July | 2019 | Stoking The Fires

As we continue to live life-on-life with the Bible School students, we become more and more involved in their lives. We have begun to understand where they really are at spiritually. Mutual trust and respect is given and the process of discipleship will be a lengthy one. They are coming out of animistic backgrounds where; fear, witchdoctors, and the communal structure dictates their every thought. It is a hard and lengthy process to mature and equip believers, but it is a privilege to do so, to see the Holy Spirit change them from the inside out, and in a sense, “turn on the lights”.

We recently had to help with a marriage dispute, and part of the “healing” process is going to the father of the woman, along with the chief of the village, and then giving them a pig as a “payment” for the dispute. The woman seemed to be elated with the process, and when we got back to the school we sat down and processed the event with the young married couple.

The Payment…

We not only discipled them in regards to why the marriage dispute arose, but also explained the fallacies of how to reconcile a person with another person via traditional methods. We showed them that there was no communication, no instruction, no warnings, no advice or counsel given for the couple’s marriage, and we asked them, is the problem fixed? Were the issues addressed? Were you guys shown a process of how to prevent this dispute from happening again? The couple answered all of these questions with “no”.

The girl then realized that their culture is of no profit in this situation, the only “warning” they gave to the couple was, “if this happens again, we want another pig”. The girl began to realize that their culture is selfish and rooted in only self-love (saying something along the lines of, “they only care about food and not our marriage”). She went from being satisfied in the payment of the pig, to sorrow when she understood that her family didn’t really love her because they did nothing that actually “helped” her, they actually just took food from her (the pig for the payment comes from the married couple).

As we taught them through Biblical forgiveness, reconciliation and principles for marriage found in Ephesians 5, the couple went from sorrow to joy slowly seeing that God’s plan is unity and closeness in a marriage… and since the study, they said that their marriage is “doing better”. Praise God that no matter what the culture is, no matter what era it is, the pureness of the Gospel is always one of healing and restoration.

Three months of Bible school are complete! Please continue to pray for the students as they dedicate themselves to studying and learning more about who God is and how to better understand His Word. Thank you for your prayers and for continuing to follow our journey!