This time of the year, when our people in South Africa start to enjoy spring time, the sky here is hazy with the smoke of many fires to clear land for new fields; the sun just a red-hot ball in the sky.
It seems weak and indeed, our solar energy is very low and some nights we do not have enough water to shower. (We use a solar pump to get water from our 20 m hand dug well). Still, we measure temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius (about 100 degrees F) some days, knowing that it will increase with 10 degrees Celsius before too long. The atmosphere is gloomy and half-real in the half-light.
We know however that, no matter our circumstances, Jesus is our Way, Truth and Light!
The yearly time of the local religion’s 40 day fast has started at the beginning of this week. This is always a difficult time for us, both physically and spiritually. All our neighbors suffer and at nearly every house we find sick people, both those that fast and those that don’t!
Unfortunately the closest clinic (about 10km from us) is out of medicine – indeed it seems like the whole region lack the basic medicines that the communities need. The result is that many people come to us for help and we find ourselves at times stretched nearly beyond our ability.
Let us praise God for being able to do something about Francois’ hearing problem. The unexpected trip to SA has already proved to be a blessing! Francois could be back into a CLA (culture and language study) routine within 2 days after arrival from the city and all the Mwinika friends are convinced that he received “powerful medicine” in SA – “look at him…” they say, and we think “yes, look at Him! 🙂
Francois discovers many funny and sometimes embarrassing “mispronunciations” as he is able to hear better! One of the most frequently asked questions when you meet someone on the trail is: Where are you going? But pronounced wrong, Francois has been going around asking people over the last 2 years: Where do you relieve your bowels?!!! 🙂 Causing many puzzled faces…
Guess who is just as relieved as us that Francois now can hear! 🙂 :-)! We praise the Lord that He is bigger than our mistakes and can use even this for his Kingdom!
Please pray for:
- Our health: our whole family struggles with “the sniffles”
- Nadia with an ear infection, and all with extreme tiredness.
- Home schooling and language study (CLA) are a huge effort.
- Pray for our healing, for wisdom in time management and to know how to treat it all.
- Pray for rest.
- Pray for our Mwinika friends who suffer in the heat and with fasting.
- One friend of Nadia’s, Maria, is very sick (her little boy has died last year of Aids, we think), but still she fasts, thinking that Allah will hear her prayers to heal her if she suffers to please him.
- Pray that this time will be a time to ready the soil for the seeds of the Gospel! May there be a 100 fold harvest under the Mwinika!
- Pray that Maria will live to hear that One already suffered in her place and paid the price in full. Once, for all.
- We go through up and down times with our adaptation as a family with our dear little girl. There are no words to describe the see-saw emotions that assault us daily. Simone goes through times of attaching to us, wanting so much to fit in it gives us a lump in the throat, and in the next moment she says or do something to reject it all! All this are expected and we have been prepared for it. However, we ask for your prayers for us as we experience a fierce spiritual resistance and fight for this little girl’s soul.
- Pray for wisdom, healing, much grace and emotional as well as physical rest and times of fun together. We work and live in the same place and it is hard to distance ourselves from it all and really rest and just “let the hair down”! Pray that we will master this skill! 🙂
- We may need to be in SA for the adoption court hearing for Simone in November already – which is really good news! This time, both parents must be there and therefore all of us will have to go. Three visits to SA in one year is way above what we have budgeted for, but we have seen the Lord go before us in everything thus far. We trust Him in this also. We will hear in 2 week’s time if the adoption can go through. Pray for the Lord’s will to be done.
- Pray for the Hendersons as they prepare to return here from their short time of rest in South Africa. They are driving back (many thousands of km!), so pray for their safety, good rest, a good boarder crossing and over night places. They hope to be back by Sunday.
- We are also preparing for our Literacy Consultant, Rosalie’s visit of 10 days, starting next Friday. It will be a marathon time of the actual making of the first primers for the Emwinika literacy classes. We are very excited but, are so aware of our dependency on the Lord to give us the grace and energy for the time ahead! Pray also for our preparation as we need to have many things in place before she arrives. We try to keep this outside our normal language study time.
Some ask if the extension to our house’s building is completely finished, and indeed we have been living and enjoying the space since Simone’s coming (1 July). However, the flying down for Francois’s hearing test and of course the hearing aids were all unexpected expenses. We still need window panes for our windows to keep the smoke and heat out and a piece of bamboo matt ceiling is still missing (unfortunately this gives the mosquitoes a way to get into our house). So, the answer is: nearly! 🙂
Thank you for your prayers, your letters and text messages (sms’es) of encouragement. We know we are but a small part of His team working among the Mwinika people. May you too see the Lord go before you as we all rejoice together in His mighty power for what He will do to see people of all nations before his Throne one day!