2012 Ending Well…
A Message from Missionaries Michael and Keila Dawson:
Happy New Year everyone! I trust your Christmas season was joyful and your new year has started off with the Lord’s richest blessing.
These are stressful days for Venezuela as the leader of the country is undertaking medical treatment and no one really knows what his condition is. Rumors abound, and there is much uncertainty.
But in spite of these uncertain times, or maybe because of them, we had a great time of fellowship with the village over the holidays. Due to lack of fuel, we could not do the multi-village seminars we have done in the past, but decided to go ahead and do something, albeit on a smaller scale with just the people here.
For Christmas, we went on an overnight hunt and then had a time of fellowship, songs and sharing Then on new years eve, after another overnight hunt and village feast, we were at church all evening. Along with praise and time of sharing, we showed a video. I was pleasantly surprised when, while we were waiting for someone, I was asked if I had any Gaither videos, (they used to watch them with Dad and Mom, Ha! We could keep them in church for weeks with Dad’s Gaither video collection!) but I digress, Anyway, I played a song, (Rock of Ages) and the people we had been waiting for showed up, so I figured we would go ahead with the video they were supposed to watch. But they kept asking for more songs…and more songs! We played Gaither videos for over an hour, probably the only reason I made it to midnight, but anyway, funny, the Yanomamö here don’t speak English and the Gaithers don’t sing in Yanomamö, but the language isn’t that important when you are so obviously praising the Lord! The collection I showed tonight is one I did for myself and it is real heavy on songs that have been translated into Yanomamö, so it was cool to watch them singing along in their own language on the songs they did know. I wonder what the Gaither’s would think if they knew that way out in the middle of the Amazon rain forest, there is a tribe of very primitive peoples that love their videos. I’ll bet we are the only Yanomamö village that loves the Gaither videos and southern Gospel music, and have even heard them for that matter. 🙂
We finally started our praise meeting and although I was very tired from having spent the entire previous night hunting and had not gotten any sleep, I was still awake past midnight. We had a number of people that got up and asked the King of the universe to forgive them for their sins and to save them from hell. There was an ovbious working of the Spirit in hearts but after the 5th one, I thought the meeting was almost over, and excused myself at 12:30 AM and walked home. What I had not realizes was that when others heard about the testimonies more and more people started coming and the meeting did not break up until 4 AM! Along with 9 rededications there were 16 young people who got up and made public profession of their faith in Christ before the meeting was over! Praise the Lord with us! I was a bit humbled when I received the full report on the following morning. But on second thought, I thought, well, we always tell people we are working ourselves out of a job, so it is OK if we went on home and let the church leaders handle it. What a joy it is to welcome these new believers into God’s family! Thank you for the part you played in all this with your gifts and prayers. God is good!