Update from Austin

What a day. You all will have to forgive me if this is short in length, because I am no exception to the general exhaustion that is present in the house. Simply put, we encountered a lot of spiritual warfare today. I was talking with Henry tonight and these were his words: "We are working to change Zambia's next generation, the youth; to encourage them to make better decisions than their parents, to surrender their lives and their choices to the Lord. The devil does not want this to happen, so we should expect there to be a war waging over these lives."

As I'm sure has been previously written, we are at the village school of Murundu in the mornings and then we are driving to Chibote Girls School in Kitwe for the afternoons. Yesterday was a tough day for a lot of us in the morning, just feeling like there were no connections made with the students. Today we decided to break into guys and girls for Dan and Casie's talks on "what if you've made a mistake." I, naturally, was with Dan and I must say that I think today was his best yet. He encouraged them to be men of God that respect and care for women instead of preying on them, doing a great job of emphasizing the grace of God that can make us a new creation regardless of our past decisions. The guys seemed really responsive. After our separate talks, we came back together for a time of prayer for whomever wanted to come forward. We were able to pray for the majority of the students and God really ministered in a mighty and visible way.

Then we were off to Chibote. Yesterday was already a pretty intense time of prayer and sharing there, I know that I personally had girls share with me about an abortion, HIV+ parents, divorce and abuse. Thus, we felt that there was a need today for us just to be available after Casie's talk for the girls to share with us as they felt led. So we did the usual dancing and singing and then went straight into the talk. Casie did such a great job, I was so blessed by the tender way that she spoke the grace, love and forgiveness of Christ into these girls lives. Read John 8:1-12. We all spent the next hour or so talking and praying with different girls about the things they are dealing with. It really is such a humbling and exhausting experience just to listen to their stories. I still feel as if I am in total sensory overload from the day, and I'm trusting that the Lord will give me the grace and faith to trust him with the things that I cannot change. There are so many seemingly impossible situations. There are so many conversations that all we can do is listen, hug and pray. I was continually impressed today that there is nothing of my own strength or merit that could give these girls any form of rescue. But greater is He that is in us than he who is in this world and we know that God has given us the ministry of reconciliation for the hurting and the broken. We are compelled to share the hope that can be found in a relationship with Christ because it does not disappoint or fail. My prayer has been that God will break my heart with the things that break His and I'm pretty sure that has been answered in a big way in the last two days. At least I hope it has been.

As we rode home, it seemed we all were feeling the weight of the world. We all had an intense day in many ways. Like I said, the spiritual warfare was unprecedented, some of us were seeing, hearing and experiencing some things for the first time. I'm sure some of you who are reading this will get many more details from your beloved team member upon your reunion with them. We desperately need your prayers: pray for the hearts of these students, pray that the Lord will keep and protect and teach us as a team, pray that we can be faithful ministers of truth, pray for lives to be changed and protected from destruction. Thank you.

For team STS Zambia,
Austin Crane