A Typical Week?

This week has been a 'classic Chris Nissen week' for Paula. It started with confirmation of the bad news of drinking starting again amongst our church members - a none too auspicious start! I then had the great privilege of buying monthly food again for the very needy thanks to 2 wonderful gifts we received in the UK for this purpose. Thanks to these, we can continue the feeding programme for another 10 months - praise God! This month it was hard to decide who should receive the food as so many folk are struggling, but we had to make the difficult decisions. It was also a privilege to deliver quite a stack of dry food goods to the CNP créche.

We had decided to cancel my cell group this week as there was to be a big security meeting in CNP with the police. As so often happens, the police didn't turn up and another meeting time was wasted! This is so frustrating. I did however, spend the time visiting a lady I have been getting to know over the past few months. This time she invited me into her home and over the next 30 minutes fully disclosed her HIV status to me; how she felt about it and how she was dealing with it. Her heart is full of faith in a healing God and she was overjoyed at my desire to go and spend time with her once a week reading the Bible and discipling her. Wow, times like this are so rare and this is only the second disclosure I have had in 3 years!!! Thank you God! We can really work with people when they are like this lady and I covet your prayers over the coming months. I am believing for our first healing from HIV - what a witness that would be in the community!

Today I met with the Home Based Care team for our monthly meeting before going visiting. This is always so encouraging. We were quite awestruck today by God's goodness. One of our stroke patients is just beginning to talk again after just 1 speech therapy session and loads of prayer!! Another TB patient is working again and yet another has joined Dean's Bible Study group and is full of thanks to God for his improving health. It is great to be so encouraged by the patients themselves. Others are still struggling and a few, though improving in health, are very lonely. We are looking at ways to alleviate this. Overall there is a real sense of God stirring things up in CNP. We are expecting (and I believe already beginning to see) great things this year.