Prayer Update: Souls

So much has happened this week that I barely know where to begin.


Since I've already talked about the church and the voodoo drums I'll start there.

Church: Gersan's class has gone so well! Praise the Lord! Thank you for all your prayers! However, it is not over so please keep praying, as it is always a struggle here to speak truth into the lies that they have believed for so long! Gersan had taught them about Eternal Security and they understand it in the classroom, but then when you apply it and say, "If you got angry and went to bed angry and you died in the night. What would happen to you?" They will all respond that you've lost your salvation.Pray that we can break through the traditional thoughts with the truth.
There were, on average about 20 people that were attending the class. The core-group of the church. They are committed to learning and gowing, but there are daily struggles in life, and with the class. For example, the pastor of the church here has not been attending, and is therefore not learning the same things as the people. In this culture, it is very common to teach Bible plus tradition. The pastor here is doing just that. Pray that he will begin attending these classes so that he will learn and have a better foundation to speak only the truth. The plan was to have an all-day class this past Saturday, but there was a death in the village. In this village almost everyone is related in some way to the Colas family. On Friday, Grandpa Colas passed away, which meant that 98% of the class was attending the funeral because they are all his grandchildren. This caused the class to be cut short a little bit, but God is still being glorified... On Sunday, Gersan was a little bit late to the foundations class, and he said when he showed up one of the young men was doing a review of everything they had learned in the two previous classes. Including answering questions and drawing diagrams that Gersan taught with. This man's name is Tolem, he is 24 years old and has a hunger for the truth of the gospel. Pray that God will continue to grow him into a leader of integrity and truth. He is already doing so much for the church, he leads a prayer meeting every morning, he works with the kids on Sunday afternoons, and helps lead worship on Sunday mornings. He has enormous potential and Gersan is hoping to start discipling him into becoming a more godly, and strongly rooted, leader.

-Pray for Tolem.
-Pray for the class and the truths they are learning.
-Pray for the Colas family as they mourn their loss. (I'm not 100% sure, but I do think he was a believer, so Praise God for that!)

Voodoo: A lot of you have sent me messages and questions about the voodoo priest and the ceremony that has been going on. To be truthful, I'm not really sure what is going on. But, I'll tell you what I do know, and what I think. The ceremony started on Monday afternoon. The voodoo priest was doing this ceremony for himself, but those from the village came to participate. He had somewhere around 20 chickens, 10 goats and a cow that he was going to offer to the spirits. Not to mention lots and lots of rum and alcohol. This is why the village attended! They offer the animals to the spirits, but my understanding is that they still eat the animals. In a country where everyone is suffering from protien deficient malnutrition, they are not silly enough to totally waste that much meat! The ceremony lasted all week long. There were many nights that the drums and chanting didn't stop until around 5am, and there were a few nights that they didn't stop at all.
There was speculation in the village about why? Why did he do that? Why was it all week? Why did he offer EVERYTHING he had and now has nothing left? Is it because he wants to come to Christ? He's been telling Gersan for a long time now that he wants to become a Christian, but he is being held back by fear and lack of faith. Fear of the spirits and what they will do to him if he leaves them for Jesus. And lack of faith that God can not only protect him, but provide what he needs without the income of voodoo. People in the village said that he was about to become a Christian, but he wanted to make the spirits happy first. He wanted them to be full of meat and drunk, so they would not bother him anymore and they would willingly let him go. But that is not the way to become a Christian. Jesus takes you right where you are. You don't need to clean your life up, you don't need to appease the spirits. They are going to be unhappy no matter what you do, because they do not love you and they do not care about you. Gersan was planning on saying all of this to him this week, but then things came up, and got busy, and Gersan also decided that he didn't want to be seen around the vicinity of the ceremonies. Gersan said another possibility is that this man will die soon if he doesn't come to Christ. Now he has fattened up the spirits and given them lots of things, but now that they have more they will expect more. He gave away everything he had for this ceremony, so if the spirits come back asking for more he will have nothing to give, except his life.

-Pray for this man. Pray for his heart. Pray that God gets him. Pray that he gets Jesus!
-Pray for this village. That they will be released, one soul at a time, from the fear that grips them so tightly!



There are so many more things to talk about, but I realize that most of you have not read many of the words in this post. This was much longer and wordier than I would have liked, but I wanted  you to have the details!
 Please pray for these people. And look for my other updates coming in the morning!