Africa 2011: Meet my leper friends

As many of you know I felt called by God to start a new ministry in Moshi, Tanzania, East Africa. In February, I was listening intently to a sermon at church when Pastor Jeff talked about the people that Jesus hung out with. I immediately had tears streaming down my face, and Bruce was quite concerned about what was so upsetting to me. He even wrote me a note as to if I was crying about all of the children who have AIDS. I wrote back... Lepers! He was as shocked as I was.

Throughout the spring, I kept asking God if it was a "Marilyn idea", or if He had really put it in my brain and heart. Many of you had been praying for guidance for me, and I thank you for that. I was also like Moses when he kept asking God to send someone else.

It wasn't until my first encounter with the leper community that I truly realized it was God speaking to me. When I asked Rev. Mahene, my minister in Tanzania, why no one had ever ministered to this group of people, he answered that God had not laid this revelation on anyone's heart before me. It is amazing that close to 30 people gave their lives to Christ. Most were lepers, but some were passersby who stopped to listen to God's word. Even one of our taxi drivers gave his life to Christ. I kept buying more and more Bibles, but never seemed to have enough with me.

I fell in love with all of them. They are a forgotten people who just want to be touched and loved, not feared. All are rather elderly and have come to the city from western Tanzania to try living by begging. There is a different dialect in western Tanzania, and I have at least learned hello and goodbye.

I am sharing these pictures with you. They may make you sad, but as for me they make me determined. Determined to raise more donations (besides the ones for Light in Africa) so that I can again make some food purchases and purchase more beds. They are hungry for food as well as the Word of God. They sleep on scraps of cardboard. Some sleep on a cardboard sandwich... cardboard on the top and bottom with old plastic bags and other soft items squished in between.

It is said that pictures are worth 1,000 words, so I will close in writing and let you see pictures of my new friends.