Salem shares the differences she noticed the most in Zimbabwe.
women getting real
God Stories from Zim: A New Song
Beth’s biggest surprise in Zimbabwe.
God Stories from Zim: Rainbows
Sisters – God is completely crazy about us. Listen to what He did against all odds as an answer to prayer.
God Stories from Zim: Growing Season
Salem’s testimony about the ways God has grown her through this trip.
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….
The Glory of Peach Butter
The Zim Celebration on Tuesday night has really been an ordeal. Broken computers, room changes, etc. But more than that, it has required culling through moments and memories, photos and videos. It is a lot of life packed into three weeks that I am trying to boil down to a few minutes. All the effort is pointed to one thing: God’s glory.
It reminds me of the other day when I was teaching the girls to make a family favorite, peach butter. You take almost too ripe peaches and cut out the bad places, the bruises or mold spots. That is what I mean by too ripe. In fact, the best peaches for peach butter are the ones the grocer is going to throw out.
These culls are deceiving. They have bad spots, but if you cut into them a little there is still good flesh toward the middle. So you slice off the bad, and then split them open to remove the pit. If they are “cling-free” you pop the pit out. But if they are not, then you have to cut the peach off the pit. Did I mention that you don’t peel the peaches? You don’t take their skins off, you just wash them.
So they have been washed, and trimmed, and pitted and NOW…they go into the blender to be ground up and then into the pot with sugar to be “cooked down” as Granny said. You heat the peach goop into a slow rolling boil and until it is a slow drip off the spoon. There is nothing better than this old farm recipe. It is southern glory at its finest.
Is anybody else seeing the human parallels here? I want to be a beautiful flawless peach. But those kinds of peaches are hard and not so sweet. What I am instead is the kind that a lot of people would throw away. But God.
God cuts out my bruises and moldy spots. But God doesn’t stop there. Then He splits me wide open and takes out the hard pits. Next He puts me in a blender and grinds me up. If that isn’t bad enough He heats up my life and circumstances so that I feel like I am in a rolling boil.
But God. He doesn’t mind the extra effort I require. Doesn’t mind getting His hands dirty while He’s working on me. And He knows just how long to grind, how much sugar to add, how long to let me boil. And then the He gets to be the first one to taste and enjoy His new creation.
God is in the business of creating something wonderful out nothing. He gets all the glory that way. With this said, don’t miss us bragging on God Tuesday night. Truly He made glory out of nothing.
Give Us Our Daily Bread
In the book of John, chapter 5, Jesus had just completed feeding the masses with two fish and five loaves. And the next evening He walked on the water to catch up with His disciples who were rowing in boats. (You might want to let your brain and your faith actually connect on just those two facts alone.) Got it? Okay, let’s continue.
The next day, the recently fed masses went looking for Jesus. “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On Him, God the Father has placed His seal of approval.” Jesus said.
Let’s pause here a moment. Why are you looking for Jesus? Do you want the miraculous supernatural life? Or do you want your belly filled? I know in my own life, I get sucked into only asking for mortgage payments when God wants me learn how to co-rule in His Kingdom.
The crowd asks Jesus a pertinent question. “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
To the surprise of us all who have been seduced into a “working for God’s pleasure” mentality, Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent.”
Huh? That’s it? Believe in Jesus? Not quite. This verse immediately sent my mind back to Psalm 78 which recounts the plight of the children of Israel. After all that God did in their midst, they were doomed to the desert because “they did not believe in God or trust His deliverance.”
To believe in Jesus is not a glib comment, or fish logo, or wristband. This is a “way of life” dependence on a Person. Not on programs, jobs, families, churches, bank accounts. Jesus is the central nervous system to the whole of our life. In Him, we live and move and have our being.
I’m not sure the folks with Jesus connected the dots yet because they turned around and asked Him for a sign. “What miraculous sign then will You give that we may see it and believe You? What will You do? Our forefathers at the manna in the desert; as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”
What are you asking Jesus for? Are you asking for more of His heart? Or are you still trying to be convinced that He is the Messiah? Do you want His life or are you satisfied with manna? If ever there was a case of selective memory, this is it.
That manna experiment didn’t end so well for their forefathers and they are asking Jesus for the same thing. And Jesus helped them raise their sights. He said, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Can I dare to ask you who is your Moses? Who are you crediting for your provision and success and supply? Is it your work, your husband, your parents? Do you look to them to provide for you when it is our Father who gives you all you need for life and godliness?
Slowly a new hunger is stirring in those around Jesus. The people asked Him, “Sir, from now on give us this bread.” Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.”
I don’t know about you, but for the first time in my life I understand why Jesus instructed us to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” It’s not the physical bread but the spiritual He was speaking of. Jesus has just told the disciples in Chapter 4, “I have food to eat you know nothing about.”
The disciples, like us, were still thinking the physical and asked a hilarious question: “Then His disciples said to each other, ‘Could someone have brought Him food?'”
Does God care about the physical needs? Of course He does. In fact Jesus tells His followers later, “Do not run after these things like the pagans do, your heavenly Father know you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.”
What is so startling is the remainder of this conversation with Jesus. He has made this declaration and then proceeds to tell them “He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe me.”
Wow. My head is spinning today about what I am asking and why and who. I want to believe more. I want to feast on The Bread of Life. How about you?
Near to the Heart of God
I have been wrestling since I got home from this trip. Wrestling over the unguided generation coming up in Zimbabwe, with little to no parents, and the cannibalizing government that seems free to feed on its own people.
I wrestle with what to do, how to do and even if I should do…anything. It is so Christian, and even American, to want to rush in to the rescue. But our rescue is not necessarily the needed medicine.
In contrast, I also shudder at the parallels of thoughts and attitudes of our own country to the thoughts and attitudes of far away Zimbabwe. Attitudes such as entitled government at the expense of the working class, perverted images of women and of marriage. Lack of self restraint and a work ethic are bad here, but there you see years down the road. It’s not a pretty reality.
On top of this my heart is beating ever stronger for the plight of women and children swept into the cesspool of the sex trade. Seems we all need to be rescued.
“God, where are you in all this?” is a common cry of my heart. “For their sakes, for our own, what do You have to say about this?”
This morning, I think He began answering that question. First, I dreamed I was doing a worship dance to the song Beauty for Ashes. “I delight myself in riches of fare, trading all that have for all that is better,” is the line that sticks out. Then in the early moments of waking, I heard this line from an old, old hymn. “There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.” The next lines got fuzzy and I could only remember part of the chorus, “Oh Jesus, blessed Redeemer…heart of God…”
The song didn’t go away and my mind woke up searching for the rest of the words. And then I remembered one of my dreams, where someone said clearly, “You need to read Psalm 46.”
Needless to say, first priority I found a book that had the whole hymn and I looked up Psalm 46. Seems the Lord has a good answer to these kinds of questions. Don’t just read the words of each of these. Sit on them, absorb them. Relate them to your world, our world.
God comfort and encourage our hearts, Amen.
There is a place of quiet rest
Near to the heart of God
A place where sin cannot molest
Near to the heart of God
There is a place of comfort sweet
Near to the heart of God
A place where we our Savior meet
Near to the heart of God.
There is a place of full release
Near to the heart of God.
A place were all is joy and peace
Near to the heart of God.
O Jesus, blessed Redeemer
Sent from the heart of God
Hold us, who wait before thee
Near to the heart of God.
CB McAfee
God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in an uproar, and kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice the earth melts. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Come see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.
Psalm 46