 30 minutes. As a group we have since realised that the twins work on a different time scale to regular humans, but they are ginger I suppose. The half hour turned into 2 hours-ish, though we did see a moose so it kind of made up for it.

We finally arrived at the camp around 7ish and got some food (expertly cooked by Josh and Kiri) and had a short night hike up one of the nearby mountains, had an amazing prayer time then headed back down again, some of us via a more rocky route which made scrambling a bit more fun! After some hot chocolate we went to bed in our cabins pretty quick amidst some classic banter, the kind that can only result when 12 guys share a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. The first proper day in K Country began by waking after a not so good sleep, mainly due to scruff absolutely stinking the place out and deciding to lick me while I slept at 5 in the morning. The sunrise was incredible, so colourful and made better by the fact we were so isolated. Once we had all been fed we set out for a short drive to where we’d be hiking for the day. We started by climbing a mountain in our snow shoes. Snow shoes are fun for about the first 10 seconds then you realise, that useful as they may be, they’re heavy and cumbersome which isn’t great when trying to navigate through the thick alpine. From every angle the landscape looked incredible, it really was such a blessing to be able to enjoy God’s creation with our own two legs and hike up the mountains and snowshoe the valleys. We stopped for food after a few hours of hiking. Once again pasta, being the souledge staple diet, gave us enough energy to continue on after being scared witless by Seb chucking a banger in the fire. As we continued on up our final steep slope everyone was feeling the aches a bit but the effort was well worth it on reaching the peak. Our resident photography expert James took some sweet photos and we hung round for a bit before scrambling back down to hike back to the camp. This gave Jeffs, Steve and I the perfect opportunity to reenact some epic Lord of the Rings moments, if somewhat poorly. We also had a load of fun sliding down the mountains on the way back. Once again we had great food that night and managed to get to sleep pretty quickly. That is, until we were awoken by Jordan’s Gollum impression screaming ‘My Precious’ in a sleeping Harry’s face, quickly followed by Harry’s questionable punch reflex and Jordan moaning about being hit in the face...

The next day was the day we would set out to go snow camping. We drove out for an hour into the middle of nowhere and met Steve, one of the camp experts. He knew pretty much everything from which way to face the car in the wind so it starts in the morning to Pine Beetles and their effect on the alpine forest. It was really cool to listen to his knowledge. We hiked for ages along a pretty straight path drawing closer and closer the the mountains and further into nowhere. It was a nice easy hike and we arrived at the camp sight with enough energy to spend a few hours building our camp. We had a lot of fun building it though chopping enough wood to feed the fire through the night seemed to take forever. Once built we all wrapped up warm, had a fatty meal of pasta and sausage and got into our sleeping bags. It was about -14 so was very cold. It was such a surreal experience for all of us, we could hear cyotes up in the mountains howling which was awesome. Unfortunately sleep was made difficult by the cold but perhaps more by the two brainless dogs we had among us. Jasper and Scruffs between them managed to wake everyone through out the night. Jasper was relentless in playing fetch with Seb whilst he tried to sleep. Once you throw a stick to Jasper he WILL bring it back and didn’t stop poking Seb all night until he relented and threw, which further encouraged him. Scruffs on the other hand was just stupid and funny as it was to observe Jeff’s getting a faceful, didn’t seem to understand that people don’t like having his butt on their face whilst they slept. I would also like to make a formal apology for waking James Hunter on behalf of the group for quoting Zoolander and informing those who were unaware of the existance of Land Octopus at 3 in the morning, thus waking and annoying him in an admittedly funny way. Sorry James. We woke to a breakfast of muffins and poptarts and then cleared up the camp for a quick snowshoe hike. Again the views were incredible. We hiked back to the van which took a few hours, which in the surprisingly hot sun was an effort. It’s hard to get too tired though when the scenery is so cool. Joel pointed out some cougar tracks, sadly we didn’t see any actual cougars though. We got back to the camp later that day and after a much drawn out game of ‘who can blow the half full bottle (or half empty...whatever) over’ we went to bed and did our best to provoke Steve before going to bed through stealing his mattress and the like.

When we woke on Saturday morning we packed our bags, said goodbye and set off on the long journey home again via the usual stops to MEC, Subway and Starbucks, once again made bearable with liberal volumes of The Office.

Church was great on sunday morning, Rich Erb spoke on retaining our ‘saltiness’ as christians which was great. After lunch we prepared ourselves for an afternoon of rivalry and banter watching the Superbowl final at Shelly and Daryl’s. I rooted for the New Orleans Saints with a few others while Josh, Joel, Steve and Chuckles headed up the attack on the Indiana Colts front, with full body paint. Too bad they lost... 31:17... For every touch down the penalty was 50 press ups which added some competition.

Week 5 went along as usual for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We had some good talks on leadership and spiritual warfare and hit the ranch. Standard.

Wednesday morning saw us loading the van again (this time with out the trailer) full of people and clothes to last til sunday. It was VERY cramped, and Misty’s heating system was the worst yet, frying anyone at the front and freezing anyone in the back two rows! After a 4 hour trip to Lethbridge where we were helping and attending at the Canon Of Truth conference, we entered the massive River of Life church, where most of us wouldn’t leave for a few days. We stayed in the youth room upstairs and spent a lot of time playing throwing an american football around after discovering a new found enjoyment in it since watching the Superbowl.

The conference started on Friday though we went to a ‘Rooted’ meeting on the wednesday night which is River of Life’s young adult meeting. There was some brilliant teaching on God’s actual call for us sometimes conflicting with what we think is God’s call on our lives. We used thursday just to help set up a few things for the conference and did bit of prayer in one of Lethbridge’s parks and had fun walking on the frozen lake. Ryan invited us to his house to prayer for the conference with some members of rooted and the worship team in the evening. We prayed for ages and God moved really powerfully, everyone managed to get some great prophesies and really encourage what was going on which was really sweet. Friday evening was the first Canon meeting and Ryan spoke very passionately about the word and having faith in God. The rest of the conference was brilliant, some great teaching mixed with some good laughs made it a lot of fun and I felt God really move and shift some false perceptions about Him that I hadn’t even realised were there. Some of the guys went back on the friday night to play in the band for the Crossroads Church Valentines Sweethearts night. It seemed very empty without them but was very funny to hear how Steve had managed to clear the church with an innocent use of a word in Wheatus’s ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ which apparently doesn’t go down well in Canada ha. Jordan also managed to change a hilariously inappropriate George Straight country song into something less dodge and sing that which went down well. They came back to the conference on saturday morning to catch the last couple of meetings so didn’t miss a huge amount. Saturday night was mostly taken up with helping clear up the church again for the sunday morning meeting though it wasn’t too tiring and we went out for 1.30am doughnuts from Tim Horton’s (also competing with MEC for best shop). After another night sleeping on the floor we went to the main morning meeting and then got back in the van for the 4 hour trip back home.

We were really blessed again by Rich and Polly when we returned as they had prepared an amazing dinner for us when we returned. After travelling for a few hours it was so nice to get some good food back in us before we went to bed and started the week’s routine again!

Basically this longwinded account only generalises a lot of what we’ve been doing and what God’s been doing in us. Overall though, God has worked so powerfully through all of us, building our strength and relationship with him as well as with each other through the last few weeks. And Josh and Joel have continued to be incredible for encouraging and building us up as leaders, and as always getting on with serving our demands without even batting an eyelid! Thanks guys.

First month JAN 2010 - Update 1

2010-02-04T13:35:00.001-08:00

Hey all, thanks for reading this if you have got this far, hopefully it will be exciting enough to read all of it! I am going to give you an insight into our first 3 weeks of Soul Edge 2010- it even sounds exciting!

Firstly we finally arrived two days late! We were stuck at Gatwick for almost 2 days as our flight was delayed by 30 hours!! Then after arriving in Calgary we had a 7 hour mini bus journey - so a long few days.

So the house we are staying in is a 5 bedroom house with 14 guys in it-that's not forgetting Kiri, she just doesn't sleep here!!! The house is constantly filled with laughter and we eat so much food every meal time!

We have started our daily routines on weekdays whereby we get up at 7.30 and have 2 hours to get up, have breakfast and spend the time in prayer and starting on our daily readings (which is about 8 chapters a day in the Bible and then a chapter of another book). At 9.30 we worship and have a morning study session- so far these have been the best times for me- and we just wait on the Lord ... It’s awesome!

After this we go for a 2.5 mile run and then hit the gym for a bit. After a bit of spare time and after having lunch we have another study session. These are really amazing encounters with the Holy Spirit and sort of have the theme of a housegroup...

After this we split into two groups and either stay behind at the house and cook and clean, but mostly we bake tasty cakes! Or we head down to the family ranch and do chores and work down there, in reality we just ride the quad bike round and chop trees down with chain saws! They have around 100 cattle, 7 horses, 4 dogs and 2 cats, so there’s plenty to do!!

Saturdays have been our adventure days. We started off with a hike of about 8 miles not far from here, which was knackering as many of us were still jet lagged! The second and fourth Saturdays have been snowboarding trips and the other Saturday consisted of shooting rifles and shotguns in the morning and then being dropped off into the Saskatchewan wilderness and then having to hike, hunt, build a shelter , a fire and make tea!

On Sundays we have been enjoying going to the Church which Josh and Joel's parents are pastors of, it's called Crossroads and has a great balance between being open to the Holy Spirit and a good solid bible teaching, so every Sunday we learn lots. The soul edge guys have also been getting involved with the music as we have 4 guitarists, 3 drummers, 2 bassists and a pianist! We have also enjoyed the wonderful hospitality and cooking of Mama and Papa Erb at the ranch!

We then had an Erb family friend called Hugh come to visit the church and spent a day with us at Soul Edge. He taught us all about prophetic ministry and really opened my eyes to how important and awesome a gift it is. Since then many of us have been gifted with prophetic pictures, words, visions and dreams-so exciting! We have also had days of fasting and prayer, which have been awesome to give days to the Lord and we have all truly been blessed through these times.

On the ranch we have also been put to more use that just mucking around on the quad!! We have been feeding the grain to the cows, moving cows, and chopping wood! We have also been horse riding and taken the sledging on the back of the quad to new extremes with troughs and inner tubes as well as building quinces in the snow, so not too much hard work! We have also just had a very cold week, too cold to run on one day as it was below -30! Every day we are also privileged to Jael and Jesse baking us amazing cakes...(they are Josh and Joel's younger sisters)
In the house we have been up to many antics: including alpha dog fighting, whereby teams gang up on others and pin people down til they submit, although this has now been stopped as it got too competitive! We have also continued our weekly quiz nights where the forfeits have been laying in the snow in boxers for 1 minute, running round the outside of the house in boxers and wearing a cape whilst snowboarding for the day! One night we also had a power cut and played an interesting game of sardines, as there are not many places you can hide 12 people...

We have also had 2 birthdays: Steve's 21st and Rich's 19th. Steve got baptised in a hot tub to celebrate which was awesome and his testimony was inspiring whilst Rich had the day on the slopes! We have also had a pudding evening with some couples from the church and are starting to get to know a few Herbertians, who are all so friendly and welcoming. We are also starting to get involved with the community in various youth groups, which is great to get to know a bunch of kids who are just good fun and just have the opportunity to share the love of Jesus with them. The fact that we are English and in a small town of only 500ish, we sort of stand out and is a good place to start conversation...

Personally i have enjoyed challenging myself in the prophetic and relying on God's word spoken into me. It's so cool to be a vessel of what God wants to say to people and myself and such an encouragement. I have enjoyed spending more time in solitude with the Lord and he has gifted me a song, which was an answer to prayer. we spent a morning of confession as well, which took hours but was one of the greatest feelings of freedom from sin many of us had experienced, and bought us closer together as a group of disciples. We are just excited to keep exploring the word of God and growing deeper in our faith and stronger in our relationships with Jesus and with one another.

Finally as I write, we are preparing for a week of snow hiking and camping in K Country about 7 hours from here. It getting late and we are up in less than 7 hours so i sign out...
God Bless you and thanks for reading and well done for getting to the end :)
Ollie.Jeffs.Olz.FM.Jetso (or wateva u fancy calling me)

WELCOME new 2010 boys

2010-01-08T15:46:00.001-08:00

The ADVENTURE HAS BEGUN!
5 months of seeking the lord
EPIC!

This Blog will be updated peroidically during this year's course.

Saskatchewan winter??? COLD!

back in kitale -last week or so

2009-06-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

The rest of the conference went really well and we left there with many smiles on our faces the pastors kept asking again and again if we were coming back. We traveled back to Pastor Macho’s house for the last few days of our stay in Uganda.

Truly it is Africans who will change Africa.We finished our time in Uganda more determined to stand with all of the friends we had made and struggle with them in all that they were facing. The drive back to Kitale was uneventful but it felt odd in a way because we were a few men down as we had parted with Josh, Andy and Josh Langlois who were traveling on to the DRC.Kitale is a beautiful place and the whole team was really happy to be back at our base. We were coming to the end of our time in Kitale but we had one final place where we wanted to take ground for the Kingdom.

Kepsongui slum. We spent an evening in prayer seeking the Lord in what he wanted to do. It seemed very overwhelming but we felt we really needed to go. As far as we knew there was very few people doing anything about the situation in the slum. It was a place that was being avoided; even by the Christians. In prayer I got the i felt the Holy Spirit tell me to look at Nehemiah 2. The bit of scripture that he pointed out to me was the portion that talks about Nehemiah going out and inspecting the walls. So what I felt the Lord was saying through this was that the first step was to go and inspect slum. So we did. We had no idea what the Lord has in-store for us the next day.The next day we arrived at the slum after and hr walk. The slum is located on the old dump of Kitale. Typical of a lot of slums it was built on garbage with garbage. As we approached the slum we saw a group of kids playing in a field they all started shouting at us in unison “how are you! how are you! how are you!” That is how they always greeted us. Because we didn’t have any other plan we went down onto the field to play football with the kids. We had brought some small footballs with us so we brought them out and started to play with the kids. They couldn’t get enough of us and wanted to hold a hand on anything that we were waring. As we were there a man came out and started to talk with Adam. Adam called me over to talk to him. I had no idea how big the implications of what would take place over the next few hrs would be for me and for others.Sam was a teacher who had been a street boy who was found by Jesus. After Jesus found him, his life was turned upside down and he was able to go to school and finish form 4. He then started to volunteer as a teacher at the school where we found him. I sat down with him and Pastor Jon and we started to hear about what they were doing in the slum. The 150 kids that we had started to play with were on brake from school. They were kids that were getting looked after by Pastor Jon, Sam, Sarah and many other amazing volunteers. All of these guys simple had a burden for the kids and started to reach out to them. The literally feed these kids on prayer. None of them had anything but a burden to care for them. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing and what we were seeing. They couldn’t believe that we had come on our own with out an African. They told us how they had just been praying that God would send them friends, I think they were more shocked then we were how quickly God had answered their prayers. We all recognized that the Holy Spirit had directed it all. After that day we went back to work with Sam and the team as often as we could. We found ourselves falling in love with these kids most of them orphans. In that time I found I had such a deep love for Sam and Pastor Jon I have only meet a few guys in Africa like them.

Throughout the last two week in Africa we found ourselves down in the slum many more times holding the beautiful but very dirty hands of amazing kids in Kepsongui. We call the part of the slum that we work in Little Lodwar because most of the people there are from Turkana. When we discovered this we were floored even further because we know we have been called to the people of Turkana. We held the kids, treated cuts and infections and then prayed for the kids who were sick. On final visit to the slum there were a number of kids that had fevers so we held them close and prayed for them and rebuked the fevers. Almost instantly the fevers left them. This happened to all three of the kids we prayed for. I won’t easily forget that day. God love was so evident in that place as we held kids in our arms and loved them. I spent about an hour holding a little girl who was around 3 but was about the size of a 1 and a half year old. It seems to me that God pours out his love in the most broken places. As I sat there holding this little girl on a field covered in human waste I knew that Gods Kingdom was coming in this place. His love is stronger then all of the brokenness in the world. In the most lost, in the most broken, in the darkest, in the loneliest, in the places that feel like hell that is where the church shines brightest and know one can ignore it.So we left that place with the faces of those kids forever printed on our heart and yet we know they are not alone. For even in that place our brother and sister’s our pouring out their lives as living sacrifices and satan and all of his demons can’t stand against the power of that. As we walked away from the slum there was no way to shake it, we went there to touch them but there hands reached out and touched us. We have been changed. How could we not be changed. The broken and the poor had touched our hands how could we forget them. Forever ruined. Perhaps we need more people to be ruined.

Uganda and the last days in Kitale (Part I)

2009-06-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

I had mixed feelings as we prepared to leave for Uganda. The need in Uganda is huge and during our trip in our previous year it had all been a bit overwhelming. In the 30 years Uganda has struggled through may hardships. Those who have suffered the most have been women and children. My close friend Pastor Macho still vividly remembers having to run into the bush to escape gun fire because of all the the fighting. Along with recent wars HIV/AIDS has caused a huge amount of devastation in Uganda. It was first discovered in Uganda and since then thousands of kids have lost there parents, and have often been left to raise there younger brothers and sisters.The drive to the boarder was not very exciting. Typically as always we were crammed into a vehicle with no room at all. In Canada we would call it a 7 passenger van but in Africa it is a 14 passenger van. I tried to sleep on the road but failed. I wasn’t busting with energy because the night before I had only managed to get a few hrs of sleep.

Uganda requires us to purchase visa’s so we had to find “the place” to buy our visa’s. After we finished at the border we pressed on to Mbale where we would meet up with Pastor Macho and then head on to the place where we would be hosting the conference. Pastor Macho had a wonderful lunch prepared for us and after downing some awesome banana's and chapatis we headed to Sirouko. Again I tried to get some sleep but failed. We arrived in Sirouko to find that pastors were already waiting for us to start the conference. The original plan was to wait until the next day but they were so anxious for us to start teaching them we decided to start a day early. We were expecting around 60 pastors and leaders at the conference but it turned out to be a lot more. Our heart was to really try and build fellowship into the conference as a key aspect so we planned on feeding all the pastors as we feel sharing meals together is a brilliant way to build fellowship. In the end we had over 150 people for three days. We didn’t have the budget for so many people but we decided to stretch and feed as many as we could. There was a group of wonderful ladies who cooked for everyone. They cooked huge pots of rice and beans. It was more then a small miracle that everyone was feed. I couldn’t believe it but even on the last day there was enough food for everyone. There is always enough! Some of the pastors couldn’t afford accommodation so we also payed for 30 pastors to stay in town, we didn’t have a budget for that either but it seemed that the little we had was enough for everything. I am still not sure how it all worked out. Jesus you are awesome!

The first morning of the conference I still felt a bit rough I was only able to get a few hrs of sleep and was forced to be absolutely dependent on the Lord for his help. The whole week was an incredible testimony of God grace. He helped us in so many ways and the Holy Spirit moved in so many ways. Whenever we gave space He would be moving powerfully upon hearts in the room. As I write this I start to feel a lot of emotion come up as I realize how much the Holy Spirit helped us. We really couldn’t have done it with out him. He was faithful to minister to every heart and to use us to encourage as we taught about being an Acts church. We are desperate to be authentic christians who live and follow the commands of Jesus, who know what it is to be a church, to love and care for each other. We really started to see this happen as we fellowshiped with these pastors. One night as I sat and talking with a pastor I was filled with such a love for him as I spoke together with him and shared my heart for prayer with him. He listened to me with so much respect and love. I knew that the Holy Spirit was in all of it.On the second day of the conference I got to witness something special. Pastor Macho came to me at lunch time and asked me if I wanted to go into the hospitable with our team and pray for sick people that evening. I wanted to say no because we were getting run off our feet with the meetings and preparing for the next day but I told him yes anyways because that seemed like the right thing to do. By the time it came to leave to go to the Hospitable I was done. I knew I had nothing to give I couldn’t even pretend to have anything. In that moment I knew so clearly that if anything happened it was the Holy Spirit, it is always the Holy Spirt but at that time it has never been clearer how weak I was. The first room we were taken into was a room with two small kids with really high fevers they had malaria. I felt there heads and they were burning up. So we placed our hands on them and started to pray. I didn’t feel anything but desperation. At first when nothing happened I found myself begging the Holy Spirit to do something. I just kept checking and re-checking there heads to see if the fever was going down. After five mins something started to change I could tell that the fever was going down. I checked it a few more times and it was really obvious I was sure that the fever was leaving them. I got Andy to check as well and he confirmed it. On top of that the kids mom said she wanted to give her life to Jesus so we got to pray with her and she started a new life! How amazing is God love! By the time we left the fever had left both of the kids completely.