I've managed to find a few minutes of internet in the middle of Zanzibar, however, the keys stick terribly, there is no spellcheck, and I've got fifteen minutes left, so I'm going to make this incredibly brief.

Outreach is going really well so far, we've been here for a little over a week and we've got a week left on the island before we head off to mainland Tanzania, a place called (and I know I'm not spelling this right) Dar Es Saalam. It's really hard here, pretty much the whole island is Muslim and so there's an incredible resistance to what we're here for, but today really felt like a breakthrough, at least for me. We broke off into small teams, and I was with one of my friends from Uganda so that they could translate English/Swahili for me, and we stood on the corner of a road and just talked to whoever would listen. It was hard at first, I feel so intrusive trying to sit people down and tell them what I believe and why they should believe it also, but it got easier as I gave it to God, and in the end of the two hours, I had gotten to preach to thirteen-some Muslims, and one of them even ended up getting saved! It was an incredible experience, and exactly the encouragement I needed at the moment.

Being here, here as in Zanzibar, but also just in the outreach environment, is really challenging everything I've ever known or experienced, but it's also taken me on a whole new level of trusting in God and of loving Jesus. Because I've left everyone in my life that I care deeply about to be here, I've had to completely turn to Jesus for everything, to be there for me and to love me through it all, and it's been amazing. I want to go so much more in-depth into all of this, but my time is incredibly limited.

As for what we're actually doing here, it's twelve of us, leaders included, staying in a few rooms from the house of a Muzungu who occasionally comes to the island to work with a church, which is located right next door. Er, well, currently in a circus tent type deal, but when they get a real building they will be right next door. We're doing a lot of ministering with the church, preaching on Sunday services as well as Friday and Wednesday ones, and we're working together with the leaders of the church for our ministery around the island. We've been mainly focusing on door-to-door, as that seems the most effective way to reach individuals here, but next week we should be heading into the market places to do some open-air type things. We're incredibly limited in what we can do here, because the island is almost all Muslim and they tend to burn churches that get too out of hand, but with God all things are possible, so there is no doubt in my mind that great things will come from us being here.

I'll post more about the island, the ministry, and everything else when I can, and expect a lot of pictures as soon as I get back to Uganda and my laptop.

Love and blessings.

Just for the record, beginning a blog post is an incredibly awkward thing. It's not like an e-mail, where you can begin with something funny or personal, or even just hey, because a blog isn't really directed at anyone, it just kind of exists on the internet. So, awkwardly talking about the awkwardness of blog posts seemed like a good way to start this one, since I initially went to start with “well,” but then realized that was how I started pretty much every blog post since I got here. Wonderful.

Anyways, everything in Uganda is going incredibly well right now. Our DTS is in intense preparation mode, since we leave for outreach next Monday. I can’t believe how quickly it’s gone by, I remember the first month or so that I was here, when it seemed like it would be an eternity until mid-November, but here we are. Tomorrow is our last day of lectures, and in whatever free time we have, we’re practicing skits, dances, and songs to present while on outreach. It’s exhausting, because we’re still getting up at 4:40 in the morning for prayer, and this morning I was completely unenthusiastic about pretty much everything about today, but during prayer time I was really convicted about my attitude, and I realized that if we want to make any kind of difference in Zanzibar, I need to go into it with a completely positive attitude, no matter how exhausted I am. I just used about ten commas in that sentence, whoops. I’d blame it on exhaustion, but really, I think I have a bit of a comma problem, please excuse. Another grammatical shortcoming, er, maybe just an English language shortcoming, I’ve found myself talking more and more like an African lately, hence the previous “please excuse.” I do it a lot less when typing, because I have more time to think out what I type, but in regular conversations I’ve started to leave out everything but the words absolutely necessary to convey the point I’m trying to make. I didn’t realize it until the other day, when I said to Ansie “No, you keep,” and Will was like, “Lindley, she’s white. You don’t have to talk like that.” It’s just a natural way of speaking at this point; but I really hope that I can resume speaking in complete sentences by the time I come home.

I’m not really sure when the last time I updated my blog was, we currently have no internet (I’m typing this in Word so that when we do get internet I can post it quickly before it turns off again), so I can’t check, but I think it’s been a while. A lot has happened in the past few weeks, but I can’t remember anything incredibly noteworthy. I preached in an African church for the first time last Sunday, on Halloween. It was an absolutely incredible experience, and God really blew me away with what He did through me. Going into it, I was over-prepared, with four or five pages of meticulously taken notes on what it meant to have a relationship with God, and carefully drawn out charts illustrating the connectivity of the various relationship aspects; however, as soon as I got up there, God took charge of the message. I don’t remember looking at my notes even once – the general idea of the message kept with my original plan, but God completely used me to say what He wanted to say. It was truly amazing, and when it was over, I realized that I seriously need to trust God more, even in little things like that. That doesn’t mean not to prepare, that would be stupid, but at the same time, I need to not over-prepare. I need to give Him more room to work, leave more space open to trust that He will work through me, because if it’s not through Him, it’s entirely worthless anyway. It tied in so well with what He’s been teaching me the entire time I’ve been here – the importance of complete submission to Him, in every part of my life. All in all, it was an absolutely amazing experience, and I can’t wait to do it again both during and after outreach. In addition to being completely floored by God’s desire to use me to speak His words, I was, as always, struck by the beautiful hearts of the people in the church. I don’t think that I ever fully understood the joy of praising the Lord and just being in His presence until I came to Africa, and it still amazes me every time. Being at this church on Sunday, it was one of the most authentic worship services I’ve ever attended. It was small, only about thirty people, forty being generous, and most of them were under the age of fifteen, but the love and joy in that room, not only for God but for everyone else there, it was the most beautiful thing in the world. After the message and the worship, I discovered that it was “giving day,” and so I stood there, the only white person within miles, and received gifts, money, salt, fruits, and other things, from these amazing people who had next to nothing, but not, as is so easy to come across in Africa, because I was white. Instead, it was simply because I was there, because I was loved. It was convicting to the extreme, but not in a bad way – I think it was probably the first time in my life that I’d been convicted with absolute joy. I realized that, here were people who didn’t have enough money to buy pants for their children, giving away everything that they had to bless other people, and in doing so, bless the Lord. It sent me into a spiral of thought about money and love and giving and blessing, and I honestly have yet to completely sort it all out, but it made me realize, on a very basic level, that love is something that can be given to anyone, without knowing them or anything about them. It seems so simple, but it changed my outlook on pretty much everything in my life, and will hopefully change the way I live my life as a result.

In other, far less life-changing news, the internet is back on. So I’m going to end this post, and go reply to e-mails and all of that lovely shenanigans. I’ve only got internet for one more week, we’re not allowed to bring laptops to Zanzibar, so this will probably be one of my last posts on here for a while, but I will resume posting as soon as I get back to Uganda in January. Although, probably not right after we get back, since my mom will be coming to visit then (!) and I will be spending every waking moment with her.

One last thing, please keep our outreach teams in your prayers, especially these next few weeks as we make the transition from learning to applying. We’ve already had a few problems as a team, the family members of three people in our team are currently in the hospital, one is undergoing an operation, another has malaria, and the third, the child of a lady named Diana, is sick but we’re not sure with exactly what. So pray against sickness, but also against distraction, and also, as always, for protection, for God to be with us and to guide us in everything that we do, as we have no idea what we’re about to go into in Zanzibar. Mukama yebba zibwe.

A few pictures from last Sunday at church. As always, they're about a week and a half late. Sorry.

With several children from the church after the service.

My African son.

The pastor's roof, which is in need of some serious repairs.