Hello Everyone,

   It brings great joy to know so many of you have been praying for us and following the blog.  Sometimes we take for granted the fact that God answers prayer everyday…..YOU MUST KNOW HE IS answering your prayers!!!

So here it is…..Starting July 14th and going through July 18th the Compassion Connect team (made up of nearly 40 people from more than 7 states, 2 countries, and so much more diversity) by the grace of God was able to carry out 2 Compassion Clinics simultaneously.  After hours and hours of serving, crying, and praying….we believe that we helped and saw around 1,715 people at the clinics.  That is incredible.  These are only the numbers….the real joy comes from knowing our God has plans for those people that we may never know….and may have been initiated at the clinics.  “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that have been prepared in advance for us.” 

One last story….Yesterday, a few of us reached a breaking point that I could not contain (I’m not a hugely emotional person….but I could not contain the sobbing).  Gary and Linda had talked about all the pain and suffering over the last few days that we have seen…and they concluded that we are shocked by it because we don’t live here….so the Rwandans who see it day in and day out must be calloused to it.  Well yesterday one of our rockstar Rwandan volunteers, Douglas…who was our referral specialist all week, came up to Gary saying “I can’t handle it anymore….so much pain and hurt.”  He was crying.  He told Gary about one mom and her little girl who had traveled four hours to come to the clinic.

The girl is nine years old….last year she was second in her class…this year she is crippled, deaf, struggles with speech.  She looks as though she has cerebal palsey.   The childs brain stopped growing and went atrophy.  The mother said she did not come for pills but she came for a miracle.  This mom saw two doctors and was told there was nothing that could be done.  As me, Gary, and Douglas were talking the mom and her girl were sitting just outside the door.  We decided we had to pray over her…and do the best we could to seek a miracle for her.   We pulled the doctors together and the pastors.  We took her and her mom into a room and prayed over her.   A great pastor friend from Kampala led the prayer….it was powerful….we were sobbing for her.  After we finished…the girl looked at the pastor and clearly said “That was a nice prayer Pastor.”  Then she motioned her hand at all of us and said clearly “Thank you for praying for me…continue to pray for me…I have faith that I will be ok.”  She said all this in kinyarwandan…and Douglas was our only translator….his response to these words shocked me and prooved that God was moving in a way I had never seen…we were all broken for her and used by the Spirit……I can’t communicate to you how incredible that experience was.  The power of prayer was witnessed in a new way that I had never seen.  As Gary put it, after hearing the girl speak clearly and the content of what she said, “That girl is more whole than any of us here.”

Sorry for that last teary story…but I had to share.

Today we went to church and had some great home visits way out in the country…..The conditions out in the country are far worse than in Kigali where we were.  It was dissapointing to see many kids with worm issues out in the country knowing that 2 hours away we had just been giving away the meds for that.

Please pray for safe and peaceful travels. See you in Portland (most of you).