The story that touched my heart here in Africa was when we met this man that was drunk. This meeting was put together by God. This man came trying to sell us brooms. We ended up speaking to him about God and he began to teach us about God. He knows the bible by heart; he began to recite some passages by heart. We asked him about his life, and he told us that he was murder, robber, basically one of the biggest criminals that Lusaka has ever met. He told us about the night he began to believe in Christ: he was in an a situation with some other criminals when police was shooting at him, and he was hit 7 times; 5 bullets in the leg and 2 in the abdomen. Then when they brought him to the hospital the surgeon didn’t want to operate on him because he had been robbed by him. The surgeon told the nurse to inject him with a substance to kill him, but the nurse took him to the intensive care, got his life saved and she told him in return you must seek Christ. So after the operation, he had to be taken to jail, in jail is where he learned the bible and preached to other prisoners. However when he came out of jail, he began to drink because the devil was too strong for him. He had lost 2 sisters, his parents to alcohol and his third sister to AIDS. So we asked him why he didn’t want to change his habits and follow the word of Christ, he said that the devil has been hunting him and his family and that his fight is too weak. So we gave him hope and we told him to come to the church so that we could help him with his life. He told us that he wanted to become a priest to spread the word of God, but that his alcohol problems would separate him. He told us that only the drinking was what killed him, because he now stopped all criminal acts and began to help people, but his drinking is what separated him from God. We told him that the door for Christ is still open, he prayed for us right there on the spot, and had a tear, and promised to come to church to clean up. May we all pray for him to be changed forever.

Filed under: Africa Summer 2006