Opportunities

Hey everyone. This is Jacob posting.

Yesterday was another lesson in flexibility. We set out in the evening to meet one of Jean-Baptiste's students to meet with him and encourage him. Turns out his student is a pastor; so what we anticipated as a quiet sit down meeting, turned into a 2 hour church service! To be transparent, even after 3 weeks here, it is still very stressful and frustrating to be in such a confusing state of "where are we? what is happening? what is our purpose here?" Even though it caught us off guard, we were given the opportunities for myself and Amanda to share our testimonies (received with many 'amens'), for Aurora to pray for the church, and for us to connect with people from the church afterwards.

We got some (of the usual) questions such as "do you have computers for us" and "are you married". It is often challenging for us to have such short visits with churches and people since we don't really have time to build a relationship with them. We have realized that this is also difficult for them, for they desire a relationship with Christians from other countries, but it is hard. We trust that our short time meeting with this church (and other churches and people) is encouraging for them and that God uses our encounters effectively for His purposes.

As we were escorted from the church through the streets of (where were we?) to a taxi stop, I had the privalige of meeting with a man named Amos. He knew a bit of english, and was very passionate about learning more, though our conversations included much broken english by him and broken french by me. It was hard for me to hear how he struggles to find learning resources and any means to practice his english. I gave him my email address so he can write me, but he said that even finding a computer with internet is not easy. Please pray for Amos.

Today we went to the Congo River with the young people from Kintambo Church. The river is the 2nd largest in the world in terms of volume... It was really big....

Amanda here...Jacob is having some technical difficulties describing the day. We took a bus with a bunch of the local youth and got to experience a fun day out. The bus was packed full (as per usual) and full of singing. Down by the river was just beautiful. There are huge boulders along the shore which we had a great time jumping to and climbing on. It was cool to see a place where the locals would go for a day off. After being down at the river we had lunch together then Aurore led a bible study. She talked about "shine" (mostly looking at Matthew 5:13-16), one of the main messages of MBMSI (it's on our tshirts). Overall I think it was a great afternoon out. Back to Jake.

Although we now have only one week left in Kinshasa, I anticipate that we will have many opportunities to speak with people. Although these are sometimes short conversations, and depending on the person, in broken french, there is much room for God to speak through us. I would ask you to pray for us, just as Paul asked for prayer in these circumstances:

Ephesians 6:19-20
Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

PS It's Alysha's birthday tomorrow! (Sunday)