Sowlbona, un gan ghwami (hello, you are my friends ~ in sa-swati)

So yea we're in the beautiful country of Swaziland this week.  We got
in late Saturday and had an amazing church service.  It lasted about 2
and a half hours and had at least half of that as worship.  The
preachers here preach in sa-swati which is similar to the language
zulu.  When I say they preach I mean it.  Have you ever heard a
minister yell at the top of his lungs for 80 minutes about the 1st
chapter of Joshua.  It was incredible.  I feel real passion for the
Lord here.  It isn't like you go to church to hear the same old same
old, but the Lord gives you a passion like no other.  This week was
difficult for me at first because I had somebody prophesy of me.  If
you have never heard of that it is when somebody has a vision about you
from God and tells you about it.  You all will be excited to know that
out of about 70 people there are a few of us with the gift of healing. 
HEALING!!  I was scared and excited when my new friend Gary told me. 
This week me and some of my team have been in the Manzini hospital for
2 days (Wednesday & Thursday).  I have been making friends with a
man that has TB really bad.  When I went to his room we prayed and I
didn't feel like God wanted him to be healed.  Weird huh.  So I began
to make friends with this man and his gf.   His name is Thulani and he
also gave me my swazi name, Mufanah (which means man ~ everyones name
has a special meaning).  After about an hour of trying to interpret
what he was saying a swazi minister and his assistant came into our
room.  Check it out I was their scripture boy.  They were yelling their
sermon and they would look at me and yell out verses from Matthew 4 and
John 10.  Wow I was loving it.  Then we all prayed for this man to be
healed in Jesus name.  From what I can understand the man accepted
Jesus while this was going on and was immediately overjoyed to here our
prayers.  After they left I knew that it was time to ask Jesus to heal
him.  I was originally scared to lay hands on the man, but I did ;)  I
visited him yesterday and he was much better.  He had bumps all over
his body on Wed., but yesterday his face looked almost clean of them. 
He said he'd been in the hospital for over 2 weeks and that was his
only night of peaceful rest.  His cough was nearly gone.  The Lord
Jesus came to this man and has given me a gift that I am so incredibly
greatful.  There are at least 5 people we have prayed healing for this
week and we know the Lord will heal them.  I LOVE IT HERE!  I have been
learning the language here in little bits and peaces.  I ask the
children in the squatter camps and they love to teach me silly
phrases.  The most awesome thing happened yesterday.  They had a
feeding at the squatter camp we have been volunteering.  That mean many
of us pooled together money, and helped buy a whole, live cow.  They
killed this cow Wed. night, and they cooked that dude up yesterday. 
Sad day we didn't get to eat it (I did get a bite of something
though).  So we got all these pictures of us literally grabbing the
bull by the horns and lifting the head up.  I was stoked.  Just one of
the many cool stories.  We also danced with the children for hours
during the celebration yesterday.  We love the African music.  I have
met a huge group of friends here that are ON FIRE for Jesus.  They
speak the Truth from the bible.  It sure is good to get away from all
the crap we here in the states.  Even the swazi people are the most
hospitable people I've ever met.  They love the word of God here (many
of them don't have bibles so we read it to them).  I have to encourage
all of you to open up your bibles even if they are lost in your
closet.  Just ask the lord what he wants to show you and I guarentee it
will yield amazing results.  Thanks for your prayers while we're over
here.  We have had some crazy things happen lately.  One of our
teammates Martha has been very sick this week.  She is in a hospital
about an hour away from us.  Also there is another team here from
adventures in missions (not my team but a team in swaziland).  The
homestead next to the one they live on was broken into and the mother
and father of the house were murdered.  They did catch the guy in
charge of it, but these parents had several kids (the youngest is 3). 
Please pray for that family, it breaks me to hear about this tradgedy. 
I really have so much more to say, but to be honest I only have 9
minutes left on this computer....haha.  I really am living by the seat
of my pants here.  I miss you all and please get into God's word
because it's the only life y'all will find when living in such a dark
world.  I'll write again in a week or so, but I am excited because
tomorrow we're going to a wild game park.  Have a good friday

Mufanah, aka marcus