SoZo @ Work

It has been very difficult the last few months in Rwanda. During the week of mourning in April the whole nation just stopped living. Everything was crazy… I was sitting in the office with all our staff, just listening to their stories and all of us crying our eyes out. During these past months we have spent a great deal of time praying and ministering to people. Praying to see the Spirit of SoZo poured out.

But, how does one believe in something they can not see?
Spiritual, and emotional healing, freedom from trauma. It is wanted it is needed.
But how does one mark the progress? Can a photo show the difference?

When closing your eyes experiencing flashbacks of Hell and chaos. Binding, controlling, paralyzing you, keeping you from ever wanting to lay your head down again. A life lived in fear and distrust. If this would be your life, would you know how to turn the channel?
Smiling on the outside, suppressing horror on the inside, pushing it down deeper and deeper just to be able to cope with yet another day.
You survived… But what for… Where is the hope for living? Will the pain ever end? Each day the dying inside gets stronger, eating away at you.

How can one support that which can not be seen or touched??
Spiritual and emotional healing, freedom from trauma. What do you say to the widow that closes her eyes each night only to revisit the memories of watching her husband and children beat and hacked to pieces then she her self being gang raped and left alone to live life. What Life???? Is I’m sorry enough!!

What is easy to support? A Church, a school, perhaps an orphanage.
These are things that are easy to be part of, for we can see them. We can mark their progress, and how exciting for us to see God in these aspects.

Yet I want to tell you about an aspect of missions that is not easy to be part of. It is the spiritual application of the experiential knowledge of God. In (James 1:27) it says that the religion that the Lord considers pure and faultless is that of taking care of the widows and orphans. Now, what makes the widow and orphan stand out from the rest of us? It is the excruciating pain they have been through in their life. Is building a house, providing an education and putting food in their stomach going to heal their pain? It will make their life easier for sure but at the end of the day people are left in the same state as before. Spiritually empty, emotionally wounded and still facing the trauma they have yet to see an end to. When we embrace the wounded and pray for them in Jesus’ name and watching God heal them, deliver them, then we know this is what it is about… The experiential knowledge of Christ.

God has been so awesome!!! We have really seen his faithfulness as he has been healing and setting people free…. See for yourself, although I tell you, the photo’s might not tell you the stories of brokenness and deliverance… Yet to me they are screaming…..