Breaking Hearts and Crackers

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I hope you all enjoyed time with your family and friends this last Thursday. Mine was special even though I was in workshops all day and didn’t officially celebrate it with relatives and a turkey dinner. Instead my family was from DRC, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, South Africa, Germany and Canada, and instead of cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie we shared communion together and one of my Zimbabwean brothers shared from I Corinthians 10:16&17,

“Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.”

He had no idea what day it was in America or how especially significant his words were to me because of it. But as I looked around at the people, my family in Christ, and remembered what made it possible for all of us to be together that day, I was full of more thanksgiving for the simple grape juice and crackers than I could have been for any extravagant feast anywhere else.

I have one prayer request that I beg you to remember as you go on from here, and that is for my Zimbabwean friend, Givemore. He has been here in Zambia for the last few months trying to get documentation for his wife and new baby girl to get out of Zimbabwe but permission to leave has not been granted. The news that he has received from the village is that they are starving and there has been a wave of cholera throughout the country, including his village. This week Givemore is returning to try to get them out but there are rumors that all borders to Zimbabwe are being closed soon to keep the cholera outbreak from spreading to neighboring countries like Zambia. Please pray for the situation in Zimbabwe and that Givemore will be able to get his family out before it gets worse. And remember to thank God for the life He has given you.

“God is very big, he is on our side. Even when things are bad in the world, nothing can limit God. Can we pray?” - Conversation with Carlos from Mozambique