As if Ramada isn’t far enough off the main road,
which is it, Mariani is even farther after turning of the secondary road. So
much so that I began to wonder if there were any people in this place at all.
Hidden behind tall bushes along the narrow trail were stalks of already-harvested
maize waving in answer to my question. We soon found a tree under which sat a
dozen people, soon accumulating to more than 50, gathered at the last minute to
hear an encouraging word from the white woman. For a moment I’d forgotten where
I was and thought this would be a quick meeting between the pastor and me
simply to see and pray over construction progress.
An invitation to visit a church under
construction always leads to the greater responsibility of providing a word of encouragement
for the church. First Chronicles 29 is always an excellent choice for it tells
of when King David gave of his personal treasure for building the temple and
then invited the people to do the same. Typically we walk around the church to
pray, but in this case we joined hands together in dedicating this land and the
building of the church structure to the Lord. What a lovely opportunity to
remind people that THEY are the church, not the structure.
Pastor Isaac testified that, after 25 years of
pastoring this church, he is finally constructing a permanent structure as a
result of what he learned from our Kingdom Business teaching in Hadu a few
years ago. We give thanks that he is a faithful servant of the Lord using the
resources of the church wisely.