Being a peanut seller is not always the most exciting or easiest job to live life on. You have to patience to sit long hours, you have to make relationships with the people and of course you have to have good peanuts. Most days there are only a handful of buyers; some days there are more, other days there are less and most of the buyers we would call “weekly regulars.” However, this is the life O lives daily!
O lives day by day and week by week on her peanut/ice sales. Every week she hopes to sell enough peanuts/ ice to buy more peanuts/ice to sell them the next week. The money that she has left over is then used to take care of her family. She is the one that provides for her seven children…she feeds them, she takes care of all of their needs and if one of them gets sick, she is responsible for their medications. Not only does she have to take care of her children, but there are weddings to attend, extended family to take care of and over the last year O is now required to pay a tax to the government for the street side corner she sells her peanuts/ice on. For her there is no concept of a bank account, savings, interest, or even what it means to have a large quantity of money; for the money she earns is needed for everyday life.
Over the last 2 months that L0ri and I have been back in M@li, O has shared with us some of her financial difficulties. More than once we have seen the pain and worry on her face because she did not have the money to buy peanuts to sell that week. Her eyes often penetrated with worry about her everyday life and responsibilities.
However, God’s w0rd tells us in M@tthew 6:25, 31-33:
“…I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food and your body more than clothing? So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the K1ngdom of G0d above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”
So we explained to O that Father can provide and will provide if she believes. For weeks we pr@yed with her asking Father to provide her with: peanuts to sell, people to buy her peanuts and an increase in how much peanuts she sells in a week. Then one Sunday O visited our house to w0rship and pr@y to Father. For one week she left town to go visit her brother and her daughters were in charge of selling the peanuts. Monday evening I spent time with her daughters husking and bagging peanuts to sell the rest of the week. Then on Tuesday I visited one of her daughters on the street to continue to work peanuts and sell them.
It was on this Tuesday that I began to see Father working in O’s life! Father was providing for O and her family! I have never seen peanuts sell on the street like I saw on Tuesday. Every 10-20 minutes somebody would come up to her peanut stand and buy peanuts. The most amazing part it didn’t stop on Tuesday, but continued on Wednesday and Thursday. In fact by Thursday evening her daughter told me they would be working peanuts again on Friday!
This week Father showed O that He has provided and He will continue to provide!
Please pr@ise Father with us for His provision of O’s peanut sales. Please continue to pr@y with us His provision for O and her family.
That is awesome to read how God is so faithful.