Ministry at Blacksands
We’ve been to Blacksands village four times over the past few weeks. It’s a village near the airport. It is much poorer compared to where we are at Pango village (Pango is near the town and it is more developed). The locals actually call Blacksands a slum. So you can pretty much imagine the condition. There are hardly any schools in the area, hardly any electricity (serious, I brought my laptop and had no where to plug it into!), no proper sanitation, water comes from the river and some kids go around wearing nothing.
We were there to conduct a couple of marriage seminars and ended with a parenting seminar last Sat. It was pretty discouraging at first because only the women would come and only a few of them. We struggled with whether our teaching would even made sense in their condition and culture! Who cares about spending marriage time when they need to make ends meet? How do we encourage them to show love in action when the men are constantly away, drinking and hardly home?
We learnt a lot each time we were there – about their lives, culture and struggles. Each time we went back, we made adjustments in our teaching and our examples.
Finally when we were there the last time, I felt that we had a breakthrough. In that village, although we had a full 3 hour seminar for just 5 mothers, they were so open and willing to learn. We felt that presence of God and even had the opportunity to pray for healing for some of the children.
Sophie had so much fun at the last village that she was a bit sad when we had to go. The kids really took to our straight black hair. It was funny how they kept touching our hair. Like little kids would jump around me, just trying to stroke my hair!
That ended our ministry in the villages. This week we’re teaching on The Father Heart of God in the current DTS and we would be done by this Wednesday! Time really flies!