Happy Sabbath--Edited version :)

It’s another beautiful day in Livingstone!  Pastor Arujo, Vice President of the South African/Indian Ocean Division, came to visit the TAA Mission Team on Friday.  He and his wife are spending the weekend with us and treating us to pizza supper tonight. We are going to church soon and will be gone much of the day, so it will be several hours before I can get back to it.  Happy Sabbath to each of you!

“You may not understand what you are doing today,” he told the group. “But it is very important, and worth more than money.  It may seem small to you today, but the impact is great, and eternal.”

Pastor Aruajo then told story of a shepherd who had an eye problem in left eye.  “He found his way to a hospital and as he went into the hall of the hospital he started looking around and realized he was in a different environment and discovered it was an Adventist hospital—a church, school and hospital complex.  For the first time he saw children going to church school and he wanted to go, too.  He found a way to get sponsored in school.  Today he has a PhD and works in a library in an American university.  The impact didn't stop there.  As he studied in an Adventist school, he started sharing with his people/family.  All his (and his wife's) family became Adventists.  He and his wife started saving money and built a school in his village and today more than 300 children are studying in that village.  This is just a small example of how an Adventist education can change not only a small village but hundreds of lives.

“You are changing lives.  Only God in the future can reveal the full impact of what you are doing today.  My wife and I have been serving here for 26 years and have seen it over and over.  This has convinced us that the best investment in Africa is in education, SDA schools.  Changing characters, changing lives.

“Take with you our gratefulness, our thankfulness.  Only in Zambia, this country has as many members as in North America.  50% of the population is Adventist.  Everywhere you go you will find an Adventist, on every level.  This is a Christian country with a strong Adventist membership.  Education is very important.  We'd like not just to talk, but we want to show our appreciation.  We will take you to a pizza place to supper with us in appreciation for what you are doing.  We appreciate your presence here.  Our prayer, our wish, is that you will get more than what you brought here, that your life will be somehow transformed and changed, that God will give to you that feeling that "I would like to come back to Africa."

My prayer that through this experience maybe 2-3 or more of you will be missionaries going wherever the Lord will call you.