11/12/08



Say a prayer for the elections here this Sunday. It’s weird to be in a country where their biggest hope is no bloodshed…. 33 political parties. Could be fascinating.

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We had two teachers stop by last week and ask us to come speak at their school. Apparently someone had given them a gospel tract, and they wanted us to come speak to their students. So we loaded up a taka-taka and went with them.

We drove most of the way, and then walked through about a block or so of houses. Their classroom was in the back room of a mud-brick home. The floor was uneven dirt. No desks. Just those little plastic chairs you buy at Dollar General for your kids to play with, along with a small hand-made wooden bench and a couple of blocks of wood. A small blackboard hung from one wall. When you say they teach with nothing, well you are talking about nothing.

So we got to share the Gospel with these kids.

Their parents were 200 feet away celebrating the ‘Day of the Dead’ with the local witch doctor.

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I’ll keep it short here, because I already took a moment to spell out the story for the PREACH webpage, but Allen Johnson led one of the local men to the Lord Tuesday night! Keep praying, guys! God’s at work!

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I remember when I was about ten and we visited my grandparents church. A real Assemblies of God church, with drums and electric guitars. And I was standing there after church, decked out in my full Mennonite garb, bowl-cut hair and large 1980’s glasses. The preacher called me up to the stage and we chit-chatted for awhile. Before we left he wanted to hug me, and said a prayer. And then he said, “you know, son, one day I think I see you in India or something like that.”

That pastor went on to his heavenly reward not many years after. But the other night while I was sitting on the ground for our out-of-doors church service, with 40 nationals (most of them children) crowded around, I found myself looking up at heaven and grinning.

Who woulda’ thunk the man of God would be right?

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I bet a bunch of you are wondering how the school ministry is going. This is the first Special Ops team (Gotta’ love the pun) to set foot in Guinea-Bissau, and we knew that nothing was going to be straight-forward. But let me share the fun:

- The prime minister has changed 3 times in the last 8 months. The minister of Education who set this whole thing up was ‘deposed’, but the new minister is quite excited to help us continue with our plans. However, we had to start nearly completely over in building ties, relationships, approvals, etc. PREACH has drawn up formal agreements this time, so hopefully there will be less bureaucracy in the future.

- The container arrived Sunday. But the crane to unload it is broken. Seems like maybe it has been for some time. There’s a second crane in the city. But, yeah, it’s broken too.

- We still need to secure vehicles to transport 35,000 pamphlets over 4-wheeler territory. They are to be had; we’re just waiting for the right ones at the right price.

- There are anywhere between 360,000 to 600,000 students in Guinea-Bissau. Both are figures from the Department of Education. But then they don’t have any working computers, so they really don’t have any records.

- We’ve been trying to find all of these schools. But the state department isn’t entirely sure where they are. And there are no street signs. We got access to good map of the city, but they needed to print us a copy…and, bummer, the printer is broken……

I hope you catch my sarcasm. I’m actually getting a kick out of it. You see, we came to do God’s work. And so not a one of those things that I just listed is a setback. “…for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” Matt 6:8.

We’re on God’s clock. It’ll happen when He moves. Not a second before. But the beauty of it is that step-by-step we get to see God’s confirming hand. And we are never in any question. And we never have a moment to forget our Source of Strength.

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I just recited the nursery rhyme to Claudio (the PREACH member from Brazil) about ‘sleep tight’ and ‘bed bugs bite’. It’s real over here. I’ve either gotten bitten, or I’ve picked up some sort of infection on my right forearm. But it’s swelled up to dime-sized blister. I’m treating it as a fungus…figgered that was a worst-case scenario and am keeping an eye on it. Ah, the ‘jungle’ life.

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Pastor Joe Davis from KY lent me a song by Dino where he takes “When Peace Like a River” and blends it into Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”. Yep, Pretty sure I’m near heaven right now.

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Keep praying. The devil is as real at home as he is here. Stay warm

Love you guys.

Q