Prayer in the Desert

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Here is a video of our time in Uganda, it has taken forever to upload this, but please watch to get a glimpse of our ministry! We will try our best to get one up from Kenya as soon as possible!

Last week we spent our entire time in the HOT african desert, aka the BUSH. After trekking over 55K in total with our huge packs on, we tried our best to soak up the pain our bodies were in so that we could build relationships with the Maasai Tribe people! (by the way, my spelling on these blogs are horrible, so please disregard... I never have time to actually spell check, heck i barely have time to type a blog!)

It was a long, hard, and HOT week- but absolutely amazing!!! God touched our hearts through the love of the people we encountered. We did nightly fellowships, house visits and school visits during the day, and lots of hanging!

The Maasai culture is very different in traditions from anything us Americans have ever been around. There is a lot of old tribal tradition that is still occuring that the few Christians in the tribe are trying to stop and create more education about the harm it is doing to many people.

One tradition they have is the "initation" of being a child and becoming an adult . In this process they do female and male circumcision (girls around age 8 or 9), which is a horribly brutal process. (Most all women/girls are forced to go through this process, whether they want to or not... I won't go into details about it over blog, but google it to research what that exactly entails).

Another common tradition is that the girls get married to older men at very young ages, as young as 9 years old. The reason being that once they go through initiation they are considered adults, and make their own decisions, so many are decieved into getting married because of how young and naiive they are. This results in little education, and the girls have babies at very young and unsafe ages. And this cycle has continued for years and years...

It is really hard for the Christians in the area, first off because many of the people here have never even heard the gospel, or of Jesus Christ, and secondly because faith goes against some of their most cherished traditions.

On Friday we were going around door to door, (or you could say hut to hut) and talking to different people and we came across two women and a bunch of little children. One was an elderly woman and one seemed fairly young (maybe late teens). They were both new believers, and said they were in need of a lot of prayer. Rita (the younger one) was engaged to an older man but he couldn't afford the dowry. She dropped out of school for him, and then he left. He got involved in some witchcraft and casted a "spell" that she wouldn't ever find a husband and that she would never marry.

it was so sad, because she was living in constant fear of this. It was hard enough that she was a Christian in this area, where it is looked down upon, and secondly she was allowing Satin's lies to belittle her and take control of her life by living in fear.

It broke my heart. We prayed for her and just encouraged her to live bodly in the fact that she believed in a BIG God who triumphs all evil... and because the Holy Spirit lives inside of her- all other demonic or evil spirits are casted out!

When we left, her mom gave me and a few others a necklace that she made. I was so touched and am so excited to have this necklace... i will always keep it so that I can remember to pray for her to be strengthened with Christ's love.

It would mean the world to me if yall who read my blog would pray for Rita!!

Later that afternoon we went to a Primary School (ages 9-15) and played games, sang songs, told testimonies, and shared the gospel. There was about 80 kids there and the entire time I was giving the gospel, most of them were giggling. At the end the Pastor gave an invitation and 2 teenage boys fought all the peer-pressure and laughter and stepped forward in tears. It was so genuine and real as if God himself spoke to the both of them and they believed with all their hearts, enough to step in front of many other kids who were going to look down upon them and laugh!

Our team was so moved!! Praise God :). That is two more Maasai boys who are going to do some incredible things among this tribe in this area. Please pray for them, just that God would provide for them physically, spiritually, and emotionally, and that their transformed lives would make a drastic impact among the Maasai community!!

I believe God is going to do big things with them!!

On Sunday we headed to "church" which was a few benches made from sticks outside in the middle of a field with camels nearly 15 feet away growling during worship haha. About 50 little kids came and probably about 10 women, and maybe 2 men. **Mind you this is the only church for miles. It was an awesome service though! We worshiped with them, danced with them, shared testimonies, etc etc. It was cool to finally experience the Church as the body of Christ, and not a building, which we so often misplace it as.

I prayed and prayed that God would do something big among this generation- to make them radically change for Jesus!

And that is my prayer in the desert (literally ha), as we leave the Bush and head onto the next thing God has in store! That the Maasai children would be a generation that is rising up with selfless faith, so that they could choose love over harm and be educated about what God desires for their lives!!

:) Love ALLEE