Wound Care & The Word

It's almost midnight here and since my lovely wife announced to the world about this blog, thought you'd oughta have something fairly current (akpe kv).

Today, my teammate, Steve Price, and I continued our weekly meeting at Dekpo (deek-po). We do a holistic ministry here in Benin and today was a good example. Steve's specialty is minor wound care. The two Aja men who went with us helped him cleaning wounds, changes bandages, and translating. We pray for their wounds, some of which come by way of bicycle accidents (sometimes falling off, sometimes from ripping their skin on the pedal!), insect bites that get infected and then start eating away at the flesh and then the bone (have I grossed you out yet?), and then the most surprising of all is always, "I whacked my leg by accident at the farm with my machete." Ah, life in Benin.

Steve's ministry is fantastic and so well received. For free, he'll clean their wounds, bandage them up and provide follow-up the next week. For some or even most, these people are not bringing wounds that they got yesterday. Most say at least a month or two, but even surprising is how many say, "oh, I've had this for about 3-4 years." Wound care at the hospital costs precious money and rarely is it deemed valuable enough. So they sit out in these remote villages with chronic wounds. Steve's ministry brings hope to these people. It was the main reason that a church started here at Dekpo last December when we were on furlough.

We trade places after a couple of hours of wound care and I continue my study of the Book of John. All of these people are non-literate, so my teaching requires a style based on such. Alot of REPETITION and storytelling. Trying to get them to tell the story once they've heard it. And we do alot of memorization. Haven't found good success with verse-by-verse memorization, but certainly certain key verses. Last week was....of course....John 3.16. However, there's nothing like sharing that scripture with people who have NEVER heard it before you tell them. The light in their eyes is really something.

Today's lesson was 2-part. The first was a lesson about the woman at the well. We focused on (1) Jesus' willingness to speak to a Samaritan....POINT: Jesus has no enemies...only desires reconciliation with everyone. (2) Jesus is the Water of Life.....POINT: If we put our trust in Him, we will never dry up! The second lesson was about the official's son being healed at a distance. Still an amazing story....that when the father returns to find his son well, and he asks about what time it was when he got better and BAM!!!....he figures out it was the exact hour he was with Jesus. He's more at amazed at Jesus, but we all should be amazed at his faith!!

Our study of John is focusing on the following FIVE TRUTH STATEMENTS (we work on these each time....after 3 lessons, most are getting most of it!):

#1 - God is Light and has from the beginning of time desired peace with all mankind!
#2 - Sin is Darkness and we stand condemned because of it!
#3 - Satan is the Deceiver and the Enemy of God and all believers are at war with him all the time!
#4 - Jesus, God's only Son, came to earth to be:

- the Water of Life
- the Bread of Life
- the Light of the World
- the Healer
- the Conquering Victor
- the Sacrifice for Sin
- the King
- the Way
- the Truth
- the Life

#5 - We are Jesus' disciples and His witnesses. We continue the ministry of Jesus so that all mankind would repent in anticipation of the return of Christ!


These truths all come from John (we could add more but these are the ones God helped me come up with). Like John 3.16, these are truths these new believers are hearing for the very first time.

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My mom has recorded tons of different TV shows from the States and we are loving watching them (a real escape from this place!) Just finished LOST....confused and bored at first, but as the season went on, I got hooked....loved the finale (not because a kid gets kidnapped but because it's truly a cliffhanger). We're big West Wing fans, and although I was not surprised by the finale, it does make it fun to think about the next season's election of a new president. NYPD Blue is a rough show, and have only watched a few over the years, but this is the finale season. It's always interesting (Law & Order is that way too). No, we don't watch TV all day long, but at nights, we are certainly not pulled in different directions like in the States so we have more free time in the evenings. Alot of times, I'll just love watching the commercials just to feel "current".


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Some dear friends gave us a VERY NICE financial gift this past month...we are SO thankful for their generosity. They, too, are in ministry so they understand how special such gifts are....as I said in one of the recent posts, we are SO BLESSED! Thanks dear friends!!!


Just asked the Blogger to run a SpellCheck on this posting and guess what word was not in their dictionary...."blog".... :)


-Rockin Randall