I can't believe it's been 6 days since I wrote last, amazing! It's not that I haven't had anything to write about, it's just the end of the day would arrive and I would notice I forgot to blog. God's been showing me great things, some are "reruns" but somethings take me a while. So, while I'm waiting for the cake for ladies' fellowship to bake, I am going to share two of the many things God has shown me. Actually, He didn't show me, He poked me with this truth.
Today, I had a doctor's appointment and you all know how long that can be, so I brought a book to read. I had started reading "They Called Me Mama" by Margaret Nicholl Laird. I read through chapter after chapter and in one of those, Mrs. Margaret went on to tell the story of when she was in Africa as a missionary. She told how a young water boy, from a cannibalistic tribe, had gone into a village to teach them the gospel and had lead many to Christ only a short time after he himself had been converted. Margaret was astonished that he could find the time after his long day to go witness to people in another village. Here is where that story continues:
"He was one of the busiest people around the place. He came to our house at five o'clock in the morning and carried water until six. Then from six to seven he was free to go to the chapel service.
After that he carried water and chopped wood until five o'clock in the afternoon. He carried water from the spring about four blocks away, and he would go to the woods to chop wood for boiling the water; all the water we used for drinking an cooking had to be boiled twenty minutes.
We needed a lot of week to heat the water. He also carried water for baths for the family. And we took a lot of baths because of all the perspiring a person does in the tropics. The big question that stumped us all was, when in the world did Mananga have time to be witnessing?
The next morning when he came up with a drim of water at 5:30, I asked him. "Mananga, have you been going to the Saras' village?" "Oui, Mama" "But when do you go?" "Every night."
"But, Mananga, you work here until the drum beats at five o'clock. how do you get out to the village five km from here before it is dark?""Oh, I don't go by the road, I go through the woods. I get there just when the sun drops. I teach for a couple of hours, then I visit with them. I come home in the middle of the night." "You come home in the middle of the night?" I could hardly believe it. "Oui." " But Mananga, aren't you afraid? We were in a district with man-eating leopards, lions, hyenas, all kinds of poisonous snakes, wild buffalo, and foxes. WE would no more think of going from house to house on the station at night than fly.
...
"But Mananga, aren't you afraid?" He still looked at me strangely. Then he replied, "Mama, were you born here?" "You know i wasn't." "Didn't anybody ever tell you about our mouths?" "Yes, we knew you ate the other white people who came here." "The what did you come for?" "We have come because we believe there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved that the name of Jesus Christ. We believe He died for you just the same as He did for us. So we came to tell you about Him." "And, Mama, you weren't afraid?" "No. We knew God sent us, so He would take care of us." I said this without realizing how wise Mananga was; I hadn't realized what he was leading up to. But as soon as I finished, he looked straight into my eyes and said, "Mama, your God is my God now."
I was rebuked. To think this happened in only a few short months. I thought of the years in my life I had struggled and doubted and of how long it was before I could honestly say that the Lord was really Lord of my life. But Mananga, with his cannibalistic background, knew Christ so well in a few short months that he was not afraid of man-eating leopards or lions. He was not going once in a while on Sunday afternoons. Every night he went out to teach the things he had learned that day. he already had all those people who believed in Christ, including those fourteen stalwart Saras, founded on the Word of God.
He was established in his salvation, although he was only a boy. it came to me that one just doesn't realize that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. I had to admit to myself that I had thought I was somebody a little bit special. I was a missionary to Africa. I was a superior person, giving my life like this.
But I could not boast that I had learned fast, compared to the way Mananga was already out serving that way. I was a slow learner compared to Mananga. And if Mananga could only look back at those years that had preceded my coming to the Central African Republic, he might have been a little bit disappointed in my testimony.
On the other hand, maybe he wouldn't have. He was so kind, so willing, so everything that the Bible says a Christian could be. i was delighted to be here in this land of miracles I really knew now that this was the place i wanted to spend the rest of my life serving God."
I will not comment on this but I am sure, the Lord spoke to your heart, maybe differently than He did to mine, but what a testimony Mananga had at just a few months old as a Christian.
The other thing was later in the book. She is explaining how she came to be a missionary to Africa. She was at Moody Bible Institute and the lecturer talked about what a blind man said to Jesus that he could see. "I see men as trees walking." The lecturer continues to say, "So Christ anointed him eyes again. And then the man saw every man clearly.
"I'm sure you students all know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour or you wouldn't be studying in a place like Moody Bible Institute, but I still believe there are many of you like that blind man. You still see men as trees walking about."
That was hard to swallow, yet became my prayer at that very moment in the doctor's office; that all man (humanity) would not be like men walking as trees but that I would see all men (humanity) as a soul, some lost and going to hell.
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