Fire, rain storms, and ministry

On Friday night as Jess and I were working on assembling a couple of machines (I more or less was just doing it to the point where Jess could have the joy of taking it a part and putting it back together), our Ascari (night guard) knocks on our door and asks if we had seen the fire. We had no idea what he was talking about but then as we stepped out the front door we see a tower of smoke and flames just behing our fence and we hear all sorts of screaming and wailing. We surveyed the situation from a ladder and discovered that it the fire was engulfing homes in an area we call Works (basically a slum area full of shanty stile houses). We could hear different little explosions made by what we think were the bars that burnt or areas that held petrol. Jess decided to get to work and he and Steven hosed down our hedge in the back in case the fire turned direction and because it was so dry it could all go up in a second. By then most of our staff was gathered on the balcony above my house or actually at the scene of the fire. At one point the fire truck came and really didn't do a whole lot as it seemed to not have a lot of water and they had to continue going back to get more.

As the fire died down we began hearing reports about how thieves were attempting to take advantage of the goods that the people still had left that were now out in the open. The guys cleared the benches in the church and put matreses down in case those who lost their homes needed a place to stay, or at least have the women and kids stay here while the men guard the few things that remained. The interesting thing was though that no one came to take advantage of it as they really just couldn't bare to leave their things.



The next day, things went into full swing as the church provided porridge for the people in the morning to put at least something in their stomachs. We also put up a tent made with a huge Samaritan's purse tarp in order to provide some covering for people to protect them and their belongings from the elements.

That night we brought the youth group over to see if there was anything we could do to help, such as helping move the things under the tent but the people just wanted to take care of it themselves so we ended up doing an impromptu VBS and my youth and I realized just how little we knew what to do with kids. But we did our best and in the end the kids were in two groups and two sets of students laid out the Gospel to these kids (some of whom were Muslim). It was honestly one of the shining moments for me in ministry as I heard my students telling these kids about Jesus' love for them. I just can't stress how cool it was seeing these kids all with their own challenges (some were street kids and AIDS orphans) ministering to others.



Right after we finished with that, the skies opened up. It was amazing! We had been praying for rain for so long and finally it came. The youth group made a mad dash for the church as I got the van to take some of them to their homes. In the end I was wait, tired, and had a couple of battle wounds but it was totally worth it!

Now we are just praying about the next steps in trying to minister to the families who lost everything.