This is so beyond cool. Refuge, the band I play with, had a gig at an “underground” church in Kabul yesterday. The church here has to stay low-key to avoid persecution or worse; a Christian church that opened publicly was destroyed. We were blessed enough to be invited to lead them in worship. The church is hidden, to find it one follows little fish around the city and the church is marked with a big fish! The bassist giggled to me that this is how Paul must have felt two thousand years ago. I had to include a pic of it. This is just the coolest church; before the service we went upstairs to a classroom to pray, and discovered that they painted the walls with Veggie Tales….stuff like “God is bigger than the Taliban”. We went nuts, the band leader had to corral us up so we could pray and get ready for the service.
I’m still blown away by the fire from that service. There were about two hundred missionaries from all over the world there. We barely got two chords in before the entire crowd erupted with the Holy Spirit; the entire band was struggling to keep from being overwhelmed by all the emotion of the worship service. I’ve never experienced that amount of love and joy by that many people at any one time…I mean, every single one of these people left the safety and comfort of home to come to the Afghanistan to minister in various ways…and every single one has this fire and passion I’ve rarely seen. You couldn’t hear the band because the crowd was singing every single song so loud that they drowned us out! The sound and joy of 200+ of them in this small “underground” church to avoid persecution…is indescribable.
After the service we got to listen to them about their individual missions…and the most amazing thing is that 3 of them are from Woodman Valley!!!
On a back note, the military volunteers have been swamped with donations and we don’t have the capability to get this influx of donations out to those in need…It’s a great problem to have but its caused me some grief because I feel like we’re failing the people back home that were willing to send the donations out of their own pockets. I’d been praying for some way for us to distribute these donations for the past couple weeks….
And one of the Woodman Valley members over here and his wife said that they’ve been struggling to find supplies to give out!!! Can you believe this!!!! This just blows my mind, how God brings everyone’s needs and surpluses together for his greater good! So the jist is that the military dudes may not be able to personally give out the supplies, but someone from Woodman will!