Seeing hope in the eyes of youth...

The past two and a half weeks have been a whirlwind! We have been learning to adjust to life with no running water or electricity...with no stove and no toilet. It has been an adventure and we've been having lots of fun. It was nice to come back to town and have all of those things again, it makes you appreciate things so much more! And its nice to wear jeans for a couple of days instead of wraps and skirts!

As the title of this blog says, we've been finding hope in the eyes of the Malawian youth! We have gotten the chance to help feed lunch and play games with many orphan youth each Tuesday. It is a joy to get to run and play with them and just be free to laugh! We've also had to days of evangelism in some neighboring villages and they have both been great. It's a great opportunity to give encouragement to the local churches and to share the Word with people who have never excepted Christ but are very ready to listen to what we have to say. We've been able to pray for many people and encourage many others. We have been blessed beyond measure!

My favorite part of the past couple of weeks, though, has been the youth conferences that we've done. We had an all girls conference and an all boys conference for the past two weekends. The conferences start with an evening service on Friday nights and then we do lessons all day Saturday about being a Godly example, how they can serve, faith, prayer, and many other topics. We then finish off with a service Saturday night and a church service with the community on Sunday mornings. During these times we get to dance and sing with the kids, ages 10-18, and we get to see them worship and pray and come up with ideas to be a blessing and witness in their communities. The joy that is in them encouraged my heart and in them I can see the hope for these communities. God is ready to use them in a mighty way and we are trying to do our best to help prepare them and give them the tools to make them successful! It is an amazing privilege to get to be part of the transformation God is doing in their hearts and through their lives. Please continue to pray for these kids as we are going to be doing a mixed, boys and girls, conference this weekend and could potentially have about 150 kids. We are excited to see how God will move in that time! We will also be doing some more evangelism next week and helping one more time with the feeding center. We will be heading back out to the village on Friday and will be gone until the 10th of July. We then leave for Zambia on the 12th. Please pray for continued safety and for open hearts and open minds as we continue to share what God lays on our hearts. Thank you all for all of your prayers and support throughout this time...it is definitely felt in my heart that I'm being lifted in prayer!

Be blessed...be a blessing!
-Katie