Little Blessings

With all the tragic and stressful events coming out of Hewa right now, it was a huge blessing to talk to my coworker and find out some good news. There was a wedding yesterday between two young believers that we dearly love.

Marriage is complicated in the tribe. Most of the time a girl is sold to a man for some money and pigs. Plenty of times the girl is not happy about the situation, but there is really nothing she can do about it. And in our village we have a lot of young believers who want to marry other believers but that is virtually impossible since most of them are related somehow. Most of the men who are really committed to the Lord just choose to remain single.

It is the girls we worry about most, though, because they usually have little choice in the matter. They can be given to men in other villages and then quickly marked as witches because they are outsiders and easy targets. Needless to say, we want our girls to stay in our village where they can hear and grow in the Word of God and be protected.

One very precious girl named Joli is one of the lucky ones. She was just married to our friend Fawa who is a believer and who will remain living in our village.

Joli is a sweet, quiet girl who has been through a lot of tragedy over the last few years. She lost her mother, her brother, her step-father and was left to care for her severely handicapped sister who then died earlier this year. But through it all Joli continues to listen and grow in the Word. She is a precious girl who loves to help all of us missionary ladies and we are thrilled that she will get to stay in our village and raise her family in the Lord.

This is a sweet and precious blessing to me, especially right now in very difficult days, and I am so thankful to Jesus for allowing us something so praise worthy to think on right now.

Joli helping me dig out "paikz" or cassava root

She is laughing because I am carrying so little :)