Africa Trip Written
by Lauren Baldwin
Zambia was amazing and I am already counting down the days until I get to go back. The actual
traveling time was long, but completely worth it.
I cannot
even begin to tell you how blessed it makes me feel to have family and friends praying for me and thinking of me! Thank you
so much for praying for me and for God's work in Zambia.
These
were my girls week 2: (same age as last week) I am mentioning them by name so if you are led to do so, please keep them in
your prayers! Bupe, Eunice, Charity, Cleopatra, Fatima, Rounert, Martha, Queen, Rita, and Tina
The same schedule pretty much goes on every
week at camp (like I shared with week one update). Week 2 went faster for me, maybe because I knew what to expect and more
adjusted to the time difference; however, many amazing testimonies and lives changed were still experienced in very real and
powerful ways!
My biggest story update from my second week of campers
is that one of my girls is a prostitute, sleeps with up to six men a day, has basically every STD known about and probably
AIDS too, but we had not heard back when I left about the AIDS test. So she definitely needs prayers; her name
is Charity.
One of my friends on the trip (an American) has
an amazing story that gives me chills. She went to Zambia for the first time two summers ago, and when she went she was very
anti-anything having to do with Christianity, because she was involved in an incident in which a high-up male of her church
touched her in a way that was inappropriate. Anyway, upon arriving to Zambia she was kind of overwhelmed because she had gotten
boys assigned to her and didn't know if she was gonna be able to relate to them, etc. During a blessing time with a boy named
Gift, she asked if she could pray for him, and he said "no let me pray for you." She began to bawl; she had not
cried in a few years because that incident had basically shut her down emotionally.
She came back to Zambia this
year and looked for Gift, but he could not come to camp because he was in government school (this is a good thing). On
Thursday, in the compounds, she finds Gift. He pulls out the picture of she and him from his certificate (all campers receive
a certificate with picture of them and counselor to remember the week by) and says to her, "I
have not forgotten about you, I pray for you every day and fasted for you because I knew you couldn't." My friend almost "lost it" because the reason that she couldn't go to Zambia last summer
is because she was in an in-patient treatment program for anorexia. What an amazing story about how awesome God is to
connect people in the natural and in the supernatural!
Thank
you all again for the many prayers, thoughts, written blessings and support for me to be able to experience what
I did. Be expecting a letter with more information soon!
Love to all,
Lauren Baldwin
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