Out In The Province

Here when you go out of the capitol city, everyone says you are going to the “province”. Provinces are like counties in our states. Yesterday, I drove two of the local brethren to the provinces to visit some of the small churches.
We drove for over two hours on some very poor roads to the first village. Gail and I had been there a year and a half ago with a medical team. It was there that one of my patients asked me if he would go blind when I took his tooth out. I had been asked that question many times and told him “of course not!” During the extraction, which Gail was assisting me with, he began to faint! Just before he passed out he yelled very loudly, “I cannot see!” We laid him down and elevated his feet and he came to very quickly. We took out his tooth and thank the Lord, he could still see!

We took 50 kg of rice and several loaves of bread to this village as they were very poor. Lork presented a short hour and a half Bible study on Romans Chapter 12, and we were on our way. We stopped at several other places to encourage the small house churches and when we returned home I was exhausted! Driving a four wheel drive Jeep with standard transmission for several hours over roads with more pot holes than I have ever seen before is quite a workout for an out of shape, soft person like me!

As we studied Romans Chapter 12, however, in which I could not understand one single word of, I felt a tremendous peace. A peace from God, I think, that said this is good. The first 8 verses jumped off the page at me like never before! I thought, God, thank you so much for spiritual gifts and the opportunity to use them. Lork told me that my being there was an encouragement to the people. Isn’t God good!