Hey all. i haven't blogged in a while, because i hate blogging when i don't have anything encouraging to write. It's not that God isn't working, because He is, it's just really hard to explain sometimes. Pretty much, I'm messed up right now. The last couple of weeks some of us have been studying a book by Donald Millar called Searching For God Knows What. He tells of a time when he was really unsatisfied with Christianity because his religion just didn't answer the hard questions of life. After thinking about it for a while, Don decideds to tell God that He didn't exist. While reading this I decided to take everything I know about God and question it, even down to his existance. What is just head knowledge and what do I actually believe in my heart to be true? After breaking everything down, I was left with two things that I could not deny; God exists and God loves. Even though in the last couple of months almost everything I've known about God has been striped from me, I feel like the little that I know in my heart is real and sincere. 

Last week I was really broken. I was missing home and I just kept realizing how much life sucks. One of the ladies we visit, Regina, got beat up by a drunk fisherman during broad daylight. The fishermen are getting really violent, they've been on strike since I've gotten here and all they do is drink and fight, even though I have no idea where they get the money to drink. Another of my friends is married to one of the striking fishermen and I know that he takes her money, probably spends it all on booze because she is constantly stressing about that fact that she has no money to feed the kids. When Regina was telling us about how she got beat up, she burst out into tears and began to tell us about how she has HIV and TB and she was SO worried about people finding out. She was a wreck, she wasn't eating or sleeping and she couldn't stop crying, and she had sent her kids to her moms place for the night because she couldn't handle life. That night while feeding the streets kids, we had to deal with racist old men, a 10-year-old kid crying because one of the older kids stole his glue, and a drunk fisherman who got beaten up by other drunk fishermen because he had tried to get a different job. There is just SO much pain and suffering everywhere I go. 

I walk into any given grocery store or gas station and on the front of every newspaper reads, 'Zimbabwe cries for help', or I see pictures or people eating bugs. Almost all my good friends from Ithemba and many from LXP are from Zim, and they've been talking about how bad it's getting there, but only this last week did it really hit me how desperate the situation is. About 600 have already died from cholera and almost 13 000 are infected, these people are dying from drinking dirty water. They don't have any jobs, so they have no money, so they can't by bottled water or food but even if they did have money, there is no bottled water or food to be bought. The Pick-n-Pays are empty. A couple of my friends went home to Zim for Christmas, and they packed the back of their truck with food to feed their families. Their government is a mess, and innocent people are dying because of it. I feel so helpless and useless. 

The most amazing thing to see is these men from Zim worship. Their passion is so inspiring. Knowing what they must be thinking and seeing them worship is so incredible. If they can worship God, I can worship God. If they can say 'God is good', I can say 'God is good'.