Ever experience something that radically changed your perspective and melted your heart? How about in just two hours? Our God is an AWESOME God and when HE has message for you to receive you will receive it! God will work in your life if you empty your hands and allow God to fill them. I emptied my hands this past week an allowed God to move.
This week we went to a school, a highly populated Muslim community, and a slum. Now the slums, you can see pictures and hear stories but you never fully understand slums until you spend time in them. They can be scary, intimidating, and overwhelming. For me it was all three. I found myself in constant prayer for an eased mind, courage, and strength “I can do all things through you who strengthens me” and God will provide I repeated over and over.
After passing drunks, scary pass ways, and intimidating glares we found our way to an 8×8 shack. We were graciously met by “Mama Hillary”, a single of eight.. Three her own and five she took in after her sister was murdered by her own husband. NINE people slept in that little room. Every minute passed and my heart broke more and more. Our group held our tears and sat in silence. Eventually we were presented the opportunity to pray over her. I asked to lay hands upon her as we prayed and before I knew it I was praying a blessing, a peace, a calming and an assurance that our God provides to a women I had never met before in my life. Something I may have never been compelled to do at home. I left that shack changed and humbled.
We continued to walk though the slums and it was as if the hopelessness of these people just began to pile upon my shoulders. You want to do so much but in those situations where there are 700,000 people not including children that live in that slum and its not even the biggest slum in Kenya, you begin to realize that you as an individual cannot dramatically change that place without Gods divine intervention. I think the slum changed me more than I changed the slum. I walked out humbled, blessed, and a little broken.
However, God showed me that I can’t do everything. He revealed that anything on this trip and in my life will only be done because HE wills.
I’ve been praying that God empowers me with knowledge and confidence. He has made me aware that I am more than a conqueror and when God is with me NO ONE CAN BE AGAINST ME! God has blessed me with strength of prayer. He has presented so many opportunities to realize the dynamic power of prayer. My relationship with God has become much deeper because I gave God the chance to change my life. I’ll never know if I changed that slum but I know that slum changed me.
I love and miss mom, dad, Thomas, and Olivia!
God Bless,
Elizabeth “Liz” Brantley
[Picture could not upload. Maybe next time.]
