Early on Christmas morning (6:30!) I received what at first appeared to be a frantic phone call from Audrey. Here’s what he said:

I just had to call to let you know what happened late yesterday (Christmas Eve)! Some of the kids who come the the children’s worship every Saturday come from families that have macumba (voodoo) temples. We knew they were needy and took some of the Christmas baskets to them yesterday.

They were really quite perplexed, wanting to know why we were doing this. I mean, it’s kind of like them vs. us. We told them that their kids love Jesus and are so excited to learn about him and worship him. We also knew that they were having a difficult time financially. We knew how much Jesus loves them and so we wanted to help out with no strings attached.

If you could have seen just seen their faces!

You’ll never guess what happened?

They wanted to know more about this Jesus we talked about — he was so different than the one they had heard about from other Christians. The end result is that they accepted him on the spot and declared that from that moment forward that their macumba terreiros (voodoo temples) were closed! This was not just one case, but TWO separate cases!

And you thought that you were simply trying to give some hungry kids some beans, rice and sardines!