The past few weeks our team has been learning how to recognize the voice and presence of the Holy Spirit. This past Tuesday I was put in a situation where I had to put all that I have been learning into action. Our team headed out to visit the Turkana Tribe for a few house visits. We split up into teams and and headed out. I was with Blair, Kelli, and our translator Mary. As we walked through the dusty roads I continued to ask God that my words would be few and his would be many.
The four of us stopped at the first house and were greeted by a woman and her young child. We all filed inside of her small mud hut and took a seat on her wooden couch and chairs. Mary began to tell us a little about the woman, her name (which non of us remember because it was very African and hard to say) a little about her husband, and that they loved the Lord. As we began to dig deeper I began to feel very overwhelmed and heavy. The Holy Spirit was speaking to me and letting me feel some of this woman’s pain. The woman’s neighbor was a witch doctor. The young woman was feeling the affects of her neighbors beliefs and practices. She shared with us that her and her family was not getting sleep at night and that rats would come in their house at night. This doesn’t happen. Ratsdon’t just fill houses at night. I was feeling to much emotions and heaviness that I began to shake and become short of breath. Blair, Kelli, and I began to claim Jesus’ name in her life and house, casting out anything that was not of the Lord. I began to see an image of an overpowering shadow and felt that alcoholism might be connected with that. I ask the woman about this, and sure enough there had been alcoholism in her husbands family. That was all the Holy Spirit giving me mental images and the words to speak.
The woman would not look at us and seemed very scared and tired. Her little girl just sat on her lap, exhausted. Everything I was feeling was from the Holy Spirit and not something from me. God was working through me to encourage and help restore hope to this woman. After a little while of praying and sharing verses with the woman she said that she felt better and was happy that we came to visit her. I began to feel better as well. There seemed to be more light shining in the hut. That night I shared with the team what had happened and they helped walk me through a debrief and made sure I was doing okay. God has giving me an understanding and peace with this situation. I am amazing at God’s strength and humbled that he has chosen me.
Our team will be visiting the Turkana Tribe in the future and I look forward to meeting with this woman again. Pray that God will continue to use me and my teammates to speak to his children in Kenya. Pray for this woman. Pray that her family would be surrounded by God and there would be no cracks in her life and home for anything but God. Pray that God would let us meet the witch docor and that we would recieve peace, guidance, and his strength. Pray that walls would broken and hearts softened.
Grow in Grace,
Holli-Noelle Lemke
