About a month or two ago, I was able to connect with the
President of the Tribunal here in Manakara.
Her position is the equivalent to the Chief Judge of a Federal Court in
the U.S. I prayed that I would meet an
attorney that I could befriend and I ended up meeting her; she was an absolute
answer to prayer. Since meeting her our
relationship has grown tremendously. We
have shared meals with her and her children and have enjoyed enlightening
discussions about the culture and political climate of Madagascar. Tiffany and Laura have definitely blogged
about her before and if you are on my email list, you have already heard about
her. She impresses me so much. She told us that she came from a poor family
and she took her education very seriously.
To become a judge here in Madagascar, there is further schooling after
receiving your law degree. Entry into
the judicial program is very competitive and under 20 students are accepted
each year. She has been a judge for 10 years
and has balanced a marriage and had 3 children within that time. She was appointed President of the Tribunal
in June of this year and she is sort of like a local celebrity. What is even more awesome about her is that
she is a Believer; a shameless Believer.
She has told us how she encourages litigants who appear before her with
scripture and lessons from the Bible; something you wouldn’t normally expect
from a member of the judiciary who is supposed to be impartial. I really admire her faith though and today I
was absolutely blown away.
Elections took place in Madagascar on October 25th
and Olga had been very busy since then.
She had to count and collect local ballots and travel to the capital to
deliver them. We usually see her once or
twice a week but we haven’t really seen her at all since the elections. She sent us a text message last night
inviting us to visit the local prison with her today. We weren’t sure what would happen or what to
expect but we knew it would be interesting and so we went anyway. When we arrived, Olga told us that she had to
tell the prisoners that the government would not be supplying them with any more
money for food and they would have to rely on their families to bring them
meals. That was an obvious shocker to
all of us. Also, the prison conditions there
made U.S. prisons look like 5 star hotels (the few U.S. prisons that I’ve been
in at least). When Olga addressed the
men, they were all sitting nicely and their attention was on her. The attention of over 200 men was captured
and all she had to give them was bad news.
After she addressed them, they didn’t get upset or unruly, they all just
continued to sit with these pitiful looks on their faces. One of us made the comment that it looked
like they were ready for a Gospel presentation and so…when opportunity knocks
we walk right on in. We asked Olga if we
could share the Gospel with them and she said yes! We shared the story of the prodigal son from
Luke 15:11-32. Olga read the story in
Malagasy and afterwards we explained it with our translator Mika. We told them that we are all like the son in
the story. We mess up and we stray away
from God, but if we return to Him with humility, acknowledging that we are
sinners and we are not worthy of His grace, then through Jesus Christ, we can
come back into a right relationship with God, the Father. After the story and further explanation of
its significance, I asked if there was anyone who wanted to come back into a
right relationship with God. So many men
raised their hands…I almost burst into tears (happy tears of course). Kai, along with Mika’s Malagasy
interpretation, explained salvation through Christ and then led all of the men
in a prayer. After we prayed with the
men, we visited the minors and the women and each of those visits was similar
to the one with the men. After today, I believe we have many new brothers and
sisters in Christ and we have already talked about wanting to return to the
prison to worship and fellowship with them.
Today was a reminder of why I am doing what I am doing. God knew this day would happen before we even
arrived in Madagascar. He opened the
door for us to meet the Judge and absolutely set the table for us to share the
Gospel and pray the prayer of salvation with those prisoners today.
We only have 31 days left until we are back in the States but
the Holy Spirit is moving here in Manakara.
Please pray for the prisoners we met today (sorry I don’t have names and
we weren’t allowed to take pictures…but God knows every single one of them). Please also pray that in these last few weeks
our voices will be still and God’s voice will be heard, that we would be seated
and He would stand.
For
the Kingdom,
plc
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