"Fear God...

and you will have nothing else to fear."

On the radio again with John tonight...

and apparently you can listen online; We'll be on from 21:00-21:30 South African time (12-12:30 Pacific Time) if you want to listen.
http://www.radiotygerberg.co.za/index.phplang=eng&redirect=home.php%3Flang%3Deng%26id%3D0%26day%3DTuesday%26currentPage%3D0

Last three and a half days...

have been quite hektik,with an estimate of 53 hrs of replicating CDs and DVDs for this upcoming trip, before part of our team headed off for the South Africa part of this mission. Praise the Lord that He has given us strength in this needed time of preparation.

          Ended it off this evening by going to Black Angus, a restaurant where i got a dish called "the Big 5," a meal consisting of springbok, warthog, ostrich, kudu, and eelant steak. What a delectable experience!

On the radio again tonight...

with 2 others from my Zambia team sharing about the trip. Please pray that God will work in the listeners lives and further motivate them in spreading the Gospel. Pray for His message to be communicated, not our own.

Zambia Missions Trip: July 24-Aug 11

ON THE ROAD

Getting the bakkie stuck in a muddy
stream for 7 hours

          It has been such a privilege to get to go on this recent mission to Zambia. A group of four of us left the 18th in a loaded bakkie (truck), filled with our supplies and material we’d be handing out for the next 3 weeks. There were about 9 days of full driving which proved to be very fruitful time to read the Word and pray. Alongside reading the Bible, I’ve been working through Shadow of the Almighty, a biography of Jim Elliott, which has been greatly challenging me in several different aspects and I would highly recommend for folk to read. We also listened through nearly the entirety of The Pineapple Story by Otto Koning, about his missions experience amoung the tribes of Guinea. On route we saw several kinds of animals, such as elephants, zebra, warthogs, giraffe, and buffalo; buck such as eland, waterbuck, red hartebeest, & impala; as well as hearing lion and hippo during the evenings and nights.

MISSION BASE

One of Angola's sturdier bridges

Sunset along the Zambezi

          Once we passed into Zambia, there was an immediate change in the quality of roads, resulting in a total of 8 punctures throughout the trip. In Zambia we stayed for just under a week at a Mission, where we were able to help in a more hands on/practical way, fixing up vehicles and doing odd jobs around the place. And how encouraging it was for all of us to see the example of servitude shown so fully by the couple who owned the Mission! Even in their old age, they were constantly looking for ways to help and take care of the people they interacted with. On Sunday, there were 3 people who had wanted to be baptized, so we drove down the winding road to the edge of the Zambezi, had a time of prayer and singing followed by the baptisms. It was a beautiful experience to see! In the following Church service, all four of us were able to give a short devotional which was translated into Luvali, the local language. Then nearing the end of our stay there, we took a day to go into Angola to drop off one of the workers and visit a few of the villages. The bridges there were usually a puzzle of about 50 pieces of cut down trees with others nearby to add to the bridge if need be.

RIVER MINISTRY

Cooking tigerfish along the Zambezi

          After our stay at the Mission, the team continued across the Zambezi River onto the Lungwebungu River (one of its tributaries). For the first few days, John, our leader, Lastone, our translator, and I, worked our way upstream, ministering to the villages on the shores as we went, while the other part of the team took the bakkie to the inland villages. After watching John preach to the first two villages, I had my first opportunity given from the boat to the 50 or so people from that village gathered on shore. Starting with Creation, we established a commonality between them and ourselves, the umzungus (white man), that we are no different to them. Then from there it progressed into the Fall of man and the problem of sin, ending with the Gospel message and the Lord’s call of Discipleship to follow Him. Afterwards, everyone on the beach was eager to ask the Lord into their hearts. But pray that it will sink deeper than the immediate emotional response, which can merely be a seed misplanted. Pray that the Message would sink deeper and take root as they grow in their fervor for the Lord rather than letting it diminish and returning to their usual lifestyle, unchanged.

SWIMMING WITH THE CROCODILES

Lastone and I swimming by a sand-
bank on the Zambezi

          Then we continued up the river, and the villages we couldn’t spend time at, we waypointed with the GPS for the the other team to get. On Sunday afternoon, we spent some time at one of the many sandbanks in the river. We were able to wash up, swim, and splash around. It was only the next morning that we found a croc’s pad directly opposite the river to where we were. The wildlife was incredible! We got some great footage of a croc sliding off the bank and splashing into the water, as well as seeing several monitor lizards on the banks and even a few families of river otters swimming down the river. In the sky were several kingfishers and fish eagles, as well as the occasional Yellow-billed Kite, hornbill, and vulture. Each night, we chose a spot along the edge of the river, and set up camp for the night. The intricate beauty around us was so incredibly stunning!

VILLAGE MINISTRY

John and Lastone giving a talk
before showing the Jesus Film

          The teams then switched round, and we continued on the land while they took the boat back down the river, spending time in new villages. While on land, we used the bakkie’s inverter to power a computer and projector. So on several of the nights, when it started to get dark, as the village gathered,  we would preach a brief sermon to them as an introduction to the film along with a couple of short clips of the ocean and different animals they had never seen. This drew people within earshot to come, and from there we all watched the film.

STIRRING OF THE PEOPLE

A watu: common means of water
transportation

          One of the days, Lastone and I walked the whole day from village to village and ministered along the way. The first village we visited was quite a large crowd; we shared the Creation message with them and continued on to questions, to which they kept us busy for a while answering and conversing over different issues, such as “What all is required for Salvation?” “Which church is the right one?” and several others. At the end of our discussion, they all wanted us to pray individually for them. But by their tone of voice and expression in asking, it was difficult to tell whether the ones who had initially asked actually wanted prayer, or whether they were trying to put God to the test as the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. However we went around person by person, and in the end it was quite amazing to see how the Lord was working, because several of the people were in tears (even through they couldn’t understand English prayers) as the Holy Spirit was working in them!

FALSE TEACHINGS AND DRUNKARDNESS

The 3 men Lastone and I talked with

          One of the biggest block we came upon was the teachings of the New Apostolic church, which permits an individual to immediately continue sinning and disobeying God after their salvation, because they teach that salvation is merely the spiritual aspect of one’s relationship with God; and since their spirit is sealed once they are laid upon by the hands of an apostle, one need not concern himself with a changed life of obedience to Him! As a result there was a lot of drunkardness amoung the villages. The next village we came to, there were 3 men sitting in the middle of the village, 2 of whom were drunk. I addressed the one who was sober by asking him whether he thought he was a good person, then worked through the Ten Commandments, ending up in a realization of his sin. However his desire to change seemed dampened by the mocking of his friends and laughter from the side. But the Lord worked in such a way that one of these men became sober and actually joined the conversation, and the other left. God created such an exciting opportunity to share with these men, one of whom I thought was a lost cause being drunk. Pray for their ministry amoung their village and the ones nearby. Pray for their excitement for the Gospel  to turn into a fulfillment of the Great Commission in that region. Pray for strength to stand up against the the devil’s fiery darts, coming with arrows of drunkardness and debauchery, darts of placidity and laziness.

PRAYING FOR THE SICK

The man God miraculously healed

          Having spent over an hour and a half at each of the previous villages, more time than we had planned, we decided to make up ground before stopping at another village; but on the way one of the ladies from the next village met us on the path and asked us for medicine for her tooth (as many of the villagers have tooth problems and pains). Seeing that we didn’t have any with us, we told them we couldn’t offer any, but what we had was far greater than physical medicine. At this they became exited and told us that we must then pray for a man who is very sick in one of the nearby grass huts; so we went into the village and sure enough, inside, there was a man lying down who had scarcely any abdomen at all, with lungs that looked almost completely deflated. The best they could figure, the man had TB, as he couldn’t breath with any ease. After explained that it wasn’t anything of the umzungu that the man would be healed by, but rather by God alone; we prayed over him and his lungs. At that time God saw fit to heal the man and fill up his lungs...right there as we were praying!!! And his voice became cleared, so he could talk. He replied that he felt much better, but that his legs weren’t allowing him to walk. So we prayed this time over his legs, and told him in the Name of the Lord Jesus to walk. That man walked! Issue and ache one after the other the Lord was working so strongly in that man. Pray that that man will lead others to Christ; that when people look at him and the miracles he experienced, they would see God and follow Him. Praise Him that one of the devil’s strongholds has become a vessel for God’s work to progress. That through the very things that disabled that man, he can now return to fight against Satan. How full of irony are the ways the Lord will bring the devil to an end.

WITCHCRAFT

          Another of the issues faced there is the widespread problem of witch doctors taking hold of the village, gripped with fear for their lives. They buy pendants (generally white, made of bone or other imitated material) to wear round their necks and wrists. This is to protect them from any sickness and harm; but yet they live in a constant fear of spirits and demons. At the next village, after we told them about the Lord and His might and warned them against the things of the witch doctor; they gave us their necklaces and bracelets to throw into the fire.

GOD OF WONDERS

Sunset along the river

          To say that God does not work in miracles now is an utter falsehood. I have attested to the working of the Spirit and the power of God. But why do we think that a miracle of healing is the greatest and most intense thing known? Is not the saving and transforming of the soul far greater than that. Psalm 73:26 declares: “My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion FOREVER.” We limit God’s greatness and power in discounting miracles, for in so doing we put God into the mold we want Him to be, not holding the power to heal someone within seconds, not holding the power to utterly transform a man’s life. The Spirit is alive!

Zambia: Sat Phone Update 3

Correction to the name of the river near to which Daniel is traveling. It is the Lungwebungu River which s the largest tributary of the Zambezi River. The link below shows a picture of the type of terrain -http://www.flickr.com/photos/36032475@N07/5618917512/

Zambia: Sat Phone Update 2

News from Daniel by Sat phone again 0n 7/30. New location is at S 14 degrees 07.450 minutes, E 022 degrees 56.118 minutes - a bit further north along the Longwebongwe River. Today we have two interpreters. Please pray for God's power as we minister to the village folk. Use the link below to see the location - http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/latitude_and_longitude_finder.htm

Zambia: Sat Phone Update 1

News from Daniel Treavelling in Zambia - short Sat phone communication. Friday 7/29, on the banks of the Longwebongwe River, about 100 km north of the Zambezi and just east of the Liuwa Plains National Park - S 14 degrees 15.484 min, E 23 degrees 00.717 minutes. Saw crocodiles on the river bank. Will be preaching and sharing the gospel to several villages in the next few days. We have four interpreters. Please pray for God to work in the lives of those to whom we minister.