When Witches Encounter Jesus...

     Next door to Pastor Moshi’s house, where we always set up our tents in Kama, is a house of Tongwe people. This house becomes a party house when their banana liquor has finished fermenting– they drink the one or two 50 gallon drums dry in a 3 day binge. It is the same house where the witch doctors of the village have their meetings, and it is also the home of a female witch (but we didn’t know about her yet). Javen has felt drawn to show love to the husband of the house, making an effort each day to speak him in his own tribal language, Kibende. Last year, this man gave a gift to Javen and has continually softened his demeanor towards our team.

    

      Coming over to greet us one morning, he said that his wife was ill. Our request to pray for her gave him pause for a moment, but he agreed.  We mentioned to a member of our national team (a former witch doctor of the village) that we were going to go pray for this man’s wife. Horrified, he said, “You can’t! She’s a witch!” Once he found out that the husband gave permission, his jaw dropped to the floor. 

     

     We arrived at her house with an entourage of followers, all waiting to see if the witch would allow us to pray for her. Little did we know what God had in store…

    Arriving at her house, I recognized the witch. She is a woman who I greeted almost daily in the village and had sat with at 2 village funerals in the last 3 weeks; yet, I had never known much about her or who she really was. When asked if we could pray for her, her response was, “Do what you want to do.” Not exactly the most welcoming response, but it was all that we needed. As we prayed, the focus of our prayer was not the fever that she was suffering with or the pain that she had physically, we prayed for her heart.

    

     Laying my hand on her shoulder, I began to speak life over her and something happened. As I prayed, I saw a picture in my mind of a little African girl, crossing a river, and as she crossed this river, she witnessed something horrible. It was a traumatizing experience for this little girl, but I never saw what it was that happened. I felt that this picture somehow related to this woman and that God was looking to heal her heart of every hurt from her life. So, I shared a little with her about God healing her heart but never said anything about the picture I had gotten in my mind.

      

     The next day, we went over to check on her, and all that I had been able to think about for the last 24 hrs was this picture of the little girl. As we went back to her house to check on her, I wrestled with myself, knowing I needed to say it. Even as we talked with her, the war inside me continued. It’s one thing to ask God to use you… it’s totally different to actually LET HIM. Finally, I explained what I saw the day before and asked if this meant anything to her, before my interpreter finished speaking, she blurted out, “It was my mother. The little girl was my mother! She told me of this experience when I was a girl.” She looked on with a face of reliving what had been spoken to her at such a young age.

  

     I was then able to say that God loved her so much that He sent a person all the way from America to come to her house, because she was physically in pain, so that He could actually heal the pain in her heart.  Whatever this pain was that affected her, her mother and their family, I (practically a stranger) could never have known it. But God revealed it, so that He could show her how much He loves and cares about her.

Because it doesn’t matter if they are murderer, a church goer, a rapist or a witch…

He Still Loves to Save the Lost.