Africa!!!

Last year sometime, around August I know for sure, August 25, 2010 (i had it written in my old Bible). I surrendered to go to Africa.  I had been feeling the call for a few weeks and even earlier in life I had felt the call but then I wrote it off as I wanted to go and not God calling me to go.

I remember all the missionaries who were going to Africa had slide show pictures and they would show them to us and it would move my heart and bring tears to my eyes, this girl (me) doesn't cry very much, and I remember this one picture of this boy who had lost his arm. His parents had AIDs and as a result he had it too, his parents died and he was an orphan.  He got saved and he had a huge smile on his face. So many people over in Africa have the same story, oh they may not have lost a limb or got saved but a lot of them have aids.  it's just sad.  People need the Lord.

through sin we forget God's call upon our lives, we have it in the back of our minds and for me when Africa would get brought up just randomly it would bring good thoughts to my mind and make me think of God's calling, but it didn't stir up the need to repent and get back on the firing line.

Last year sometime I was given a CD by a girl and it had Bury My Heart on the Mission Field and all throughout the song I pictured African people, the song never once mentions Africa but that was all that was on my heart.

At youth conference last year Brother Copeland preached (Brother Baldwin did too, but Bro Copeland was the one God used in this instance, though God used both) and he asked, I believe it was Brother Gaddis's youngest son, to come up to the altar to come and stand next to him. Brother Copeland knelt down next to the boy and dreamed about that little boy's future.  He said he could be a preacher some day or something else, or a missionary to Africa and that spoke to my heart because of all the Africa stuff that had been going on, I was seeing it everywhere, on TV, in preaching, just everywhere.  I didn't surrender that day, but a few weeks later I did surrender.

How are they going to hear if we don't go? Who is going to fill the missionaries shoes when they die and go on to Glory? Who will reach the African people if I don't? Yes I know that women don't preach and I don't want to be a preacher, God forbid that I'd want to be a preacher, but I know that I am to be the help meet to my husband whenever God sends that man along.  But a missionary can be someone who just shares the Gospel with the lost souls that need Christ.

Isn't it amazing how God can take something I wrote one year ago and bring about conviction and remind me what I surrendered to and bring about a burden.  Sunday morning Mrs Martin prayed with me and gave me some papers I wrote and gave to her to remind me of every once in awhile, she told me to read them again and I did and it's burdened my heart.

I don't know when God will send me my husband, and I don't know if I will make it to Africa, but as Mrs Martin has told me and others before you just have to surrender to go if God has told you to, it was in Sunday School that she told us and she was teaching on Abraham and Isaac and Abraham offering Isaac, she told us that we don't have to go to Timbuktu, a place in Africa, and never see our mom and dad again, just surrender to go if God has called you.  God sometimes wants us to just have faith in Him.  He won't ask of us more than we can bear or anything like that and He won't ask of us anything that He won't enable us to do and won't walk with us through.  Do I know if God will place me in Africa one day? No, I don't, but am I willing to go? Yes, I'm willing to go.

God is good to me.

God bless!!!
Mandy Marie