My lungs were thick with dusty sand Sunday afternoon. The sunbeams piercing into Church of Joy reflected the rising dirt from our many lunch-guests. My heart melted onto the floor.
My preparations for our “Christmas show” began 9am Tuesday morning and ran straight through until Sunday morning! Literally. Our goal was to have two celebration services/outreaches in our “Church of Joy” where we simply preached JESUS from birth to resurrection, including His miracle ministry when He walked the earth. What an incredible time it turned out to be!
In the afternoon, we invited the old homeless people of Harar, lepers, cripples, blind… to come for a Christmas show and free lunch! They were lined up at our Church compound 1½-hour before we began. Some of our women disciples prepared the mass of food all through Saturday morning, afternoon and night into Sunday morning! Just to give you an idea of how much food I’m talking about… they chopped 21 kilos of onion!! Gah! We wanted to give our lunch guests the absolute BEST from the service, to the drama, to the injera they feasted on at the end.
The drama began with Mary holding baby Jesus and being carried into the sanctuary on a donkey led by Joseph! Then of course a shepherd came with a baby goat on his shoulders and the wisemen came bearing gifts of gold. (We did have a camel available, but we left him out… just incase he decided not to handle the spotlight in a small building so well) Immediately the stage was cleared and a new song began… describing the entire life of Jesus. Half way through, the drama continued…
…Jesus was dragged through the sanctuary by men in black clothes, beat up, stabbedwith a crown of thorns and nailed to a cross. Every mouth in the room was hanging open as they watched the crucifixion. Of course in only a few moments they were shouting with joy when they saw Him raised from the dead! Erik, who played the part of Jesus, ran into the audience with his bloody and torn clothes hanging from his shoulders, showing them his hands that had been nailed to the cross… I loved the simplicity of our guests, they grabbed his fingers and looked up into his eyes in astonishment! Hallelujah!
Without missing a beat, a third song began and the four people dressed in black clothes on the stage transformed into bound, oppressed and desperate characters. One-by-one Jesus came to them and RESTORED blind eyes, HEALED a disease-stricken woman, gave FREEDOM and LIFE to a beggar girl addicted to Kat and finally STRAIGHTENED and STRENGTHENED a crippled man’s legs who had been crawling around with sandals on his hands… like the cripples do here. The entire room was now shouting as the lyrics of the song continued on… “Hallelujah, Hallelujah!!!”
No words can describe the gift it is to preach the entire gospel through body language, facial expressions and song. Filip played our remarkable cripple in the drama… he scooted himself around with his arms, pulling on Jesus’ legs the entire time He was focusing on healing and restoring the others. He was desperate. My heart was beating to the rhythm of his acting but my focus was however on the eyes of the 3 crippled men in our meeting who were starring toward the stage with the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen. They were identifying with the things we had prayed about, prepared and now displayed for the sake of their own lives. WOW WOW! I am so proud of everyone who helped me make this happen… our team, graduated biblestudents, soon-to-be biblestudents… you were all just dripping with the anointing and shining Jesus’ power!!!!
Maybe you’re thinking it’s kind of late for a Christmas show… not when you live in Ethiopia. Their Christmas is January 7th! Our morning service ended with one former bibleschool graduate, Selam, singing “What Child is This?” I still have a smile on my face as I type these words… thanks Jesus for coming the way you did. Thanks for being our example. Thanks for dying and raising again. I’m so madly in love with You!
After the stage was cleared, our incredible Pastor Ashagre and my breathtaking husband, Pastor Samuel… preached salvation and healing. One man with a deaf ear was healed in Jesus’ name! Praise God!
After the bags of hot injera were passed out to more than 100 people and the entire church was cleared... I walked home through the city alone. The single moms, babies and old men returned to their "home" beneath the huge Orthodox church... they were happy. Plastic bags, emptied of all their contents were floating in the breeze. The Word was preached. The Spirit moved. Bellies were filled. Miracles happened. Miracles, miracles, miracles. So hungry for this new season!!
