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Lafawnduh_Mouhotta
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Name: Laura
Gender: Female
Interests: music, movies, theatre, Jesus, ministry, kids, dancing, art, writing, color, traveling, people, reading, baking, eclectic style, flowers, painting my toenails, laughing, playing games...
Expertise: I can do many things... but am an expert at none
Occupation: Other
Industry: Nonprofit
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
10/22/2004
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For those who have asked... here is a little update that i sent about my trip... enjoy!
Hey ya'll,
I can't even begin to tell you how great my trip was! I've chatted some of your ears off about it, but it's hard to describe! God was at work there, and his hand was evident in what we were doing! It was certainly a blessing! Here are a few of my favorite stories.
We worked in the capital city prayer walking and distributing a book called "all that the prophets have spoken." It's a literate story of the prophecies of Jesus, and then the story of his life. This book is tailored to Muslims, and is a really well made book. We went to high school and college campuses and spent time talking to them about life, their studies, God, and anything else they wanted to. At the end of the conversation, we gave them a copy of the book and contact info for a local pastor and believers. It was really great to do this, because people don't have many personal posessions, and many don't have any books of their own. For many this was the first book that they have ever had. We continue to pray that they will read the books and have many questions; and that they will contact the local believers who can share more with them about Jesus.
One particular time that we distributed this book, we encountered the principal of the school while we were distributing. After talking for a while, he asked the missionary we were with if he could get 60 copies of the book. He reads and discusses a book with his faculty and wanted to read this with them next. He also invited the missionary to come back and discuss the book with them. This was one way that we really saw God's hand in our work. Some of the most educated people in that town are going to be exposed to the Truth, and there will be someone there to walk them through the story.
The other part of our time was spent in a village. We had several missionary families, a local believer who is a doctor, a local believer who is a missionary to his people, in addition to our team from OBU. We all prayed together each day before we began our work, and most of us prayed throughout the day as well. We had one group of people helping in the clinic and the waiting room. Each day the local who is a missionary, told Bible stories and preached in the waiting room while people were waiting to see the doctor. There was also a group of students who helped teach in the school each day. They had many opportuniities to teach the school kids to sing Christian songs, and lot's of English. Many kids can't afford to be in school so a group of us spent time playing with them and teaching them English around the village. We also had a small room set up where we gave pedicures to the women who were waiting to see the doctor. This was a very humbling experience and certainly meaningful as well!
Probably the most impacting part of our time in the village was the last day. We went to say goodbye and the chief of the village invited us into his hut. We talked with him for a while, and as we were leaving we asked to pray with him. One of the men prayed for the village and the chief, and after he was finished the chief was a bit emotional. He told us that many Americans and many westerners had been into the village before, but none of them had ever prayed for the village like we had. He said that they see Americans as people who are self sufficient and don't need anything from anyone. After seeing how we prayed, he knew that we were different and that we're people who depend on God and are people of prayer. This was a really big thing for him to say, because prayer is so important to the Muslim people. This left us with an open door for the missionaries in the area to continue to reach out to that village!
Prayer is so powerful, we often doubt it, but I don't know why! Thank you for praying for us and our work there... many seeds were planted among the Senegalese on this trip. I continue to ask each day that God would water those seeds and bring a harvest!
Blessings,
Laura
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| I went to Senegal, Africa... it was incredible! I would love to ramble on and on about it, but I don't know where to begin! God is at work there and that is the bottom line! We saw evidence of His hand in so many things that we were doing, and that was really awesome to be part of! If you want to know more about the trip, i'll be thrilled to tell you, but for those who can't stick around for a 30 page post, I'll spare you!
Sidenote:
Here are some quote from an article I was reading today "Caught in a Crush" I think it's got some good points... i just picked a few..
"Some people come into our lives and have a gift to give us by arousing intense longings," wrote Gail Godwin in Father Melancholy's Daughter. "Often they are not all they could be, in themselves. But some intensity in us exactly matches some intensity in them, some essentialness in us meets a similar essentialness in them.... Whatever the outcome of these feelings, mightn't they suggest the possibility of a union far better than anything we have so far known?"...
"Perhaps part of what we call "infatuation" is the experience of seeing, for one moment, the real person before us, in all their God-given glory and fragility. People's faces, especially, can break our hearts. "There is nothing so astonishing as a human face," wrote Marilyn Robinson in Gilead. "Because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it."...
"On the most fundamental level, our aches point homeward. As Frederick Buechner wrote, "Beneath the longing to possess and to be possessed by the beauty of another sexually — to know, in the Biblical idiom — there lies a longing, closer to the heart of the matter still, which is the longing to be at last where we finally belong.... When I think of all the beautiful ones whom I have seen for maybe no more than a passing moment and have helplessly, overwhelmingly desired, I wonder if at the innermost heart of my desiring, there wasn't, of all things, homesickness."
Sometimes we have to dig deep to understand what we're really longing for. Often the things we think we want wouldn't actually satisfy us if we could have them. Our deepest desire, buried under and running through all the others — is for union with God and all redeemed creatures. That desire comes from the One who planted it in us, wounding us that way so that we can follow our aches home." | | |
| well... no comments on the last post... is it true, what everyone is saying... is xanga really dying? it's so sad to me... it really was my first on-line love... and now look at us...
i'm not a fan of the craziness of the end of the year. I'm stress-queen-cranky-pants...
i don't know what i'm doing when i leave ouachita, and i'm ok with that... but everyone else is really concerned about it... i think like 5 people ask me every day... i'm afraid it makes me look a little irresponsible or something...
this isn't terribly exciting, i'm sorry...
a car on the way home from nashville had two very funny bumper stickers...
"I  Squaredancing" and "Squaredancing is friendship set to music"
Do you Squaredancing?
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| i had intentions of writing a little note about how in only 3 months i'll be packing up my apartment and heading out into the great unknown...
then i realized that it's only 2 months... and somehow that make it seem a lot more real! it's sad, but true... don't start missing me yet... i'm still here!  | | |
| i got my first ticket on Good Friday. i was doing my mom a favor and driving because she didn't want to drive my dads car. she was with me and we both felt like i was trapped by two shady cops who were leap frogging down the road for about 6 hrs. one would pull someone over and the other would clock people as they drove by. there's a law in texas that you have to slow 20mph below the speed limit and/or go into the other lane when passing an emergency vehicle... who knew??! anyway, i drove by going 45 in a 55 and swerved into the other lane, but did not fully enter or fully slow, thus i got a ticket. i was really ticked off and i said the word "freakin" about 10 times with my mom in the car. i was a little embarassed about my behavior, but she was gracious to me.
ironically my dad had gone to the store a couple of hours before the incident and he saw them there in the same spot. he actually saw the whole thing happen because he was going back home and literally passed me when the lights were behind me. for the record, he said that i swerved into the other lane enough, and also felt like i was trapped.
my family isn't one of those that sides with someone and says they were right when they were clearly wrong, but in this case we felt like i was jipped. i think my mom would have told the cop off if i hadn't put my hand on her knee and given her the "mom look" and said 'that's enough.' it was really funny.
so i was pretty ticked off about that on friday, but then i realized that i was sulking and whining about something so stupid on GOOD FRIDAY... clearly much more important things were to be reflected on that my newly tainted driving record and $250 fine...
lessons learned... HE is still good... always good | | |
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