Tommy Downs

Tommy Downs

A Servant of Jesus Christ

Joy's Sector Trip Update

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since I’ve wrote. We had a bunch of Zambian chiefs on base a while back. Zambia’s been in a drought for the past two years, so we unified together believing for rain. It’s coming and it’s gonna bring glory to God. We went out on our sector expedition last week, it rained a bit while we were there, praise the Lord, but more’s coming. The expedition was amazing, we got to preach two to three times a day, and pray for people everywhere we went. Many people got saved and encouraged, and people are being healed, hallelujah!

Tommy, Hop, and I have gone to the village near the base (Nsongwe) twice now to do ministry. Each time we go, we take a Cambodian friend of ours. We invite other AMTers to go with us, but they’ve been busy. Anyway the first time we went to several houses; wherever our interpreter lead us. We got to share the gospel, encourage believers, and pray for people. The second we went we got to revisit some of the people we had ministered to the time before. One woman we prayed for and this time she was asking for us to pray for her again, because she was doing much better, hallelujah! Another woman we had preached to had never heard the gospel, but she was very open and she accepted Christ. When we went back the second time she was telling us how she’s been praying, reading the Bible, and going to church; she’s even stopped smoking, and she’s just full of life, the change is visible in her. We got to minister to many more people, it’s amazing! After the sector expedition I’m more confident in ministering because of all the practice I got.

A couple days ago I was pretending to be a tiger and I chased the children here at base around. They had a lot of fun; although they were a little scared at first. I actually scared a couple of the adults with how convincing my growling was.

So much has happened I don’t really know what to talk about. My friend Madelynn, aka American me, has been reading my mind. It’s crazy! We were playing the game Things (if you don’t know what that is, you should, it’s one of my favorite games) and she like always knew my answer. It was weird, because I would try to come up with an answer that she wouldn’t guess was mine and she’d still get me out.

Me and Hop live in a house now, with a toilet, a shower, a fridge, and a fan. It’s crazy, we’re so spoiled.

It’s like we’re celebrities when we go into the villages because we’re white people. The word that the Tonga people use when they see us is Makuas(white people/foreigners). The children especially, they get really excited when they see us. When we were on expedition Hop, our friend Theara, and I rode around in the back of a van. Our ministry partners were in the front of the vehicle, and whenever people would come up to the driver to greet him, they would look back and see us. “Oh, you got Makuas”, then turning back to address us they would wave, “Hi Makuas”; it was really funny. At one point when we were ministering I got really tired and so I went to nap in the car; when I woke up it was almost time to go. Anyway I sat up in the car and saw a crowd of children staring at me. I hadn’t even done anything, except sit up, but they think Makuas are interesting. I started making funny faces at them and they broke out in smiles and laughter. Soon even more children gathered around on both sides of the car to watch me make faces at them, it was so cute. (They had just finished children’s ministry, so it’s not like they were being neglected. The children just wanted to watch the silly Makua). Some of the little children are terrified of Makuas. One lady came up to me to have me pray for a little kid and he was squirming and crying, trying to get away from me; I did still pray for him.

I think that’s all I’m going to say for now. We’re doing good; God is just blessing us left and right. We love you all, and look forward to seeing you again.