Laura shares the impact of listening prayer for her and the Zim team.
Change the World
God Stories from Zim: A Future and a Hope
Beth’s story of a dream, and a new destination…
God Stories from Zim: Before We Even Left…
For the next few days, we’ll be sharing the team’s stories from Zimbabwe. Here, Laura shares how God radically changed her thinking about financial provision and asking Him for big things – before they even got on the plane!
You Helped Change the World
Sisters – Jana and her family have headed to the beach for some much needed family time after the Zimbabwe trip! Pray for rest and refreshment for all of them.
Jana has asked me to give you all a recap of last night’s Zimbabwe Celebration event, welcoming four of the Women Getting Real team members back and sharing the harvest with the rest of you who supported us stateside. The Zimbabwe trip would not have happened without you.
For myself, it was such a great reunion – so good to see the faces of the women and men who have been praying for us and encouraging us all the way to Zimbabwe and back. As Jana shared last night, “One of the most powerful gifts to us as a team was your prayers. It was tangible. I could send a text calling to rally the saints and we could just feel the breath of God move among us, an ocean away. When someone asks you to pray for a mission trip, never think that your prayers don’t matter.”
We as a Zim team want you to know that you were as much a part of this trip as we were, and we gave each person who came last night a note to remind them – and now you:
Because of God through you. . .
Our team:
- Cried with 14 women at a Bible study
- Challenged more than 600 students in 3 high school assemblies
- Equipped 80+ women at a Women’s Retreat
- Biblically trained 8 camp counselors
- Encouraged the dreams and purity of 50+ middle school students
- Played, prayed with, and blessed 75 children at the local orphanage
- Washed the feet of 25 senior citizens
- Loved on 40 + handicapped children
- Shared testimonies with 20 women at the Women’s Tea
- Prayed for healing at the hospital
- Renewed and encouraged 4 ministry leaders
- Worshiped in song and dance
- Invested in many one on one relationships
Thank you for being part of this journey.
More God stories from Zim coming this week….
Ready, Set, Zim!
We had our first meeting for Zimbabwe last night and I am FIRED UP.
After hearing stories from others who had already gone and are going again, and after watching a video of the needs, I was undone. Because of AIDS, there are two groups of people: old people and and children – from infants to teens. So few parents, no leadership, no hugs, no training. Here is a country starving to death in more ways than one: spiritually, economically, socially, physically.
An old folks home where the patients don’t even have matching shoes.
Homes where grandfathers and uncles want 12, 13, 14 year old girls to prostitute so they can eat.
What do you do with that?
Salem is 12. I hear those stories and I look at her. I try to think of how bad life would have to get for me to be willing lay her in the arms of a stranger for money. How could I get to the place of desperation that I would do that to my own flesh and blood?
Here is a place where babies are abandoned on the road. Some kind soul brings them to the hospital but once they get there, what next? There is no family to hold or soothe. The orphanages are full. There is no room in the inn.
What do you do with that?
Then there are pockets of whites who have been so hurt and betrayed by the government seizure of their land and livelihood, and they are so bound up by religious legalism that they are shut down, paranoid, lost.
What do you do with that?
You pour forth the name of Jesus like ointment.
What they need, what we need, is the supernatural. It hit me last night as I was listening. Perhaps, we have been deceived. What do we bank on? When there is no government program to turn to, no store to buy from, no money to withdraw from the bank, we need something beyond our own control, something “altogether other.” These people far away, are like us. We need the REALITY of God to interrupt the reality of our lives. It is easy to watch videos of Haiti, and Zim, and other places of devastation and think, “What can I do?” and I would say more than you can possibly imagine. Pour forth the name of Jesus. Pray that they would prosper spiritually, economically, socially, physically. Pray that the teams have all they need to go so they can speak hope, life and truth to a desperate people in desperate times.
What will you do with that?
Here is video clip if you would like see first hand what God is up to. My Cry for Zimbabwe
Remember, if you want to be part of this work you can do so here.
Will You Help Us Change the World?
Isn’t that an audacious question? It sounds like, uhm, let me think — oh yes, it sounds like Jesus. He is the One who took a handful of scarred and frail believers and changed the course of history. Their encounter with the Living Messiah, their passion to tell their story about Him, changed the world, one person at a time.
That is what we are up to at Women Getting Real. Our desire is to rescue people from the heartache, lies and defeat in their lives and lead them into the presence of the Loving God where He can restore, renew and heal. Are we there yet ourselves? Nope. We are all in process, on the journey, ever seeking His face. But this one thing we know and bank our lives on: the same God who is healing us, will heal others too.
We believe that the same tender love, the same Living God who has radically altered our lives, altogether changed our existence not only in the hereafter but also with His overwhelming presence in our daily lives, is able and willing to do that for others too. And we want to tell our stories, now and later, near and far, home and abroad.
Will you help us with this Holy Search and Rescue Mission?
There are four of us going to Zimbabwe in May. I am going to teach retreats and teens. Two other “dream team” members of WGR are going, Beth Hungerford and Laura Jones. They are invaluable leaders in the workings of Unhindered events, and behind the scenes work of the ministry. When they go to Zimbabwe they will be helping with the youth camps and orphanage there. The final representative from WGR is our youngest team member, Salem, my 12 year old daughter. She is a bundle of gifting: child magnet, willing builder and adventurer extraordinaire. God was so clear to us all that she was to make this trip. So we are quite eager to see all that God will reveal and deposit in her.
It is not so much what we offer, but that we have all been clearly, and almost humorously, Called. And we must answer. We are joining a larger team going with John Dee and Ebenezer Ministries and will be gone for three weeks. Does this sound crazy to you? It still does to me. But isn’t that just like God? Nothing is impossible for Him.
So we are extending an invitation to you to link arms with us. Will you pray for us? Salem said it best. When I was helping her with her donor letters, I asked her what she wanted to put under her “prayer requests.” She said, “Preparation and faith.” I love that. That is our first step. Preparation and Faith. Our second step is to pray in the funds to go. We know that God has all the money we need. And He has given me such a verse:
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: “He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; His righteousness endures forever.” Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
2 Corinthians 9: 8-11
We stand on His promises to provide through many hands.. Will you link arms with us financially too? Maybe you can’t go, but you can help send us. You are going to Zimbabwe “through us” as we all go through the power of Christ.
So if you want to join the Change the World adventure with us, click here. This is will give you all the info you need to be part of this God work.
“Lord rend the heavens and come down, Seek the lost and heal the lame, Father bring glory to your name.”
