This has been quite a busy week for us. A lot has happened.
Last Saturday David taught TEE (Theological Education by Extension - a Bible course) at Remagwe. That is our "young" church. The church is usually filled but only about 6-8 are adults. The rest are youth and children. All of the students in his class are youth and at least one cannot read. He will be out there again today. Please pray that this course will be the foundation for Christ's presence and glory for this generation in this place.
One thing I forgot to mention about our witnessing last week is that we were served a rubber chicken! This is the second time in our years on the field that we were served a chicken so tough you couldn't even take the outside skin off. Chloe, our little carnivore, managed to tear off most of the meat on one leg, but I couldn't even make teeth marks! Chloe and I didn't go witnessing this week. Chloe had big plans for a fancy meal that she wanted to put on for Dad and I needed to study my Swahili lesson for the next day. David said that he and the pastor and his wife had a good time visiting and encouraging some of our Tarime church members.
Thursday, David went out to a village called Shirati. A pastor's house burned down and the little churches up here had gathered some things together to donate. David and our local pastors spent the day down there fellowshipping with them. He said it was humbling how this family took the iron sheets off the burnt house, put up a shelter, and just moved on with their lives. Even though David very much enjoys these times of fellowship, he had an extremely bad headache the whole day. Imagine sitting for 6 to 8 ours in the sun in a dry village with a pounding headache!
While David was gone, Chloe and I walked to Tarime Baptist Church to teach the women's group. It is not a bad walk, except that I wore a pair of Abby's (my older daughter) shoes and immediately had horrible blisters on my toes! On the way there we passed over a stream. A group of men were bathing. Instead of turning away or discreetly ignoring us, they started calling out, "Wazungu!" - which is what we are called everywhere - white people. My teaching was less than inspiring but the ladies trudge along with my language skills and are very gracious.
Then, when we returned to the house there was a huge electrical surge. Lights started blowing out loudly - scaring Chloe to death. The tv started smoking horribly. I turned off the power to the house, but the damage was already done. We lost the tv, dvd player, satellite decoder, and many power supplies and converters. We praise the Lord that the computers (which were mostly not plugged in), the fridge, and the freezer are fine.
And these are just the highlights to a week that involved all the usual life tasks! And it is not over yet. Chloe has the pastor's daughter over today to play and teach English. David teaches TEE again this afternoon. I am supposed to go to the church this afternoon to help clean the little room we use for our services. I say "supposed to" because I am not feeling 100% at the moment. We'll see how the afternoon goes.
Continue to pray for us. Hopefully these little bits of our life will help you to see our prayer needs, where our challenges are, and why the joy of the Lord always floats to the top.
Blessings.
