Mission Moroto Stories: Last Rites
In early 2023, we pushed farther north from the mission and were preaching in new unreached villages. In one village, Lokitelekapeth, the elders asked us to pray for a sick woman. To get to her, we had to kneel down and crawl through a thorn barricade around the village designed to keep out raiders. We would crawl through one barricade and then maneuver a maze and then crawl through a second barricade to access the interior of the village. When we reached the village yard we stood up and noticed mounds of earth everywhere. We asked, “What are they planting in the mounds?” The elders said, “These are graves of those who died of hunger this dry season.” We were stunned to realize the whole village yard was a graveyard of fresh graves. We whispered a prayer and then went to find the sick woman. What we found shocked us. This elderly woman’s body looked like a skeleton with dried leather stretched over it. Her face was swollen from infection to twice its normal size. She lay in the dirt with only her 8-year-old grandson to bring her water and food periodically. They asked us to pray. Papa Matthew confessed later that what went through his mind was, “This lady doesn’t need prayer for healing, she needs last rites prayed over her. She is slipping even now into eternity!” But Papa Matthew and Rebekah laid hands on her and prayed for healing. The lady begged us to take her grandson back to Mission Moroto and the indigenous pastors committed to checking on her regularly to make sure she was getting food and water. Rebekah took the little boy back to the mission. A week later, we were having a revival at our church and hundreds were coming from the villages and one of the indigenous pastors came running up and said, “The lady you prayed over is here!” They took us over and there she was! Face healed and looking so so much better. She hugged us and thanked us. We lifted our hands to heaven and praised the Lord! He is kind like that. She professed faith in Jesus and was baptized that weekend. In the following months, we were led to begin a weekly feeding program that we call Jesus and Porridge where we hire a cook and a teacher in each of 24 local villages and we supply maize flour and sugar and feed and educate over 2000 children and elderly 3 times a week. Amazingly, it costs us only $1 per person per month to do this! Jesus is changing a region, one cup of porridge and one Bible story at a time. www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories