Where God Commands the Blessing

'How wonderful, how beautiful, when brothers and sisters get along! It's like costly anointing oil flowing down head and beard, Flowing down Aaron's beard, flowing down the collar of his priestly robes. It's like the dew on Mount Hermon flowing down the slopes of Zion. Yes, that's where God commands the blessing, ordains eternal life.' The Message

Hello Everyone,

Recently, my team and I spent a week in community for some training for our Care Workers. It is a wonderful opportunity to walk more closely with people and for God to do a work in all of our lives. Our Care Worker volunteers are called from local churches but this does not necessarily mean they know the Lord personally and that their beliefs are not mixed with other cultural spiritist beliefs. So, we take the opportunity to always share the gospel of Jesus and invite the Holy Spirit to come into people's lives.

What a joy it was to see many longing for more of God and wanting to recommit their lives and be led by the Holy Spirit. We also needed to be prepared for the demonic to show itself in protest. Prayers for deliverance began but will need to be ongoing. Now, the Lord reveals to us the spiritual nature of what we have been battling for so long. Disunity and conflict caused by selfish ambition and envy. It has sin and a alliance with demonic practices at its root. How we all need God's redemption and pure wisdom in our lives or we are lost and causing strife for ourselves and others.

The training teaches the volunteers the history of Hands at Work and its core values. Basically, it is a biblical teaching and practical outworking of the Church's mandate to serve the orphan and widow in their distress and keep oneself away from the self-centredness of the world (James1:27). Our Zambian volunteers were deeply moved by George's story. How a white South African man crossed the lines that were never breached and went into black communities to nurse the dying of AIDS. People rejected by their own families and left to die alone because of the fear of an unknown disease. It was these dying people who pleaded to have their children taken care of, knowing that the family who no longer cared for them may have no concern for their children. We are now ministering into this legacy. Decades later there is medication for people who are HIV positive. People are able to manage their condition and it is no longer a death sentence, if they keep up with the medicine. Yet still there a millions of AIDS orphans across Africa and so many other vulnerable children. All who God would have us see and care for. This story helped our Care Workers understand that they are part of this calling and they too need to cross the lines of their own culture and community, to find the lost and care for them as their own.

For my team, one of the most important experiences is to have a community stay at the homes of some of the children we serve. I stayed with a grandmother who is caring for five children -- aged from 13 to four. The elder two are her own and the three youngest are her daughter's. Their mother works away from the family, trying to scrap together enough to eat. Hands at Work built the family a new, modest house last year because their mud hut crumbled in the rainy season. At nightfall the three eldest boys returned from the work they do straight after school. They spend the afternoon shepherding a farmer's goats and earned 10 Kwacha for all three of them. That's just over 80 cents! Everyone has to do what ever they can or they just won't eat. When we stay with a family we always take a food parcel to leave behind us. The grandmother asked, however, to use this food to feed all of us. She was embarrassed to offer us the very little and slightly rotten maize meal they would eat. For many of our most vulnerable children the food at the Care Point is the only meal they eat that day. I couldn't eat much. Just enough to be polite and try and push for the rest to be given to the children and not a guest.

This is why we are here and this is why it is so important to allow God to rid us of our sin, pride and selfishness. So that we stop fighting each other and turn our minds, hearts and attention to these silent little ones lost in their suffering. You can see in the photo above that the children are so shy that they can barely look at the camera. Peace and unity invite God's blessing and anoint us for his work. May we all cooperate with him and his calling to see what he sees.

Please Pray that:

• the work the Lord began in our Care Workers lives continues and that people would whole heartedly seek peace, love and forgiveness

• unity is restored as people submit to the Lord and repent of sin and for allowing Satan to use them for his purpose

• we all become completely focussed on the important task of using all our capacity to help the most vulnerable, who struggle to help themselves

• everything we do would glorify Jesus and that the things done, he also would do.

God Bless you for your support and prayers,

Emma