life in cape town and onward to zimbabwe!

"In Christ all will be made ALIVE." I cor. 15:22

It has been a while since I last blogged and I feel that so much has happened! The Lord has really been doing so much in my life. So much is going on all the time; everyday there is an abundance of things i am learning and experiencing here. so this week i began asking the Lord to show me what he is doing in all these things, specifically in my heart. the thing i felt him say is that in this season my heart is coming ALIVE! (which is really exciting :) I feel that in this season so much is being revealed in me and i am really stepping into the things i am created to be. learning to love the things the Father has given me. allowing Jesus to delight in who i am and not what i do. really running with him, fully trusting him to take me to the places he has for me! Hallelujah!

There is a group of us who spend our nights on the weekends praying and worshipping in the prayer shack in our backyard. It has been so sweet to really press into God’s presence and to experience more and more of the Living God! One night as we were praying I was looking at some pictures that are hanging on the wall of the prayer shack of kids in Masi who are apart of the Vulnerable Children program. All of a sudden my heart was flooded with emotion and I began crying. That night the Lord really poured out his heart over me for the children of Africa, specifically in Masi. I mourned the injustice of the things these kids face everyday. So many children are growing up without fathers and/or mothers. Disease, neglect, abuse, addiction, fear, abandonment and hopelessness plague the families of Masi. Children face everyday things I could never imagine the children I know from home facing even on one occasion. I mourned that night, but God also began stirring my heart. He gave me Ezekial 37 where God calls Ezekial to prophecy life over the pile of bones, and as he does the dry bones come to life, and come together in a “vast army.” I felt God calling me to prophesy over these children, prophesying life, hope, destiny over them. Calling out to each child by name because as each was born God saw them and dreamed extravagant dreams over them. He still longs for those dreams to come to pass, he longs for each child to live out their glorious destiny. Although they are over looked in this world and are oppressed by the injustices of society, the Father sees them and the great Rescuer comes to break their chains. So I feel that he is asking me to stand in the gap and to cry out for each child to come and step into their destinies…calling them to be the generation that seeks the face of God. (Psalm 24:6). Some of the things that I feel God has been stirring up in me since being here at CPx is a desire to see children raised up to know God, to love him and to hear his voice. And a longing to see families restored…Father’s returning to their children, mother’s healed and set free, and children being loved, treasured and raised up! This is so near to God’s heart!
Since that night in the prayer room a week ago, I have been praying over the children of Masi, specifically the children in the V.C. program. I have a list of all the households and each of the children’s names. I have been taking each household and praying for the children by name. As I have been praying the Lord has given me words and dreams that he has over each child, and I have been speaking those words over the kids. Here is a fun story about one of the children I prayed over:
Every Friday we have a kids club where we gather the Vulnerable Children program. i was praying over one of the households that i have never met...i prayed over a little 10 year old girl named Lucy. I felt the Lord speaking several things over her. That afternoon in masi we were going around to the households gathering the children for the kids club. one of the households i went to gather from was Lucy's! she was pretty quiet and was not opening up to me at first. but as we were walking she reached up and touched my clip (my friend brooke made me some hair clips that i could wear and then give away to little girls in masi) ...so i pulled the clip out of my hair and put it in hers. she was so excited! i told her that i wanted to give this to her but she had to promise to remember a few things everytime she wore it. i told her when she wears it she must tell herself 1.) I am beautiful! 2.) God loves me! 3.) and whitney loves me too! her face lit up...and her walls started to come down. i then told her that earlier that day i had been praying over some kids from the vulnerable children progam and she was one of them. i then told her that God had told me that he created her to be a light in this world. that where there was bad things and darkness, God had made her to bring light and love to those places. she got so excited and said "my name means light!" i got to share with her some more about God's heart for her. it really felt that she understood that God had spoken these things! it felt so significant. it was seriously one of the sweetest moments i have had in masi so far. Praise God! He loves his children!

In other news! As most of you know, the last 6 weeks of CPx are spent on short term outreach trip where we can apply all the things we are learning in the teaching phase. I just found out last week that I will be going to…

ZIMBABWE!

I leave on April 23 for Victoria Falls, which is located in Northern Zimbabwe, right on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. From what I hear, Victoria Falls is beautiful and is like Niagra Falls but ten times bigger! We will be living in a community of about 150,000 people, called Chinotimba. As most of you know, the county of Zimbabwe was once known as the “breadbasket of Africa.” The country was prosperous and stable; however, due to the leadership of president Mugabe, the economy of Zim has been destroyed. The people of Zim were left to fend for themselves in a country where billions of Zim dollars could not even buy food for a family due to the extreme inflation. I have prayed for Zim many times for the issues the country is facing and it is a joy to be able to actually go and meet the people and serve them! The team I am going with consists of our team leader Munya, who is from Zim, two couples from Florida, David and Shannon and Ray and Stacy, and a black South African named Wonder. We will be living in the community we will be serving in which is very exciting to me!

And I hear that elephants live right outside where we are staying!

i am so excited and expectant for what God is going to do in our time there! i am praying that even now he would begin giving us each his heart, dreams and vision for his beloved country of Zimbabwe!

And in closing i wanted to include a picture of the new love of my life...Jasper Aslan. The All Nations family adopted Jasper and asked me and my roommates if we would take care of him. i don't even like cats but i LOVE jasper! i am really pretty obsessed with him!

THANK YOU to each and everyone of you for being with me on this adventure and loving, supporting and encouraging me! i thank God for all of you!

MUCH LOVE FROM AFRICA!
whit

the Divine Orchestrator!

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…

And God saw that it was good.”
Genesis 1:1 &10

God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing. He formed the earth and everything in it. When I really look at nature it never ceases to amaze me how everything fits together so perfectly. I have been studying Genesis 1 with several groups of women in Masi this past week (pretty sweet when women who don’t really know Jesus are teaching you knew things about God. Yes!). I have been struck really deeply with some truths drawn from this story. God is an orchestrator. Every detail of creation screams this truth. I have been for the 100th time learning to trust God in a new way since I have been here. On Friday during our time in Masi, the Lord moved in such a powerful way that I truly feel changed by it. There wasn’t any crazy healing, no one got raised from the dead, and the multitudes didn’t give their lives to Jesus. However, I was left in awe of the greatness of God and feeling so secure in the Father’s faithfulness. Here is the story.

My group that I do outreach in Masi with (Julianna and our friend, Vuyani) began our day by going to find Nokuthula, a girl we met the week before. She is hungry to know more about Jesus, so we set up a time to meet with her and her friends to pray and read the Word together. On the way we were going to drop by one of the Vulnerable Children houses. As we are heading down the main street we passed a group of girls. I made eye contact with one of them for a bit and I felt the Lord telling me that I was suppose to talk with her because she was hungry to know Him. But for some reason I didn’t do it. So as we are looking for this house, we got a bit lost and were walking in circles. We passed that same group of girls again about 10 minutes later. As we passed by the group, the girl I knew I was suppose to talk to was passing directly in front of me and for some reason neither of us got out of each other’s way. We ended up standing face to face. Her name is Siwapiwe. She asked me what we were doing in Masi. After telling her about our heart for Masi, she said that she wanted to walk around with us sometime. I told her that we could come by her house later that day. We then headed to meet Nokuthula. When we got there she led us to her friend’s house that wanted to meet us. But her friend was not there. We went to the library to try and find a place to hang out. The library was in mass chaos with hundreds of kids…and somehow we ended up on a tour of the library. We went up the stairs to the computer section and as I walked up the stairs a beautiful little girl greeted me. We finally found a quiet spot and had a really sweet time with our friend. After hanging out with her we went to find the house of the girl we met earlier, Siwapiwe. As we walked up to her home, we realized that it was the exact shack we had come to with Nokuthula! The girl I felt the Lord calling me to speak with and the friend of Nokuthula was the same girl! We knocked, but Siwapiwe was not home. As we were waiting for her, I saw a woman across the street coming in and out of her shack. Her shack was my absolute favorite color (turquoise, of course) and she seemed really lovely. I really wanted to go talk to her, so I went over while we were waiting for Siwapiwe. She was SO friendly and invited us to sit with her and gave us some coke. She told us that she has two kids who were at the library for an afterschool program. I thought to myself, “I bet her daughter is the little girl who greeted me at the computer area.” Sure enough, a minute later her kids came home and it was the same little girl! A few minutes later, Siwapiwe got home. We called her over and come to find out, she is really close with the woman we were sitting with. Earlier that day the Lord had given me a word for someone we would meet later that day about the parable in Matthew 13:44 of the treasure hidden in a field. I feel the Lord spoke so clearly who his treasures were that day. Every person we came in contact with were connected. The crazy thing is that these people were not all from the same area. We had been all over the community. Masi is big but God is bigger. Our steps were ordered so perfectly. The Lord sees and has plans for these women.

God is a divine orchestrator. He orders our steps. He won’t let us miss the good things he has for us. There is such assurance when we walk with the Father. This encounter that I had in Masi sealed something in my heart… I can trust the Father. He is so big and he knows exactly what we need. We can throw ourselves on his promises. We can put every hope in him and we will never be disappointed. He brings all things together for our good. I am so thankful that I have such good news to share with a hurting, weary and oppressed people! My heart is welling up with joy and praise for God our Creator. My heart’s desire is more and more to walk in adoration and worship as I keep my eyes fixed on Jesus, the lover of my soul. Thank you again to all who have made it possible to be here…I am so thankful for this time in my life and what the Lord is doing in me! MUCH LOVE! whit