Hey family and friends;
Happy December!!!!
The only clue that we’re in the Christmas season as far as the senses go is the Christmas songs the kids at school are learning for the program and the Christmas projects that I’ve been doing with all the classes for a month.
I miss the beautiful winter wonderland that is all lit up at this time of year where many of you are sitting. In fact, 2 nights ago I dreamt I was driving by field after field that was beautifully decked out with lights, and I was just mesmerized by the beauty, and was slowly making my way along. There were others around me that were rushing me and telling me to speed up. I gently told them that these were the first Christmas lights I’d seen for the year, and was enjoying the sight.
I encourage you to stop and really take in the beauty that surrounds you and not just rush from party to party and appt. to appt., without really pondering Whom and why we are celebrating.
So, I was supposed to go to Kigali, Rwanda last week Thursday morning till this past Monday for a women’s conference. I was very excited to go. Jabe Iglese Vivant blessed us so much when they volunteered to pay for all my expenses minus about $17.00 US. Around nine in the evening the night before we were to leave, Aime, the very helpful admin. from school that helps the expats with Visa’s, Passports, etc., called and said that he had just heard that the Rwandan border denied David Micklefield (Pastor Andrew’s brother that was visiting Buj. and wanted to go to Rwanda with a buddy) entry into Rwanda because he didn’t have a Visa.
Till 2 weeks ago Canadians did not need a Visa for entry into Rwanda, but we heard that Kagami - Rwanda’s president, slapped this on Canadians because Canada doesn’t give Rwanda enough aid!!!
To process the Visa takes between 24 - 48 hrs., so that meant I could not go. Pastor Ray’s wife, MaryAnne, and her guest from Vancouver were supposed to fly out the following evening to the conference, and they had to cancel their flight.
Oh well, this way I got to spend the weekend with my 2 boys, and we had a great weekend. Went to the beach on Saturday and Sunday with friends. Lake Tanganyika is perhaps 6-7 blocks from our house as the crow flies; we can see the lake from our kitchen window with the Congo mountains behind the lake.
On Sunday was our 18th anniversary for when we got engaged. Wow, that makes us sound old. God has so richly blessed me with the gift of my Isaac.
Today was so cool. On Wednesdays I do Christian Ed. with the year ones. Almost every week I reiterate what it means to be a Christian, what Jesus did for us on the cross, and why, etc. I do this because of all the Muslim/Hindu kids in all the classes, and because I have a passion to see them come to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A number of these kids come with the religious signs painted on their faces day after day, and with their bracelets and necklaces that are supposed to protect them.
Let me start at the beginning….
Last year, there was this little boy (don’t know whether he’s Muslim or Hindu) in kindergarten that would worship the sun when outside. When his teacher saw this she would obviously stop him. We as staff prayed for this boy and his family, as it was pretty obvious that the parents are very devout followers of the religion, and as such could bring that spirit into the school when dropping off/collecting the son.
This boy is very intelligent and hangs on to every word I say as I tell them about Jesus. He repeats what I say almost verbatim when given the chance. He’s usually the first to raise his hand to answer questions, learns Bible verses well and easily, etc.
So this particular day I’m in their class again, he answers a question, and without a seconds warning, the Spirit comes over me in power and I instantly stretch out my hand to him and declare: “One day you will be a mighty man of God!” I immediately started crying and I quickly turned away so the kids wouldn’t be alarmed to see me cry. Luckily, sweet Olive, the teacher, happened to be in the class as well, and saw the whole thing unfold. She started asking questions about the lesson as I regained my composure.
Well, after this event, this boy was on my heart so much. I prayed for him often; during summer holidays, he continued to be in my prayers. In my spirit I knew what was said about him was not of me, but entirely of God, and I prayed into that. I would often think and wonder how much God would be glorified in and through this “mighty man of God.”
Well, that little boy started that journey as a mighty man of God this morning, praise Jesus!!!
After explaining again that Jesus was born so that He could die for our sins, that He is the Son of God, that God raised Him on the third day, and He is ALIVE, and if we invite Him into our hearts and lives and ask Him to forgive our sins, and we live for Him, then we are Christians and His children.
I often have the children repeat after me core truths pertaining to Jesus and or God, because I know the power of hearing yourself speak words, whether positive or negative. Over the months when I would have them repeat some aspect of those truths, I would always look at this child as he loudly proclaimed those truths, and in my spirit I would rejoice. His mouth was speaking truth, it was only a matter of time before God would line up his heart/soul /spirit with his mouth.
Today was the eclipse of his heart and mouth. He raised his hand and said; “I want to be a Christian.”
Man, I’m telling you, inside I was just yelling and screaming and praising Jesus and doing flips…..
I asked him to come to me where I was sitting on the little kiddie chair. I put my arm around him and asked him if he believed who Jesus is and what He did for him, to which he answered yes after each question. He very clearly and succinctly said the sinners prayer after me.
I told him that the Bible says that the angels in heaven rejoice when one sinner repents, and that he had just caused that to happen. This child was absolutely beaming as I raised his hands with mine and rejoiced with him.
Meanwhile, the whole class quietly sat on the mat in front of us and observed the scene as it unfolded.
Now let me back track.
When ‘A’ raised his hand to say he wanted to become a Christian, ‘B’ was right on the heels as he raised his hand for the same reason. I wasn’t surprised by this, because I had sensed that God was really working in this little Muslim boys heart as well. So after ‘A’ prayed, I asked ‘B’ to come to me, and went through the same steps with this boy.
Wow, what an awesome time!!!
I ask you with great, great sincerity, please pray for these 2 boys very regularly. The opposition will be extreme, both from parents when they find out, and obviously from the enemy.
“The One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” 1 Jn 4:4b
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Remembering Ramona...
Remembering Ramona….
Today, November 27th marks the 1 year anniversary of when our sweet Ramona put on her heavenly dancing shoes…
There is so much that I could write…
Today, November 27th marks the 1 year anniversary of when our sweet Ramona put on her heavenly dancing shoes…
There is so much that I could write…
Friday, November 12, 2010
Colton's fleece is white....
Nov. 10 2010
Oh, I know, this is again so long overdue….
So, you know the song ‘Mary had a little lamb’ - it has a new version amongst Colton’s classmates. The last line goes; “it’s fleece was white as Colton.” Cracks me up!!
I had the fabulous opportunity to lead a year 6 girl to Jesus a few weeks ago. Her mom, she told me, is/was Muslim, so this is very exciting, but at the same time this girl, Karen, needs a lot of prayers because of the Muslim teaching. It’s very serious if Muslims convert to Christianity - in very extreme cases they can be killed. Karen’s mom and dad are currently separated with mom living in Tanzania, but she says they are getting back together again at Christmas.
I gave Karen a notebook on the day of her conversion in which I wrote some godly truths and encouraged her to use the notebook to write down prayers, meaningful Bible verses, journal, etc. About once a week now for the last three weeks she brings the book to me to read the things that are on her heart. Wow, what an incredible joy to read her confessions of her faith in Jesus Christ, and the love that she has for her new found Saviour!! Some of the things that she talks to God about are so sad, like her family situation. Please pray for this precious girl and her family.
The other Muslim girl that I was able to pray with last year has not yet returned to school. She informed me last year that they would likely stay in India for longer than just the 2 months of summer holidays. This is the case, and doubtlessly being in that predominantly Muslim culture must be hard for a year 6 girl to stay grounded in the Christian truths and values that she believed. Please lift her before the Lord in prayer as well.
Right from the start when we arrived God has put the Muslims in my heart and in my path. There is a Muslim couple from Kenya that live on the compound where we get some of our groceries, and they had us down a while ago and expressed a desire to form a friendship with us. They’re a lovely couple with a 2 year old daughter. Naima, the wife, wants to teach me how to make Indian samosa’s - yum. She makes them in the house and sells them at the shop on their property. Please pray for this relationship as well.
Isaac just got home now at 6:45 P.M. - doing work in one of the teachers houses again.
Colton is doing very well in school - so far his percentages are almost all mid 90’s to 100% (on 4 tests). Even French is a subject that he’s attacking with determination to do well in. In fact, at the parent/teacher meeting 2 days ago his French teacher said he’s top of the class in that as well, believe it or not!! Considering there are a number of first language French speakers, that’s quite a feat! We’re very proud of Colton.
Nov. 12
Yesterday Colton serenaded Isaac and myself at lunch time with ’Jesus loves me” in Swahili, Kirundi and French. He said that he had put the song together between classes while he was on his way to his math class.
Almost two weeks ago when we were at the lake Isaac and Colton swam out to a boat that was on the water, and as Isaac hoisted himself into the boat he seriously hurt his rib. The water was pretty choppy, so with the movement of the waves and the boat rocking, he slammed into the top side/edge of the boat. We believe that it was probably broken. He was in lots of pain, and it began to swell up; laughing hurt, moving, walking, everything hurt. It was hurting him a lot that night, and after really praying, it improved dramatically. He’s tried to down play the severity of it all, which is his nature, but he’s still not completely without pain.
On that note, my neck and shoulders have really been acting up in the last few months. At times, for a number of days at a time, it’s very painful to move my head to the left. We would appreciate your prayers in these matters as well.
I don’t know how much or how accurate the news coverage is about Burundi, but things continue to brew in this country. There are currently two rebel groups; one that is very active and has killed many people. The other one is called Al Shaabab; it is a subsidiary of Al Quida, and it is made up of mostly younger Muslims. They have made threats since well before the elections this past June, and in fact the whole block that occupies the president’s offices has been blocked off with huge concrete pillars since about mid June.
The beef that they have is that Burundi and Uganda both have peace keeping soldiers in Somalia, and they want them out so they can run amok with their ‘holy war’. During the soccer World Cup in the summer this group was responsible for a bomb blast in Uganda that killed 75 people.
Makes me shake my head - the unstable state that Burundi is in itself, and they send out peace keepers…. It’s pretty close to home though - one of the assistant teacher’s husband is slated to go to Somalia for the second time.
One of the assistant teachers just had an almost 10 pound baby with no drugs, and when she had started to scream during delivery the doctor had slapped her in the face and told her to shut up!!!!!
But that’s not an isolated incident - women out here apparently hardly make a sound during child birth, no matter how much pain they are in, and if they do, the doctor puts an end to that very abruptly. Yikes, if I would have ever been in that ‘position’, it would probably have been hard to not allow my foot to ‘slip’ into the doctors face. During a silent contraction of coarse!!
Wow - Calvary Chapel family - thank you so much for the wonderful distraction that we received at school yesterday!!
We had no idea that David Micklefield (for those that don’t know, that’s our lead pastor’s brother) was coming out here, and so that was a pleasant surprise. The letters and cards are a huge encouragement, and we treasure them.
If I may be so bold and say this: It only costs $1.70 CND to send a letter/card out here, and we have lots of space to put all you readers’ Christmas family picture cards up……
When I was a babe in Christ, Jesus put a deep desire and passion in my heart to do prison ministry. I spoke with different people that where involved in that over the years, but I guess it was never God’s timing. Well, it seems that it is His timing now.
There’s this little church (about 125 people) that we’ve been going to that’s called Trinity Tabernacle. The pastor couple are super - he’s from Uganda, she’s from Rwanda. This church has a pretty huge impact in the prison - in fact there are 9 ex-convicts in this tiny congregation. One of the guys, an interpreter, was on death row two times for murder. He served 9 years and was miraculously released!!!
Pastor Paddy has invited me to join a small team that goes to the prison every week to minister there. It’s really an awful place; it was built for about 1000 prisoners, but these walls contain 3000 inmates!! There are many women serving time who have their children with them, ranging in age from infant to pre-schoolers, criminals of every kind, high ranking government officials, etc., etc.
In this country you are guilty until proven innocent - honestly. But if you have enough money you can “buy” your innocence if indeed you are guilty. A person can serve years before their case is tried, and if you are innocent, that’s just too bad.
Pastor Ray said last week that Jabe is also very involved at this prison, and so he said he could set me up with the team that goes every 2 weeks. Please pray that Jesus will empower, anoint and equip me to minister to the people that He wants to reach through me, whether it’s salvation, an encouraging word, a plate of beans and rice handed to them with a loving smile, or whatever.
As for Trinity Tabernacle - we were going there for about 3 months. We met the pastor couple - Paddy and Joli - at a mutual friends’ engagement party. When they said that their church is in English our ears perked up. After a few months we decided to visit the church; we were at this point really struggling with the length (sometimes over 4 hrs.) at Jabe, the heat for that amount of time under a tin roof, the earphones for translation are not good so you have to push them against your head to hear, which gives us bad headaches after a few hrs., and the novelty of all these things had just totally and completely run dry.
And so that’s what brought us to Trinity. We prayed all along that God would show us which church He wanted us in. We didn’t have peace about making Trinity our home for some reason, we missed some aspects of Jabe, we had visited another church about 4 or 5 times where a lot of our friends go to…….
Anyways, we had talked to church leadership about it and they said to talk to Pastor Ray. Well, P. Ray said that because we are here serving under African Revival Ministries we should at least sometimes go to Jabe, as Jabe is an A.R.M. church.
So we went there again this last Sunday, and it felt like we were home. Praise Jesus. However, we will need extra measures of grace for the heat, length, earphones, etc. And we’re still probably going to visit other churches sometimes.
I’m about talked out!!
Oh, I know, this is again so long overdue….
So, you know the song ‘Mary had a little lamb’ - it has a new version amongst Colton’s classmates. The last line goes; “it’s fleece was white as Colton.” Cracks me up!!
I had the fabulous opportunity to lead a year 6 girl to Jesus a few weeks ago. Her mom, she told me, is/was Muslim, so this is very exciting, but at the same time this girl, Karen, needs a lot of prayers because of the Muslim teaching. It’s very serious if Muslims convert to Christianity - in very extreme cases they can be killed. Karen’s mom and dad are currently separated with mom living in Tanzania, but she says they are getting back together again at Christmas.
I gave Karen a notebook on the day of her conversion in which I wrote some godly truths and encouraged her to use the notebook to write down prayers, meaningful Bible verses, journal, etc. About once a week now for the last three weeks she brings the book to me to read the things that are on her heart. Wow, what an incredible joy to read her confessions of her faith in Jesus Christ, and the love that she has for her new found Saviour!! Some of the things that she talks to God about are so sad, like her family situation. Please pray for this precious girl and her family.
The other Muslim girl that I was able to pray with last year has not yet returned to school. She informed me last year that they would likely stay in India for longer than just the 2 months of summer holidays. This is the case, and doubtlessly being in that predominantly Muslim culture must be hard for a year 6 girl to stay grounded in the Christian truths and values that she believed. Please lift her before the Lord in prayer as well.
Right from the start when we arrived God has put the Muslims in my heart and in my path. There is a Muslim couple from Kenya that live on the compound where we get some of our groceries, and they had us down a while ago and expressed a desire to form a friendship with us. They’re a lovely couple with a 2 year old daughter. Naima, the wife, wants to teach me how to make Indian samosa’s - yum. She makes them in the house and sells them at the shop on their property. Please pray for this relationship as well.
Isaac just got home now at 6:45 P.M. - doing work in one of the teachers houses again.
Colton is doing very well in school - so far his percentages are almost all mid 90’s to 100% (on 4 tests). Even French is a subject that he’s attacking with determination to do well in. In fact, at the parent/teacher meeting 2 days ago his French teacher said he’s top of the class in that as well, believe it or not!! Considering there are a number of first language French speakers, that’s quite a feat! We’re very proud of Colton.
Nov. 12
Yesterday Colton serenaded Isaac and myself at lunch time with ’Jesus loves me” in Swahili, Kirundi and French. He said that he had put the song together between classes while he was on his way to his math class.
Almost two weeks ago when we were at the lake Isaac and Colton swam out to a boat that was on the water, and as Isaac hoisted himself into the boat he seriously hurt his rib. The water was pretty choppy, so with the movement of the waves and the boat rocking, he slammed into the top side/edge of the boat. We believe that it was probably broken. He was in lots of pain, and it began to swell up; laughing hurt, moving, walking, everything hurt. It was hurting him a lot that night, and after really praying, it improved dramatically. He’s tried to down play the severity of it all, which is his nature, but he’s still not completely without pain.
On that note, my neck and shoulders have really been acting up in the last few months. At times, for a number of days at a time, it’s very painful to move my head to the left. We would appreciate your prayers in these matters as well.
I don’t know how much or how accurate the news coverage is about Burundi, but things continue to brew in this country. There are currently two rebel groups; one that is very active and has killed many people. The other one is called Al Shaabab; it is a subsidiary of Al Quida, and it is made up of mostly younger Muslims. They have made threats since well before the elections this past June, and in fact the whole block that occupies the president’s offices has been blocked off with huge concrete pillars since about mid June.
The beef that they have is that Burundi and Uganda both have peace keeping soldiers in Somalia, and they want them out so they can run amok with their ‘holy war’. During the soccer World Cup in the summer this group was responsible for a bomb blast in Uganda that killed 75 people.
Makes me shake my head - the unstable state that Burundi is in itself, and they send out peace keepers…. It’s pretty close to home though - one of the assistant teacher’s husband is slated to go to Somalia for the second time.
One of the assistant teachers just had an almost 10 pound baby with no drugs, and when she had started to scream during delivery the doctor had slapped her in the face and told her to shut up!!!!!
But that’s not an isolated incident - women out here apparently hardly make a sound during child birth, no matter how much pain they are in, and if they do, the doctor puts an end to that very abruptly. Yikes, if I would have ever been in that ‘position’, it would probably have been hard to not allow my foot to ‘slip’ into the doctors face. During a silent contraction of coarse!!
Wow - Calvary Chapel family - thank you so much for the wonderful distraction that we received at school yesterday!!
We had no idea that David Micklefield (for those that don’t know, that’s our lead pastor’s brother) was coming out here, and so that was a pleasant surprise. The letters and cards are a huge encouragement, and we treasure them.
If I may be so bold and say this: It only costs $1.70 CND to send a letter/card out here, and we have lots of space to put all you readers’ Christmas family picture cards up……
When I was a babe in Christ, Jesus put a deep desire and passion in my heart to do prison ministry. I spoke with different people that where involved in that over the years, but I guess it was never God’s timing. Well, it seems that it is His timing now.
There’s this little church (about 125 people) that we’ve been going to that’s called Trinity Tabernacle. The pastor couple are super - he’s from Uganda, she’s from Rwanda. This church has a pretty huge impact in the prison - in fact there are 9 ex-convicts in this tiny congregation. One of the guys, an interpreter, was on death row two times for murder. He served 9 years and was miraculously released!!!
Pastor Paddy has invited me to join a small team that goes to the prison every week to minister there. It’s really an awful place; it was built for about 1000 prisoners, but these walls contain 3000 inmates!! There are many women serving time who have their children with them, ranging in age from infant to pre-schoolers, criminals of every kind, high ranking government officials, etc., etc.
In this country you are guilty until proven innocent - honestly. But if you have enough money you can “buy” your innocence if indeed you are guilty. A person can serve years before their case is tried, and if you are innocent, that’s just too bad.
Pastor Ray said last week that Jabe is also very involved at this prison, and so he said he could set me up with the team that goes every 2 weeks. Please pray that Jesus will empower, anoint and equip me to minister to the people that He wants to reach through me, whether it’s salvation, an encouraging word, a plate of beans and rice handed to them with a loving smile, or whatever.
As for Trinity Tabernacle - we were going there for about 3 months. We met the pastor couple - Paddy and Joli - at a mutual friends’ engagement party. When they said that their church is in English our ears perked up. After a few months we decided to visit the church; we were at this point really struggling with the length (sometimes over 4 hrs.) at Jabe, the heat for that amount of time under a tin roof, the earphones for translation are not good so you have to push them against your head to hear, which gives us bad headaches after a few hrs., and the novelty of all these things had just totally and completely run dry.
And so that’s what brought us to Trinity. We prayed all along that God would show us which church He wanted us in. We didn’t have peace about making Trinity our home for some reason, we missed some aspects of Jabe, we had visited another church about 4 or 5 times where a lot of our friends go to…….
Anyways, we had talked to church leadership about it and they said to talk to Pastor Ray. Well, P. Ray said that because we are here serving under African Revival Ministries we should at least sometimes go to Jabe, as Jabe is an A.R.M. church.
So we went there again this last Sunday, and it felt like we were home. Praise Jesus. However, we will need extra measures of grace for the heat, length, earphones, etc. And we’re still probably going to visit other churches sometimes.
I’m about talked out!!
We have to move
October 14
One of the pastors at Iglise Vivant passed away last week Friday. He started feeling unwell on Wednesday, suffered a stroke, and on Friday died of a heart attack. He leaves behind his wife and 5 children, the youngest of which is in year 2. I teach 2 of them in Primary and one is in Colton’s class. The other 2 attend a public school. Please pray for this family. The funeral was on Tuesday, and the following day, Aaron, the son that’s in Colton’s class got hit by a motorbike while riding his bike. The only injuries on Aaron were some bumps and bruises and a few stitches on his foot, but the driver of the motorbike is not known if he will pull through.
So this Saturday my niece Ramona, who passed away last November, her brother is getting married. Another brother got married on August 7th. My heart and thoughts are again so much in MB…..
Things are again getting more uncertain in this country. There is a large rebel group that is pretty active, having killed many people already. For about 2 months after the elections at the end of June we didn’t hear many gunshots from our house, but in the last month or so they have increased drastically again. The worst ones are at night when you’re woken up by them, and they sound as if they are on our block; that has only happened twice that they are so close. Please pray for safety for us, and for peace in this country.
Colton is off to a great start in school, receiving a few tests back this week on which he scored 100%. Over lunch today he related how he had tried to swap his snack with the monkey that likes to hang out at school. The monkey was enjoying a nice ripe mango he picked off one of the trees next to Colton’s classroom and wasn’t about to hand over his mango for a bland tasting ‘Maria” cookie imitation. Smart monkey.
We still haven’t found a house; Aime is really looking for us. Some houses are just tiny, others are just plain not liveable, so the search continues. So far we haven’t seen any personally; we can’t be on the scene till the price is completely settled upon because if they see that we’re mzungu the rent automatically skyrockets. Please continue to pray for the right house, and remember to ask the Father to kick in that yard so Colton can continue to kick his soccer ball around.
Speaking of soccer, Colton has gone through about 10 or so balls in the 14 months we’ve been here. No, it’s not that he’s got a kick that flattens the ball like a pancake (though he’s really good), but the thorns etc. wreak havoc on them. We brought 3 balls from Canada, bought 3 in Kenya when we went in August, received on from Honda and Libby for his birthday and the rest we’ve bought here. And he gets them patched time and time again, so it’s not that as soon as one pops its garbage. Many times he’s playing with a half deflated ball, and the sound coming from the buddies he’s got over is an indicator that deflated or not, they are having fun.
Isaac is not so bombarded by requests for this and that to be done, asap, by so many people now. He’s more caught up, though still busy. Seems at the beginning of the school year is the best time for people to do repairs on their houses as well. Once people know that he is knowledgeable in many areas they are quite eager to have him come and fix this or that. Obviously, CRIB and school (and affiliates) are priorities.
Nov. 10
Wow - I wrote this close to a month ago when we didn’t have internet access for about 4 weeks. I will post it though, thankfully with a very wonderful house update!!
We don’t have to move - PRAISE the LORD!!!!! The landlord called Aime up and told him that his son and daughter-in-law don’t need the house now till August. Thank you to the many of you that prayed for us in this regard. The prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective!
One of the pastors at Iglise Vivant passed away last week Friday. He started feeling unwell on Wednesday, suffered a stroke, and on Friday died of a heart attack. He leaves behind his wife and 5 children, the youngest of which is in year 2. I teach 2 of them in Primary and one is in Colton’s class. The other 2 attend a public school. Please pray for this family. The funeral was on Tuesday, and the following day, Aaron, the son that’s in Colton’s class got hit by a motorbike while riding his bike. The only injuries on Aaron were some bumps and bruises and a few stitches on his foot, but the driver of the motorbike is not known if he will pull through.
So this Saturday my niece Ramona, who passed away last November, her brother is getting married. Another brother got married on August 7th. My heart and thoughts are again so much in MB…..
Things are again getting more uncertain in this country. There is a large rebel group that is pretty active, having killed many people already. For about 2 months after the elections at the end of June we didn’t hear many gunshots from our house, but in the last month or so they have increased drastically again. The worst ones are at night when you’re woken up by them, and they sound as if they are on our block; that has only happened twice that they are so close. Please pray for safety for us, and for peace in this country.
Colton is off to a great start in school, receiving a few tests back this week on which he scored 100%. Over lunch today he related how he had tried to swap his snack with the monkey that likes to hang out at school. The monkey was enjoying a nice ripe mango he picked off one of the trees next to Colton’s classroom and wasn’t about to hand over his mango for a bland tasting ‘Maria” cookie imitation. Smart monkey.
We still haven’t found a house; Aime is really looking for us. Some houses are just tiny, others are just plain not liveable, so the search continues. So far we haven’t seen any personally; we can’t be on the scene till the price is completely settled upon because if they see that we’re mzungu the rent automatically skyrockets. Please continue to pray for the right house, and remember to ask the Father to kick in that yard so Colton can continue to kick his soccer ball around.
Speaking of soccer, Colton has gone through about 10 or so balls in the 14 months we’ve been here. No, it’s not that he’s got a kick that flattens the ball like a pancake (though he’s really good), but the thorns etc. wreak havoc on them. We brought 3 balls from Canada, bought 3 in Kenya when we went in August, received on from Honda and Libby for his birthday and the rest we’ve bought here. And he gets them patched time and time again, so it’s not that as soon as one pops its garbage. Many times he’s playing with a half deflated ball, and the sound coming from the buddies he’s got over is an indicator that deflated or not, they are having fun.
Isaac is not so bombarded by requests for this and that to be done, asap, by so many people now. He’s more caught up, though still busy. Seems at the beginning of the school year is the best time for people to do repairs on their houses as well. Once people know that he is knowledgeable in many areas they are quite eager to have him come and fix this or that. Obviously, CRIB and school (and affiliates) are priorities.
Nov. 10
Wow - I wrote this close to a month ago when we didn’t have internet access for about 4 weeks. I will post it though, thankfully with a very wonderful house update!!
We don’t have to move - PRAISE the LORD!!!!! The landlord called Aime up and told him that his son and daughter-in-law don’t need the house now till August. Thank you to the many of you that prayed for us in this regard. The prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Colton is a teenager!!
Hey; Sept.16 2010
So we’ve settled back into the school routine. Colton is in year 8 and enjoying it. It was much more fun to start this year compared to last year when we didn’t know anyone.
Isaac is crazy busy from 7:00 AM till past dark many days, plus Saturdays. This should slow down soon once everything has been built/fixed for the schools, teachers’ houses, CRIB (ongoing), etc.
My teaching schedule is only a little fuller this year with the addition of one more class per week. It’s really busy, but it makes the time go by quicker.
So… Colton is a teenager!! I can hardly believe that we have a young man and not a little boy any more. He very much enjoys standing in front of me and measuring up to where he measures on me…. Not so long ago he was up to my mouth, then my nose, eyes… well, he’s got less than 1 and ½ inches to go and he’ll have sprouted past me!!
He had a good birthday, his second here in Burundi. He made a long list of friends that he wanted to invite to his party. I again made my boys’ favorite cake, and I’m telling you, the texture is sooo different here. It just wants to fall apart. So once I had inverted the top layer, it split down the center vertically and horizontally. We christened it “the Christian cake”, ‘cause of the cross that adorned it. ( In the past, the old perfectionist me would not have found this funny at all, but praise Jesus, He’s helping me to be a little softer around the edges.)
I want to publicly say a huge “thank you sweet Desirae!!!” This lovely lady (Colton’s cousin) spent a lot of time into a scrapbook that she put together of her life over the past year, and mailed it out for Colton’s birthday. He was so blessed to receive a package from our other home. Just the fact that he’s not “outta sight, outta mind”, is nice to know, with the huge added bonus of such a personal gift. Missing grandma’s, cousins and friends is sometimes hard for Colton.
Remember my blog from a number of months ago about this tiny little cat - Belle - that was in dire straits that we spoon fed for 5 days, it died in my hands while feeding it, Jesus raised it from the dead, and it permanently died the following day? Well, our friends Travis and Astrid’s cat had 5 black babies ( Colton and I witnessed the births of the first 4), and the momma cat stopped feeding the babies on the fifth day and died on the sixth. Knowing about our very limited knowledge about feeding an orphaned kitten, they asked if we wanted to take one. Long story short, we’ve had Zima for over two weeks, and he’s doing great. Colton is the best at feeding him out of the three of us. ‘Zima’ is short for ubuzima, which means ‘life’ in Kirundi; speaking positively into the little critters life. Colton is pretty confident that Zima will get to stay in the house permanently; “after all,” he stated, “ he’s worked his way into your heart already, next it’s into the house.” Even Isaac enjoys holding the little guy, listening to Zima’s “motor running” - Isaac’s terminology for purring. I thought cats have an aversion to water, but this feline seems to enjoy his two plus baths per day.
All three of us are in this awesome Bible study. We started about two months ago, and we meet every Tuesday; we’re doing an audio series by Bill Johnson and Chris Vallotton. There’s a couple from South Africa, Tim and Jeannette (he teaches pastors here), three Korean ladies that are starting a local NGO, Olivia, who’s from Denver Colorado, manager of King’s Conference Center combined with lots of different ministry involvements, Marieke, part of Travis and Astrid’s team, but currently working with CRIB kids, and Travis and Astrid. These people are very near and dear to our hearts. We have wonderful and deep personal ministry and prayer times together; we feel so blessed to have these friends. If Jesus is done with us here in Buj. after our two years, it will be very hard to say bye to these wonderful friends….. I don’t even want to go there just now.
We have to move out of our house by the end of December; our land lord wants it back so his son and daughter-in-law can move in. This is a pretty huge prayer concern as rental houses are very hard to find in this area. And it has to be furnished which makes it even harder to find. So please pray that we will find a house that is suitable, and that God will kick in the added blessing of a yard that allows Colton to play soccer in the back yard. For example, often yards are not even big enough for a trampoline.
Our fridge hasn’t worked in months - at least 5 months. There are brief times when it cools so much that it freezes the food, the odd time it cools a little, but for the most part it just doesn’t cool at all. We’ve told the land lord a number of times, to no avail. So moving will bring a stop to me attempting (and failing) to keep the fridge cold with frozen water bottles. (The freezer section works fine.) It used to be that if we put food in the fridge it was the one place that the ants couldn’t get to - this is no longer the case.
Man, animal and land is greatly looking forward to the rainy season. Since April we’ve had one light sprinkle on June 29th (the day after elections; kinda’ symbolic of the Father cleansing the country). The temperature is consistently hot, hot, and hot - low to mid 30’s. Nights are a few degrees cooler than day time. However, last week Sunday we had a gentle shower, as well as a few more times during that week. Two of those mornings it was so cold; the temperature dipped down to an all time low that we have witnessed - both mornings it was a mere 23.8 degrees!!! We sat at the breakfast table covered in goose bumps. Colton put his long PJ bottoms on under his school uniform. This cold yet wonderful respite from the heat dissipated after about an hour. (Till last week the lowest we’ve experienced is 24.8.)
The same thing happened last year; we had a few “teaser” showers beginning of September, followed by another few months of harsh, dry heat. But hopefully we won’t have to wait that long this year, as last year there was a ‘mini famine’ up country because of the delayed rains.
With the dry season come the unpleasant and very unwelcome electricity and water cuts. The novelty?? tolerance?? of not having hydro and water wears off after months and it just gets old and very frustrating. Try as we might to have and maintain a godly attitude about it, we just simply fail sometimes. It really wreaks havoc with the fridge situation if I can’t freeze water to somewhat keep the fridge cool. And in this country of sweat and dust and filth, water is even more essential than just for cooking/drinking. We’ve had a lot more water cuts this year than last; for washing we store water in pails and for drinking in jugs.
When you are aware of incredible govt. corruption it makes it pretty hard to just ‘live with it’, when you know that things could be drastically different; but the public, it seems, isn’t important enough to supply them with basic necessities, as long as some of their pockets are thickly lined… Televised promises by top govn. personnel to make a complete stop to cuts go unfulfilled.
What’s especially annoying is when water and hydro are cut at the same time, which happens frequently. Aarrrhhhggg!!! No hydro, no fans!!! Yeesch that’s hot.
Sept. 22 2010
“I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” Luke 10:19
Isaac has prayed into this almost daily for many months…
Colton found and captured a scorpion at school yesterday. It is currently approximately 4 feet from where I’m sitting in a clear plastic pencil case. I took it to school today to show some of my students. It seems most people don’t know that there are scorpions in Burundi. Aime, a colleague of ours, was down a few weeks ago and we told him that Colton had stepped on one in the shower about a month ago, and he could hardly believe that they exist here - he had never seen one - and he’s a local. And we’ve had two encounters with them in the span of about a month. The one Colton stepped on was much bigger than the one he caught yesterday. We also get snakes and centipedes in that same shower.
I’ll leave you with that warm and fuzzy thought. ;-)
So we’ve settled back into the school routine. Colton is in year 8 and enjoying it. It was much more fun to start this year compared to last year when we didn’t know anyone.
Isaac is crazy busy from 7:00 AM till past dark many days, plus Saturdays. This should slow down soon once everything has been built/fixed for the schools, teachers’ houses, CRIB (ongoing), etc.
My teaching schedule is only a little fuller this year with the addition of one more class per week. It’s really busy, but it makes the time go by quicker.
So… Colton is a teenager!! I can hardly believe that we have a young man and not a little boy any more. He very much enjoys standing in front of me and measuring up to where he measures on me…. Not so long ago he was up to my mouth, then my nose, eyes… well, he’s got less than 1 and ½ inches to go and he’ll have sprouted past me!!
He had a good birthday, his second here in Burundi. He made a long list of friends that he wanted to invite to his party. I again made my boys’ favorite cake, and I’m telling you, the texture is sooo different here. It just wants to fall apart. So once I had inverted the top layer, it split down the center vertically and horizontally. We christened it “the Christian cake”, ‘cause of the cross that adorned it. ( In the past, the old perfectionist me would not have found this funny at all, but praise Jesus, He’s helping me to be a little softer around the edges.)
I want to publicly say a huge “thank you sweet Desirae!!!” This lovely lady (Colton’s cousin) spent a lot of time into a scrapbook that she put together of her life over the past year, and mailed it out for Colton’s birthday. He was so blessed to receive a package from our other home. Just the fact that he’s not “outta sight, outta mind”, is nice to know, with the huge added bonus of such a personal gift. Missing grandma’s, cousins and friends is sometimes hard for Colton.
Remember my blog from a number of months ago about this tiny little cat - Belle - that was in dire straits that we spoon fed for 5 days, it died in my hands while feeding it, Jesus raised it from the dead, and it permanently died the following day? Well, our friends Travis and Astrid’s cat had 5 black babies ( Colton and I witnessed the births of the first 4), and the momma cat stopped feeding the babies on the fifth day and died on the sixth. Knowing about our very limited knowledge about feeding an orphaned kitten, they asked if we wanted to take one. Long story short, we’ve had Zima for over two weeks, and he’s doing great. Colton is the best at feeding him out of the three of us. ‘Zima’ is short for ubuzima, which means ‘life’ in Kirundi; speaking positively into the little critters life. Colton is pretty confident that Zima will get to stay in the house permanently; “after all,” he stated, “ he’s worked his way into your heart already, next it’s into the house.” Even Isaac enjoys holding the little guy, listening to Zima’s “motor running” - Isaac’s terminology for purring. I thought cats have an aversion to water, but this feline seems to enjoy his two plus baths per day.
All three of us are in this awesome Bible study. We started about two months ago, and we meet every Tuesday; we’re doing an audio series by Bill Johnson and Chris Vallotton. There’s a couple from South Africa, Tim and Jeannette (he teaches pastors here), three Korean ladies that are starting a local NGO, Olivia, who’s from Denver Colorado, manager of King’s Conference Center combined with lots of different ministry involvements, Marieke, part of Travis and Astrid’s team, but currently working with CRIB kids, and Travis and Astrid. These people are very near and dear to our hearts. We have wonderful and deep personal ministry and prayer times together; we feel so blessed to have these friends. If Jesus is done with us here in Buj. after our two years, it will be very hard to say bye to these wonderful friends….. I don’t even want to go there just now.
We have to move out of our house by the end of December; our land lord wants it back so his son and daughter-in-law can move in. This is a pretty huge prayer concern as rental houses are very hard to find in this area. And it has to be furnished which makes it even harder to find. So please pray that we will find a house that is suitable, and that God will kick in the added blessing of a yard that allows Colton to play soccer in the back yard. For example, often yards are not even big enough for a trampoline.
Our fridge hasn’t worked in months - at least 5 months. There are brief times when it cools so much that it freezes the food, the odd time it cools a little, but for the most part it just doesn’t cool at all. We’ve told the land lord a number of times, to no avail. So moving will bring a stop to me attempting (and failing) to keep the fridge cold with frozen water bottles. (The freezer section works fine.) It used to be that if we put food in the fridge it was the one place that the ants couldn’t get to - this is no longer the case.
Man, animal and land is greatly looking forward to the rainy season. Since April we’ve had one light sprinkle on June 29th (the day after elections; kinda’ symbolic of the Father cleansing the country). The temperature is consistently hot, hot, and hot - low to mid 30’s. Nights are a few degrees cooler than day time. However, last week Sunday we had a gentle shower, as well as a few more times during that week. Two of those mornings it was so cold; the temperature dipped down to an all time low that we have witnessed - both mornings it was a mere 23.8 degrees!!! We sat at the breakfast table covered in goose bumps. Colton put his long PJ bottoms on under his school uniform. This cold yet wonderful respite from the heat dissipated after about an hour. (Till last week the lowest we’ve experienced is 24.8.)
The same thing happened last year; we had a few “teaser” showers beginning of September, followed by another few months of harsh, dry heat. But hopefully we won’t have to wait that long this year, as last year there was a ‘mini famine’ up country because of the delayed rains.
With the dry season come the unpleasant and very unwelcome electricity and water cuts. The novelty?? tolerance?? of not having hydro and water wears off after months and it just gets old and very frustrating. Try as we might to have and maintain a godly attitude about it, we just simply fail sometimes. It really wreaks havoc with the fridge situation if I can’t freeze water to somewhat keep the fridge cool. And in this country of sweat and dust and filth, water is even more essential than just for cooking/drinking. We’ve had a lot more water cuts this year than last; for washing we store water in pails and for drinking in jugs.
When you are aware of incredible govt. corruption it makes it pretty hard to just ‘live with it’, when you know that things could be drastically different; but the public, it seems, isn’t important enough to supply them with basic necessities, as long as some of their pockets are thickly lined… Televised promises by top govn. personnel to make a complete stop to cuts go unfulfilled.
What’s especially annoying is when water and hydro are cut at the same time, which happens frequently. Aarrrhhhggg!!! No hydro, no fans!!! Yeesch that’s hot.
Sept. 22 2010
“I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.” Luke 10:19
Isaac has prayed into this almost daily for many months…
Colton found and captured a scorpion at school yesterday. It is currently approximately 4 feet from where I’m sitting in a clear plastic pencil case. I took it to school today to show some of my students. It seems most people don’t know that there are scorpions in Burundi. Aime, a colleague of ours, was down a few weeks ago and we told him that Colton had stepped on one in the shower about a month ago, and he could hardly believe that they exist here - he had never seen one - and he’s a local. And we’ve had two encounters with them in the span of about a month. The one Colton stepped on was much bigger than the one he caught yesterday. We also get snakes and centipedes in that same shower.
I’ll leave you with that warm and fuzzy thought. ;-)
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Tired and refreshed!
Cont. from previous blog….
So on Sunday, Wycliff, who is Mercy’s husband, picked us up at our hotel and we walked to their church - Anglican - a massive and ancient stone building with beautiful stained glass windows. After church more touring of the city, then hopped on a matatu again and went to Mercy’s for lunch.
Monday we boarded the train for Mombasa at 7:00 P.M. The trip was about 15 - 16 hrs. long; the cabins weren’t posh, but all we needed: beds, sink, etc. The farther away from Nairobi we went, the hotter it got. Mombasa’s weather is much like Burundi’s - hot, hot, and hot!!! Thank goodness for my trusty umbrella to shade me from the sun combined with my 70 SPF sun block.
Mombasa was fabulous!!!! A large part of the city is on an island, accessible by bridges, but we also opted to check out the ferry. That was really beautiful. We went to this absolutely amazing park that had baobab trees galore. The trunks are incredibly thick, kind of like the Redwoods of California. Colton and I both have this thing for trees - Colton loves to climb them, and I just love the look of trees; and leaves. So Colton scrambled from tree to tree, climbing like a monkey. Things that wouldn’t necessarily garner much attention in the western world are much cause for locals to stop and take in the sight as a mzungu goes about his business, including tree climbing.
We visited Fort Jesus - google it for a bit of East African history, followed by a scrumptious Chinese lunch on the ocean. After this we headed to the Indian Ocean. Wow!!!! God sure knew what He was doing when He spoke this into existence! Breath taking powder white beach that goes on mile after endless mile. We could go out into the water over half a km. and the water was only up to our chest.
The camel ride that we had on the beach was awesome. It walked very slowly, clodding along just like the camel on the Veggie Tales movie, Jonah.
The three of us really enjoy shell collecting on the beach, and this was even more fun than on Lake Tanganyika, the 600 km. long lake that we can see from our house.
Thursday we spent more time at the beach. Considering that I’m not a beach bum, nor can I go in the sun, it was fantastic. And the fact that I wore a sport shirt with short sleeves and shorts for once was not cause for people to stare, as anything goes on the beach in Africa.
At 7:00 P.M. we boarded the train back to Nairobi. It was all-inclusive, so dinner and breakfast are served in the dining cars. The animals had us glued to the windows for hours; we saw many herds of zebra, antelopes of varying kinds, wildebeest, ostriches, other large land birds, etc.
Saturday we went to this huge Maasai market; the colors, the Maasai body piercing, the haggling, the loud banter, the ‘smell’ of Africa, it truly is a place where the senses are engaged!!
Afterwards while walking around, just taking in more of this busy city, we stumbled on this fantastic little coffee house that served real, brewed coffee!! Super, super strong stuff. It’s my new favorite coffee house in the world; no joke - move over Second Cup and Starbucks. We bought three mugs there and I got a t-shirt with the logo on it - “Nairobi Java House”. If time and finances allow, book a flight to Nairobi Java House, and since you’re in the city anyway, make sure you check out the rest of the city as well.
For supper we wanted to have things from the supermarket that we miss from Canada and enjoy them back at the hotel. So after careful deliberation and having to make choices from the overwhelmingly many aisles of food, we decided on yogurt (Colton and I each polished off a one litre no problem), Ritz crackers (imitation, though the label was the Ritz label), apples, which we don’t buy in Burundi ‘cause they’re a dollar a piece, and tiny and not fresh at all; a very large bag of delicious potatoe chips, Pepsi!!! (yaaayyyy!! For devoted Pepsi drinkers like us; though I must say that the Coke in Burundi is good - must be due to the fact that it comes in glass bottles), and imitation Oreo’s. Oh… the little pleasures of our Canadian home!!! Yikes, maybe I should check how many food groups we covered before I print this…..
On Sunday morning we went back for another great coffee at the above, chilled, than headed to the airport to catch our flight back home. We had a short layover in Tanzania, and came home feeling tired, refreshed and rejuvenated; a contradiction in terms, I know, but a vacation is probably the only time when “tired and refreshed" makes sense.
We thank God very much for our time away; we really needed it. We know we are where the Father wants us, but that doesn’t make it easy.
I came back with a new fire and excitement for this coming year. I like that.
So on Sunday, Wycliff, who is Mercy’s husband, picked us up at our hotel and we walked to their church - Anglican - a massive and ancient stone building with beautiful stained glass windows. After church more touring of the city, then hopped on a matatu again and went to Mercy’s for lunch.
Monday we boarded the train for Mombasa at 7:00 P.M. The trip was about 15 - 16 hrs. long; the cabins weren’t posh, but all we needed: beds, sink, etc. The farther away from Nairobi we went, the hotter it got. Mombasa’s weather is much like Burundi’s - hot, hot, and hot!!! Thank goodness for my trusty umbrella to shade me from the sun combined with my 70 SPF sun block.
Mombasa was fabulous!!!! A large part of the city is on an island, accessible by bridges, but we also opted to check out the ferry. That was really beautiful. We went to this absolutely amazing park that had baobab trees galore. The trunks are incredibly thick, kind of like the Redwoods of California. Colton and I both have this thing for trees - Colton loves to climb them, and I just love the look of trees; and leaves. So Colton scrambled from tree to tree, climbing like a monkey. Things that wouldn’t necessarily garner much attention in the western world are much cause for locals to stop and take in the sight as a mzungu goes about his business, including tree climbing.
We visited Fort Jesus - google it for a bit of East African history, followed by a scrumptious Chinese lunch on the ocean. After this we headed to the Indian Ocean. Wow!!!! God sure knew what He was doing when He spoke this into existence! Breath taking powder white beach that goes on mile after endless mile. We could go out into the water over half a km. and the water was only up to our chest.
The camel ride that we had on the beach was awesome. It walked very slowly, clodding along just like the camel on the Veggie Tales movie, Jonah.
The three of us really enjoy shell collecting on the beach, and this was even more fun than on Lake Tanganyika, the 600 km. long lake that we can see from our house.
Thursday we spent more time at the beach. Considering that I’m not a beach bum, nor can I go in the sun, it was fantastic. And the fact that I wore a sport shirt with short sleeves and shorts for once was not cause for people to stare, as anything goes on the beach in Africa.
At 7:00 P.M. we boarded the train back to Nairobi. It was all-inclusive, so dinner and breakfast are served in the dining cars. The animals had us glued to the windows for hours; we saw many herds of zebra, antelopes of varying kinds, wildebeest, ostriches, other large land birds, etc.
Saturday we went to this huge Maasai market; the colors, the Maasai body piercing, the haggling, the loud banter, the ‘smell’ of Africa, it truly is a place where the senses are engaged!!
Afterwards while walking around, just taking in more of this busy city, we stumbled on this fantastic little coffee house that served real, brewed coffee!! Super, super strong stuff. It’s my new favorite coffee house in the world; no joke - move over Second Cup and Starbucks. We bought three mugs there and I got a t-shirt with the logo on it - “Nairobi Java House”. If time and finances allow, book a flight to Nairobi Java House, and since you’re in the city anyway, make sure you check out the rest of the city as well.
For supper we wanted to have things from the supermarket that we miss from Canada and enjoy them back at the hotel. So after careful deliberation and having to make choices from the overwhelmingly many aisles of food, we decided on yogurt (Colton and I each polished off a one litre no problem), Ritz crackers (imitation, though the label was the Ritz label), apples, which we don’t buy in Burundi ‘cause they’re a dollar a piece, and tiny and not fresh at all; a very large bag of delicious potatoe chips, Pepsi!!! (yaaayyyy!! For devoted Pepsi drinkers like us; though I must say that the Coke in Burundi is good - must be due to the fact that it comes in glass bottles), and imitation Oreo’s. Oh… the little pleasures of our Canadian home!!! Yikes, maybe I should check how many food groups we covered before I print this…..
On Sunday morning we went back for another great coffee at the above, chilled, than headed to the airport to catch our flight back home. We had a short layover in Tanzania, and came home feeling tired, refreshed and rejuvenated; a contradiction in terms, I know, but a vacation is probably the only time when “tired and refreshed" makes sense.
We thank God very much for our time away; we really needed it. We know we are where the Father wants us, but that doesn’t make it easy.
I came back with a new fire and excitement for this coming year. I like that.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya, here we come!!
We left on Wednesday, August 11th and came back on Sunday, August 22nd.
We arrived at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi and immediately were thrown into a world of many white faces and shops filled with more chocolate and “things “ than we had seen in over a year. And not just any chocolate, but LINDT chocolate!!! Amongst almost every other kind you can think of. Yummmm!!
We went to our hotel, just chilled for a while, went downstairs for dinner, nothing hugely exciting. Oh, wait, we went to this huge supermarket that had everything; we just walked around trying to take it all in - clean, brightly lit and fully stocked shelves of anything you could wish for. It was as if we were transported into another world in the span of a few short hours. We bought lots of junk food and went back to our hotel room and pigged out on our scrumptious finds.
Mercy, a Kenyan, was a teacher at The King’s School till June. She got married to a Kenyan just before Christmas in their native Nairobi. She came back to Burundi to finish the school year, while her new husband, Wycliff stayed behind. In June she moved back to Nairobi, but not before she offered to show us around Nairobi if and when we came. Well, Mercy is just a darling, and she (and hubby Wycliff on Saturday) was a great tour guide on Friday and Saturday.
Thursday - First we went to an elephant orphanage located in Nairobi National Park. Hung out with, petted, laughed at, got dirtied by about 15 elephants.
Next stop - Giraffe Center. This was THE best. There were buckets of food pellets that made it very easy to befriend these beautiful creatures. At first the sensation of their long, rough and slimy, black tongue wrapping around your hand was … umm… I don’t know, I guess just plain gross. But just the realization that you were actually feeding a giraffe made you forget about the grossness and give them handful after handful. One of the employees asked me if I’d like to be kissed by a giraffe, and without thinking about it I said yes. The guide demonstrated by putting a pellet of food between his pursed lips, and lickity-split, (pun intended), the pellet had exchanged lips!! First I was up, followed by Colton who had to do it time and again because Isaac kept missing the camera shot. Hee-hee!! This one time when Colton had this necking experience (pun definitely intended), he kept arching his back more and more, but the giraffe’s neck just kept coming and coming, till finally it got the pellet, leaving a thick line of saliva hanging between Colton’s chin and his mouth. Loved it - me, not Colton!!
When it was Isaac’s turn I kept missing the shot as well, and no, it wasn’t intentional; this also necessitated numerous attempts, somewhat to Isaac’s chagrin. Thankfully they had a washing station nearby, complete with soap, that we made good use of.
Following this we went to Mamba Village, which is a large crocodile place. We’ve seen crocs. in Burundi lots, so this wasn’t a big deal. We came for the lunch that is served in a beautiful outdoor setting by a little lake.
Next it was off to Westgate Mall, a 5 story shopaholics paradise. It is located in a very posh area of Nairobi. Many of the shops are high European fashion brands, whose prices made our eyes spin. Here too, we just walked around trying to take it all in, thinking back to Burundi and the incredible contrast between it and where we were now. And you know what we bought?! Spices!! I’m not kidding!! Spices!! Finally in a real store and all we bought was spices.
At about 8:30 P.M. we went to Carnivore, which is this really huge place that serves meats that you might not ever even have heard of. For example, how ‘bout some zebra tonight? Perhaps a nice slab of medium-well done crocodile; not suit your palate today? No problem - maybe hippo will hit the spot. Oh, you just want something mundane? Well they cater to that as well. Does steer heart (Isaac’s favorite) sound better? Or ostrich meatballs? Colton’s fav. - pork sausage; my favorite - boring ol’ chicken breast.
They just keep bringing different types of meat till you tell them no more. We must have had at least 10-12
varieties that night. I’m not that keen on meat as a rule, so the cat that was roaming between the tables was very well fed beside my chair.
Regretfully, we weren’t able to take any pictures at Carnivore because we had completely killed the camera battery at our other excursions that day, and we didn’t go to the hotel before dinner to recharge them.
That was Thursday, a super fun day.
Friday, Mercy came to our hotel after breakfast and we headed out to Nairobi National Park. We saw lions, albino zebra’s, cougar, leopard, cheetah, hippo, wildebeest, numerous antelope species, crocs., monkeys, ostrich, etc. etc. Our mode of transportation was the ever popular matatu, which is what we would call a hippie van in the west; blaring reggae music, brightly decorated, windows rolled down, swerving in and out of the absolute craziest traffic you can imagine. Burundi traffic , as awful as it is seems almost like child’s play by comparison. At night these matatus turn into a kaleidoscope of colors in motion as the lights that the owners install illuminate the insides.
After lunch we toured around the city, and met up with 2 other Kenyan teachers, which was really cool. In a city of close to 5 million people and running into someone you know is pretty sweet. Oh, and when we were at the giraffe center we ran into another Kenyan teacher!!! Three in total, not counting our planned encounter with Mercy.
Irene, one of the teachers who lives up country in Kenya during the summer months had come to the city for a few days and was staying at this hotel that was a fraction of the price that we were paying for our hotel. Our hotel was very, very basic by Canadian standards, but it is the high season right now, so it wasn’t cheap. Anyways, Irene suggested seeing how much a room would be for the three of us at this cheap place. Isaac and I agreed that we would first check out a room, and take it from there. Well, before we could hardly blink, and without seeing a room, we were booked into this place for three nights. Imagine what $15 US per night gets you!!! In much lower standards than you and I are used to. Let it suffice to say it was an experience, and thankfully we spent very little time there except for the nights.
In Canada I would hardly think twice about buying Kenyan coffee. It was surprising to find that it’s almost impossible to find an establishment that has brewed coffee; almost everyone just serves a pretty poor instant coffee. So after a number of days Isaac and I wanted a real cup of coffee, and while staying at our wonderfully cheap hotel we decided that we’d check out the 5 star Hilton’s restaurant to see whether they served real coffee. Much to our delight they did, but it came at a crazy high price; we splurged on a very tiny cup of super strong java, but opted out of the $30 US breakfast per person.
The lack of availability of coffee in Kenya is because the growers get much more for their coffee beans when they export. In Burundi, very, very few locals drink coffee even though we have superb coffee grown up country. Reason being most people can’t afford to drink it.
In the afternoon Mercy and Wycliff took us to the August 7th Peace Memorial. This is the US Embassy site that was bombed by Al Quida on August 7th, 1998. Two hundred and eighteen people died. Pretty awful.
In the evening we went to Wycliff’s parents house - super fun people. His dad is the director of admin. in the Kenyan parliament and was very eager to give us a tour of parliament, whether in session or out, which ever we preferred. Across the street from Wycliff’s home is where Mercy grew up with her aunt and uncle because her mom died . So we went and had a nice time with Mercy’s family. Kenyan’s are so friendly and welcoming, and we left with warm invitations to come back, feeling loved and accepted. By Kenyan standards we were, after all, almost family now as well.
To be continued…..
We arrived at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi and immediately were thrown into a world of many white faces and shops filled with more chocolate and “things “ than we had seen in over a year. And not just any chocolate, but LINDT chocolate!!! Amongst almost every other kind you can think of. Yummmm!!
We went to our hotel, just chilled for a while, went downstairs for dinner, nothing hugely exciting. Oh, wait, we went to this huge supermarket that had everything; we just walked around trying to take it all in - clean, brightly lit and fully stocked shelves of anything you could wish for. It was as if we were transported into another world in the span of a few short hours. We bought lots of junk food and went back to our hotel room and pigged out on our scrumptious finds.
Mercy, a Kenyan, was a teacher at The King’s School till June. She got married to a Kenyan just before Christmas in their native Nairobi. She came back to Burundi to finish the school year, while her new husband, Wycliff stayed behind. In June she moved back to Nairobi, but not before she offered to show us around Nairobi if and when we came. Well, Mercy is just a darling, and she (and hubby Wycliff on Saturday) was a great tour guide on Friday and Saturday.
Thursday - First we went to an elephant orphanage located in Nairobi National Park. Hung out with, petted, laughed at, got dirtied by about 15 elephants.
Next stop - Giraffe Center. This was THE best. There were buckets of food pellets that made it very easy to befriend these beautiful creatures. At first the sensation of their long, rough and slimy, black tongue wrapping around your hand was … umm… I don’t know, I guess just plain gross. But just the realization that you were actually feeding a giraffe made you forget about the grossness and give them handful after handful. One of the employees asked me if I’d like to be kissed by a giraffe, and without thinking about it I said yes. The guide demonstrated by putting a pellet of food between his pursed lips, and lickity-split, (pun intended), the pellet had exchanged lips!! First I was up, followed by Colton who had to do it time and again because Isaac kept missing the camera shot. Hee-hee!! This one time when Colton had this necking experience (pun definitely intended), he kept arching his back more and more, but the giraffe’s neck just kept coming and coming, till finally it got the pellet, leaving a thick line of saliva hanging between Colton’s chin and his mouth. Loved it - me, not Colton!!
When it was Isaac’s turn I kept missing the shot as well, and no, it wasn’t intentional; this also necessitated numerous attempts, somewhat to Isaac’s chagrin. Thankfully they had a washing station nearby, complete with soap, that we made good use of.
Following this we went to Mamba Village, which is a large crocodile place. We’ve seen crocs. in Burundi lots, so this wasn’t a big deal. We came for the lunch that is served in a beautiful outdoor setting by a little lake.
Next it was off to Westgate Mall, a 5 story shopaholics paradise. It is located in a very posh area of Nairobi. Many of the shops are high European fashion brands, whose prices made our eyes spin. Here too, we just walked around trying to take it all in, thinking back to Burundi and the incredible contrast between it and where we were now. And you know what we bought?! Spices!! I’m not kidding!! Spices!! Finally in a real store and all we bought was spices.
At about 8:30 P.M. we went to Carnivore, which is this really huge place that serves meats that you might not ever even have heard of. For example, how ‘bout some zebra tonight? Perhaps a nice slab of medium-well done crocodile; not suit your palate today? No problem - maybe hippo will hit the spot. Oh, you just want something mundane? Well they cater to that as well. Does steer heart (Isaac’s favorite) sound better? Or ostrich meatballs? Colton’s fav. - pork sausage; my favorite - boring ol’ chicken breast.
They just keep bringing different types of meat till you tell them no more. We must have had at least 10-12
varieties that night. I’m not that keen on meat as a rule, so the cat that was roaming between the tables was very well fed beside my chair.
Regretfully, we weren’t able to take any pictures at Carnivore because we had completely killed the camera battery at our other excursions that day, and we didn’t go to the hotel before dinner to recharge them.
That was Thursday, a super fun day.
Friday, Mercy came to our hotel after breakfast and we headed out to Nairobi National Park. We saw lions, albino zebra’s, cougar, leopard, cheetah, hippo, wildebeest, numerous antelope species, crocs., monkeys, ostrich, etc. etc. Our mode of transportation was the ever popular matatu, which is what we would call a hippie van in the west; blaring reggae music, brightly decorated, windows rolled down, swerving in and out of the absolute craziest traffic you can imagine. Burundi traffic , as awful as it is seems almost like child’s play by comparison. At night these matatus turn into a kaleidoscope of colors in motion as the lights that the owners install illuminate the insides.
After lunch we toured around the city, and met up with 2 other Kenyan teachers, which was really cool. In a city of close to 5 million people and running into someone you know is pretty sweet. Oh, and when we were at the giraffe center we ran into another Kenyan teacher!!! Three in total, not counting our planned encounter with Mercy.
Irene, one of the teachers who lives up country in Kenya during the summer months had come to the city for a few days and was staying at this hotel that was a fraction of the price that we were paying for our hotel. Our hotel was very, very basic by Canadian standards, but it is the high season right now, so it wasn’t cheap. Anyways, Irene suggested seeing how much a room would be for the three of us at this cheap place. Isaac and I agreed that we would first check out a room, and take it from there. Well, before we could hardly blink, and without seeing a room, we were booked into this place for three nights. Imagine what $15 US per night gets you!!! In much lower standards than you and I are used to. Let it suffice to say it was an experience, and thankfully we spent very little time there except for the nights.
In Canada I would hardly think twice about buying Kenyan coffee. It was surprising to find that it’s almost impossible to find an establishment that has brewed coffee; almost everyone just serves a pretty poor instant coffee. So after a number of days Isaac and I wanted a real cup of coffee, and while staying at our wonderfully cheap hotel we decided that we’d check out the 5 star Hilton’s restaurant to see whether they served real coffee. Much to our delight they did, but it came at a crazy high price; we splurged on a very tiny cup of super strong java, but opted out of the $30 US breakfast per person.
The lack of availability of coffee in Kenya is because the growers get much more for their coffee beans when they export. In Burundi, very, very few locals drink coffee even though we have superb coffee grown up country. Reason being most people can’t afford to drink it.
In the afternoon Mercy and Wycliff took us to the August 7th Peace Memorial. This is the US Embassy site that was bombed by Al Quida on August 7th, 1998. Two hundred and eighteen people died. Pretty awful.
In the evening we went to Wycliff’s parents house - super fun people. His dad is the director of admin. in the Kenyan parliament and was very eager to give us a tour of parliament, whether in session or out, which ever we preferred. Across the street from Wycliff’s home is where Mercy grew up with her aunt and uncle because her mom died . So we went and had a nice time with Mercy’s family. Kenyan’s are so friendly and welcoming, and we left with warm invitations to come back, feeling loved and accepted. By Kenyan standards we were, after all, almost family now as well.
To be continued…..
Monday, July 26, 2010
Burundi Hospitals
So, I was going to tell you a bit about the hospitals here.
We’ve had a tour of 2 private hospitals, which is what I’ll start with. I won’t go into much detail.
A large room houses between 10 and 12 people; rooms can house men and women together; beds are literally back to back, no curtains to separate them. Linens may or may not be provided. It’s very dirty and smelly. AIDS patients are beside malaria patients who are beside anal hernia patients who are beside…. All food and drink has to be brought in by family/friends. If this does not happen because of lack of family or funds, the patient literally does not eat. Family/friends are also the caregivers. Nurses and doctors primarily administer drugs etc.; equipment is almost non-existent. Beds are probably at least 50 years old. People, I think mainly care givers, lying on the ground outside. Laundry spread out on the ground to dry.
Camping tents are the overflow - I’m very serious. When we had a tour there was a surgery in progress, and the door was not completely shut. This was a normal `house door`, no double or triple doors leading to the O.R, just a regular door off the hallway. The person that was giving us the tour opened the door further, and there, splayed on the table was a patient undergoing surgery, open to gross contamination.
There was a high pile of broken beds stacked up against the one wall outside, not far from the `tent ward.`
The government hospitals are much, much worse. The one where Divine stayed and died in was almost unbearably filthy. No linens are provided. The walls are so splattered with ``stuff`` that has run down that it seriously almost looks like a wallpaper pattern. Every Band-Aid, every needle, every dressing, absolutely every single thing that the patient needs for the treatment of the ailment they are suffering from has to be bought by the family/ friends. Again, caregivers of the sick tend to almost all needs. There’s a big metal barrel cut in half just outside a cluster of rooms that serves as the needle/blood transfusion/empty IV/food scrapes disposal. It reeks.
Emergency service - The day Mama Queen was brought in and died she had to wait about 5 hours before she was seen by a doctor; this is completely normal. There is much that I could say, but won’t.
One thing I ask of you, the reader. Please don’t whine and complain and get angry about our western medical system when things don’t go as you wish they would. And please don’t whine and complain and gripe about the high taxes that you pay, because a large part of the taxes you pay goes toward your medical coverage. You have no idea how blessed you are. Thank God for what you have.
We’ve had a tour of 2 private hospitals, which is what I’ll start with. I won’t go into much detail.
A large room houses between 10 and 12 people; rooms can house men and women together; beds are literally back to back, no curtains to separate them. Linens may or may not be provided. It’s very dirty and smelly. AIDS patients are beside malaria patients who are beside anal hernia patients who are beside…. All food and drink has to be brought in by family/friends. If this does not happen because of lack of family or funds, the patient literally does not eat. Family/friends are also the caregivers. Nurses and doctors primarily administer drugs etc.; equipment is almost non-existent. Beds are probably at least 50 years old. People, I think mainly care givers, lying on the ground outside. Laundry spread out on the ground to dry.
Camping tents are the overflow - I’m very serious. When we had a tour there was a surgery in progress, and the door was not completely shut. This was a normal `house door`, no double or triple doors leading to the O.R, just a regular door off the hallway. The person that was giving us the tour opened the door further, and there, splayed on the table was a patient undergoing surgery, open to gross contamination.
There was a high pile of broken beds stacked up against the one wall outside, not far from the `tent ward.`
The government hospitals are much, much worse. The one where Divine stayed and died in was almost unbearably filthy. No linens are provided. The walls are so splattered with ``stuff`` that has run down that it seriously almost looks like a wallpaper pattern. Every Band-Aid, every needle, every dressing, absolutely every single thing that the patient needs for the treatment of the ailment they are suffering from has to be bought by the family/ friends. Again, caregivers of the sick tend to almost all needs. There’s a big metal barrel cut in half just outside a cluster of rooms that serves as the needle/blood transfusion/empty IV/food scrapes disposal. It reeks.
Emergency service - The day Mama Queen was brought in and died she had to wait about 5 hours before she was seen by a doctor; this is completely normal. There is much that I could say, but won’t.
One thing I ask of you, the reader. Please don’t whine and complain and get angry about our western medical system when things don’t go as you wish they would. And please don’t whine and complain and gripe about the high taxes that you pay, because a large part of the taxes you pay goes toward your medical coverage. You have no idea how blessed you are. Thank God for what you have.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Mama Queen is dancing for the King
Happy Canada Day!!!
Take time to thank God for our wonderful country.
Much has happened in the last few weeks.
We got to spend some time with Sara and Peter Ndaruhutse, children of the late David Ndaruhutse, founder of A.R.M. - African Revival Ministries. Sara is 20, lives with her mom in Kigali, Rwanda and she studies in Uganda in communication. After completing this she’s planning on going to Bible college in the UK. I didn’t spend much time with Peter, so I don’t know what he’s studying. They both love and serve the Lord.
School’s out - hooray!! Colton did absolutely phenomenally well; he received 7 academic awards. With school being out I also get some breathing space, which I needed. Isaac’s schedule will be very full in a few weeks as he has a lot of things to fix/install/build for both schools.
Since the beginning of the school year I’ve had a daily stream of mostly girls, some boys, coming to my room during recess, just to chat. We have two 20 minute breaks, so that’s a lot of time I’ve spent with them. On average I’d have probably 6 -8 girls, (some grade 3, mostly grades 4 - 6) per break, sometimes up to 15. I often struggled with this; I had so much work to do and wanted to work through the breaks, but I had to keep telling myself that relationships are more important than working through break. Many of these girls are Muslim/Hindu. One year 5 girl accepted Jesus as her Saviour, and said she would not tell her parents. She came back the next day, very distraught, saying she had told her parents and that she couldn’t be a Christian. In this religion the father has full rights to kill his family if they convert to Christianity.
This particular girl, Bhagyashree, was hard for me to always love; nosy, serious chatterbox, etc. She loved to tell me about their Muslim festivals and beliefs, ceremonies and rituals. So after listening to her I would tell her what Christianity is. This particular time she informed me that they were in the middle of this 2 day festival where the father lights a big fire in the back yard and walks around it 4 times, after which their sins are forgiven. I reminded her that only God/Jesus forgives sins. I told her if she ever wanted to accept Jesus as her personal Saviour and wanted to have someone pray with her, or if she had questions about that or anything pertaining to Jesus, she could ask me anytime. Immediately she said she wanted to accept Jesus!!! I was soooo excited!! I had been praying for her for a long time, and now I got to witness this miracle.
Please pray for this precious girl and her year 3 sister. These kids that come from Muslim/Hindu families are so confused. Some have told me that at school they pray to Jesus, and that they believe in Jesus, but at home they pray to their false gods and idols. We have an almost 25% Muslim/Hindu student body. Naida, year 6, is really struggling; her dad is laying on the pressure at home, and she is torn.
One year 3 girl told her teacher and myself that she saw men with turbans and a huge snake in her room. One of the men had touched her on her head and she was transported to their temple, and the man touched her again and she was back in her room. Recently all the kids got a bible from Gideons and this girl, Angali, brought it back at her fathers’ request. He had specifically forbidden her to read it at school, and threatened her that he was posting “a man” demon, by the ceiling of her classroom to watch her, and if she read in the bible this “man” would tell him. These are only 2 stories; there are many more; please pray for these children that every word they hear that come from the Fathers’ heart will take root and will with time bear much fruit. I fully believe that the Lord has them at the King’s School for a purpose.
We as staff are very aware of the spirits that could be brought into the school by these kids and parents, and we corporately pray against them very diligently.
There is a King’s School grad (2007) that was helping out since January that also has spent a lot of time in my room. She comes and tells me things that are going on at home, she cries, and I just pray, “Jesus help me.” I pray with her, listen to her and love and affirm her. I asked her if I could blog about her situation so you, the reader, could pray.
Evangeline is going to be 20 in October, and her father treats her like a little child. In fact he compares her with her 7 year old sister. She is not allowed to socialize, she’s in a prison. Her mom and dad have been separated for a number of years; mom lives in Nigeria. Dad is a pastor of a local church here. Dad beats his girls regularly. Evangeline says she far rather would have his physical abuse than his verbal abuse. Her last physical beating was when she was 16, but he’s threatening to start beating her up again. One sister is doing her A levels (grade 13 equivalent) in Uganda, one sister is going into year 9, and one into year 3. Evangeline also became a Christian recently (March); she hasn’t told her dad yet, she says he would use this against her. The spiritual abuse is awful. Evangeline failed her A levels in Uganda; it’s a 2 year program.
These girls are docile, yet carry a lot of anger and hurt in them. Often when he beats the girls he does it in front of the sisters. He says they are evil and wicked, and that they are dangerous.
Even though Evangeline is treated like a small child, she’s expected to raise her sisters and manage the home, as well as work full time; on top of this, she tutors some kids. Since starting work as an assistant at the beginning of the year she has not been able to keep one single franc that she’s earned. Not one. Her dad takes it all. I could write much about this situation, but I won’t. Please pray for this friend and her family; and pray that I will be a good friend to her.
There are other teachers that come into my room, tell me their problems and cry, though crying is very un-African. I guess they saw me cry when Ramona was sick and died, so perhaps they know it’s okay to cry around me. All I can do is listen and hug them and pray with them. I’ve wondered though what Jesus is doing in and through all these people coming to my room.
Two days ago we had 3 people speak over us that Isaac and I are spiritual parents. They know nothing about the above relationships. Two of them just flew in from the UK a week and a half ago, and one from South Carolina. We were praying together, and God showed up pretty powerfully.
The spiritual parents thing totally resonates with us - towards the beginning of our time here in Burundi, I had three dreams about adopting someone. I never felt it was a physical adoption; I’ve wondered about these dreams, and we believe God has revealed to us what they meant. Please pray into this with us.
We’ve met some pretty incredible people in the last 10 days - people that we fully believe God has brought into our lives for a huge purpose. Some are local, others are not. It feels like we’re on the cusp of something new.
Divine….. sweet, precious Divine….dancing in heaven, worshipping Jesus together with my daddy that died when I was 2, with my incredible niece Ramona and my beautiful friend Charlotte….
Divine was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 yrs. ago. Shortly after she got pregnant, unplanned. One week after Bearnu (girl), was born she had a mastectomy; one week after this, she started chemo. in Uganda, as Burundi has no cancer treatment. She was doing pretty good till about three months ago. Her other breast started showing very rapid signs of cancer. Her lungs started filling up with fluid. She had an excruciating lung puncture. By now her breast was literally being “eaten” away by the cancer. She was refusing another mastectomy. Her wound/scar from the mastectomy started leaking lots. Both sides had to have daily dressing changes, due to lots of awful drainage. The last 5 days she could not lie down because she couldn’t breath, and because of being in agony. She hardly slept a wink in this time; exhaustion hardly touches what she felt I think.
Early Monday morning the 21st, Deo - her husband, and Alli took her to the hospital. Alli kept me informed all morning while I was at school as to what was happening via texting. Nothing happened all morning medically, hospitals here are almost enough to……….. more on that later.
Finally at about one in the afternoon she was seen, and was put on I.V. An exhausted Alli went home, and Deo went home to organize meals to be brought to the hospital. They were told that she first had to have a blood transfusion before they could do another lung puncture. At about 3:00 P.M. Isaac, Colton and I arrived at the hospital. It was awful; she was not fully “there”, her heart was hurting her so bad, she was fighting to breath. I held her head as she sat in her wheelchair, too weak and tired to hold it up herself.
At about 4:15 they finally started the transfusion, and they made her lie down. She begged and begged to sit up because she couldn’t breath, and her heart hurt her more when she laid down. As weak and tired as she was, she tried to get up time and again, and the family members that were there literally held her down. I coulda’ decked them. I realize they were just trying to help, but it was so incredibly hard to see. The family didn’t seem very compassionate at all, using harsh tones, etc.
Alli came back shortly after they started the transfusion. At about 4:30 Deo came back. At about 4:45 they put a hose by her nose with oxygen coming out of it. Divine was begging for help, every little while trying to get up. Close to 5:00 things got horrible, and 5 - 7 minutes later she died. She suffocated….. you can’t imagine…. the look on her face, her eyes…..
She leaves to mourn her passing her husband Deo, 6 beautiful children: Queen, Destine, Caleb, Esther, Dedi, and little Bearnu, and lots of family and friends, which we are blessed and privileged to be amongst.
Please pray for Deo and the family.
And please remember to pray for us as well
Take time to thank God for our wonderful country.
Much has happened in the last few weeks.
We got to spend some time with Sara and Peter Ndaruhutse, children of the late David Ndaruhutse, founder of A.R.M. - African Revival Ministries. Sara is 20, lives with her mom in Kigali, Rwanda and she studies in Uganda in communication. After completing this she’s planning on going to Bible college in the UK. I didn’t spend much time with Peter, so I don’t know what he’s studying. They both love and serve the Lord.
School’s out - hooray!! Colton did absolutely phenomenally well; he received 7 academic awards. With school being out I also get some breathing space, which I needed. Isaac’s schedule will be very full in a few weeks as he has a lot of things to fix/install/build for both schools.
Since the beginning of the school year I’ve had a daily stream of mostly girls, some boys, coming to my room during recess, just to chat. We have two 20 minute breaks, so that’s a lot of time I’ve spent with them. On average I’d have probably 6 -8 girls, (some grade 3, mostly grades 4 - 6) per break, sometimes up to 15. I often struggled with this; I had so much work to do and wanted to work through the breaks, but I had to keep telling myself that relationships are more important than working through break. Many of these girls are Muslim/Hindu. One year 5 girl accepted Jesus as her Saviour, and said she would not tell her parents. She came back the next day, very distraught, saying she had told her parents and that she couldn’t be a Christian. In this religion the father has full rights to kill his family if they convert to Christianity.
This particular girl, Bhagyashree, was hard for me to always love; nosy, serious chatterbox, etc. She loved to tell me about their Muslim festivals and beliefs, ceremonies and rituals. So after listening to her I would tell her what Christianity is. This particular time she informed me that they were in the middle of this 2 day festival where the father lights a big fire in the back yard and walks around it 4 times, after which their sins are forgiven. I reminded her that only God/Jesus forgives sins. I told her if she ever wanted to accept Jesus as her personal Saviour and wanted to have someone pray with her, or if she had questions about that or anything pertaining to Jesus, she could ask me anytime. Immediately she said she wanted to accept Jesus!!! I was soooo excited!! I had been praying for her for a long time, and now I got to witness this miracle.
Please pray for this precious girl and her year 3 sister. These kids that come from Muslim/Hindu families are so confused. Some have told me that at school they pray to Jesus, and that they believe in Jesus, but at home they pray to their false gods and idols. We have an almost 25% Muslim/Hindu student body. Naida, year 6, is really struggling; her dad is laying on the pressure at home, and she is torn.
One year 3 girl told her teacher and myself that she saw men with turbans and a huge snake in her room. One of the men had touched her on her head and she was transported to their temple, and the man touched her again and she was back in her room. Recently all the kids got a bible from Gideons and this girl, Angali, brought it back at her fathers’ request. He had specifically forbidden her to read it at school, and threatened her that he was posting “a man” demon, by the ceiling of her classroom to watch her, and if she read in the bible this “man” would tell him. These are only 2 stories; there are many more; please pray for these children that every word they hear that come from the Fathers’ heart will take root and will with time bear much fruit. I fully believe that the Lord has them at the King’s School for a purpose.
We as staff are very aware of the spirits that could be brought into the school by these kids and parents, and we corporately pray against them very diligently.
There is a King’s School grad (2007) that was helping out since January that also has spent a lot of time in my room. She comes and tells me things that are going on at home, she cries, and I just pray, “Jesus help me.” I pray with her, listen to her and love and affirm her. I asked her if I could blog about her situation so you, the reader, could pray.
Evangeline is going to be 20 in October, and her father treats her like a little child. In fact he compares her with her 7 year old sister. She is not allowed to socialize, she’s in a prison. Her mom and dad have been separated for a number of years; mom lives in Nigeria. Dad is a pastor of a local church here. Dad beats his girls regularly. Evangeline says she far rather would have his physical abuse than his verbal abuse. Her last physical beating was when she was 16, but he’s threatening to start beating her up again. One sister is doing her A levels (grade 13 equivalent) in Uganda, one sister is going into year 9, and one into year 3. Evangeline also became a Christian recently (March); she hasn’t told her dad yet, she says he would use this against her. The spiritual abuse is awful. Evangeline failed her A levels in Uganda; it’s a 2 year program.
These girls are docile, yet carry a lot of anger and hurt in them. Often when he beats the girls he does it in front of the sisters. He says they are evil and wicked, and that they are dangerous.
Even though Evangeline is treated like a small child, she’s expected to raise her sisters and manage the home, as well as work full time; on top of this, she tutors some kids. Since starting work as an assistant at the beginning of the year she has not been able to keep one single franc that she’s earned. Not one. Her dad takes it all. I could write much about this situation, but I won’t. Please pray for this friend and her family; and pray that I will be a good friend to her.
There are other teachers that come into my room, tell me their problems and cry, though crying is very un-African. I guess they saw me cry when Ramona was sick and died, so perhaps they know it’s okay to cry around me. All I can do is listen and hug them and pray with them. I’ve wondered though what Jesus is doing in and through all these people coming to my room.
Two days ago we had 3 people speak over us that Isaac and I are spiritual parents. They know nothing about the above relationships. Two of them just flew in from the UK a week and a half ago, and one from South Carolina. We were praying together, and God showed up pretty powerfully.
The spiritual parents thing totally resonates with us - towards the beginning of our time here in Burundi, I had three dreams about adopting someone. I never felt it was a physical adoption; I’ve wondered about these dreams, and we believe God has revealed to us what they meant. Please pray into this with us.
We’ve met some pretty incredible people in the last 10 days - people that we fully believe God has brought into our lives for a huge purpose. Some are local, others are not. It feels like we’re on the cusp of something new.
Divine….. sweet, precious Divine….dancing in heaven, worshipping Jesus together with my daddy that died when I was 2, with my incredible niece Ramona and my beautiful friend Charlotte….
Divine was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 yrs. ago. Shortly after she got pregnant, unplanned. One week after Bearnu (girl), was born she had a mastectomy; one week after this, she started chemo. in Uganda, as Burundi has no cancer treatment. She was doing pretty good till about three months ago. Her other breast started showing very rapid signs of cancer. Her lungs started filling up with fluid. She had an excruciating lung puncture. By now her breast was literally being “eaten” away by the cancer. She was refusing another mastectomy. Her wound/scar from the mastectomy started leaking lots. Both sides had to have daily dressing changes, due to lots of awful drainage. The last 5 days she could not lie down because she couldn’t breath, and because of being in agony. She hardly slept a wink in this time; exhaustion hardly touches what she felt I think.
Early Monday morning the 21st, Deo - her husband, and Alli took her to the hospital. Alli kept me informed all morning while I was at school as to what was happening via texting. Nothing happened all morning medically, hospitals here are almost enough to……….. more on that later.
Finally at about one in the afternoon she was seen, and was put on I.V. An exhausted Alli went home, and Deo went home to organize meals to be brought to the hospital. They were told that she first had to have a blood transfusion before they could do another lung puncture. At about 3:00 P.M. Isaac, Colton and I arrived at the hospital. It was awful; she was not fully “there”, her heart was hurting her so bad, she was fighting to breath. I held her head as she sat in her wheelchair, too weak and tired to hold it up herself.
At about 4:15 they finally started the transfusion, and they made her lie down. She begged and begged to sit up because she couldn’t breath, and her heart hurt her more when she laid down. As weak and tired as she was, she tried to get up time and again, and the family members that were there literally held her down. I coulda’ decked them. I realize they were just trying to help, but it was so incredibly hard to see. The family didn’t seem very compassionate at all, using harsh tones, etc.
Alli came back shortly after they started the transfusion. At about 4:30 Deo came back. At about 4:45 they put a hose by her nose with oxygen coming out of it. Divine was begging for help, every little while trying to get up. Close to 5:00 things got horrible, and 5 - 7 minutes later she died. She suffocated….. you can’t imagine…. the look on her face, her eyes…..
She leaves to mourn her passing her husband Deo, 6 beautiful children: Queen, Destine, Caleb, Esther, Dedi, and little Bearnu, and lots of family and friends, which we are blessed and privileged to be amongst.
Please pray for Deo and the family.
And please remember to pray for us as well
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Bubanza Crusade - Part 2
Long over due again.
We had three wonderful friends from Canada visit us for 10 days. Marvin and Rachael, together with Andrea were a breath of fresh air. We love you guys!!
So, part 2 of the Crusade:
The church wasn’t nearly big enough to hold everyone, so the event was held outside which proved to be problematic at times due to short but intense rains. We were under a canopy of tarps and palm branches resting on bamboo sticks. The edge of the mountain was about 20 feet from where we sat. The view was beautiful; there was a deep valley/ravine separating us from other majestic mountains - real mountains, like in B.C., not just ’wannabe’ mountains. (Mind you, all Burundi mountains are the real kind of mountains.)
People had walked/hiked from a distance of up to 15 km. from all directions. First introductions where made - the visiting team as well as all the local pastors representing their churches.
Eddy, who is Honda’s administrator did most of the interpreting for us, and time and again he said how the various choirs were singing songs of condemnation. He said this is very common in rural churches, where worship is often not worship, but judging. The choirs can sing beautifully, and often times are very, almost painfully long winded. They always have synchronized movements throughout the entire song - often times quite funny to watch. Whether it was mixed adult or childrens’ choirs, babies were on the backs of the choir members, bobbing back and forth. The ground was saturated from the rains, and so all the dancing was on slimmy, red mud. Most are bare foot anyway, no need to worry about their expensive Lacoste or Adidas getting ruined.
Many, many responded to the alter calls, and the angels in heaven rejoiced!!
Isaac spoke on the Holy Spirit, and I spoke about who we are in Christ Jesus according to Eph.1:3-14. In the evenings people were able to watch ‘Pilgrim’s Progress” and another Christian movie. The first evening Honda figured there were close to 1500 people, the second night there were more. They stretched out a white sheet on tall branches, thus enabling viewers on both sides.
The second night after preaching, Isaac very suddenly felt very sick. We had just entered the church to have supper, and Isaac knew he needed to get out - now!! We excused ourselves in the nick of time. After vomiting a few times he was completely well again. We fully believe this was a spiritual attack, as Isaac had previously felt a heaviness and darkness in his spirit. But praise be to Jesus - He who is in us is more powerful than he who is in the world!!!
I know I’ve written very little of the spiritual things, but really, when Jesus sets free the captives, that’s the bottom line. We were blessed beyond measure by being able to pray for, encourage and walk along side a beautiful people.
Isaac, Colton and I were all changed on that mountain.
Our dear friend Alli, the one that runs the sewing/mechanic project with ex-prostitutes and child soldiers, has a guy working for her by the name of Deo. Deo is her “right-hand-man” at the project; he’s an extremely soft spoken, gentle spirited father of six. He had malignant cancer from 2002 - 2004, with a huge visible lump on the side of his throat. He was hospitalized, and the doctors gave him just a little while to live. However, God told him that he was healed, and so Deo would tell people this, all the while having this lump on his throat. Well, Jesus completely healed him, and that was 6 years ago!!!
Deo’s wife, Divine, age 30 (Mama Queen - oldest daughter’s name is Queen), was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago; it is now all over her body. She is very sick, and in need of prayer. The way things work out here is if you have someone working for you, you are responsible for the medical bills that the employee and his family accrue. Well, needless to say, the bills are stacking up, and Alli is left almost by herself to pay for them.
Burundi does not have any kind of cancer treatment, so before Christmas Deo and Divine took a bus to Kampala, Uganda 6 times for chemo. Alli said it’s not a pleasant ride at the best of times, never mind when you’re so sick. Hospitalization in a government facility is not expensive by our standards - not even $10.00 per night, but this does not include any medicines, painkillers, tests, nothing. Also, hospitals do not feed the patients, so all food has to be brought in by family/friends. The custom here is that there are many people with the sick almost constantly, so these people also have to be fed. So for the most part, Alli is feeding 5 - 6 people daily on top of all the medical bills. We have come to know and love Deo and Divine, and have been so blessed by them.
If Jesus prompts you to help out with the bills, please email us at: ircfroese@gmail.com
Blessings!!!
We had three wonderful friends from Canada visit us for 10 days. Marvin and Rachael, together with Andrea were a breath of fresh air. We love you guys!!
So, part 2 of the Crusade:
The church wasn’t nearly big enough to hold everyone, so the event was held outside which proved to be problematic at times due to short but intense rains. We were under a canopy of tarps and palm branches resting on bamboo sticks. The edge of the mountain was about 20 feet from where we sat. The view was beautiful; there was a deep valley/ravine separating us from other majestic mountains - real mountains, like in B.C., not just ’wannabe’ mountains. (Mind you, all Burundi mountains are the real kind of mountains.)
People had walked/hiked from a distance of up to 15 km. from all directions. First introductions where made - the visiting team as well as all the local pastors representing their churches.
Eddy, who is Honda’s administrator did most of the interpreting for us, and time and again he said how the various choirs were singing songs of condemnation. He said this is very common in rural churches, where worship is often not worship, but judging. The choirs can sing beautifully, and often times are very, almost painfully long winded. They always have synchronized movements throughout the entire song - often times quite funny to watch. Whether it was mixed adult or childrens’ choirs, babies were on the backs of the choir members, bobbing back and forth. The ground was saturated from the rains, and so all the dancing was on slimmy, red mud. Most are bare foot anyway, no need to worry about their expensive Lacoste or Adidas getting ruined.
Many, many responded to the alter calls, and the angels in heaven rejoiced!!
Isaac spoke on the Holy Spirit, and I spoke about who we are in Christ Jesus according to Eph.1:3-14. In the evenings people were able to watch ‘Pilgrim’s Progress” and another Christian movie. The first evening Honda figured there were close to 1500 people, the second night there were more. They stretched out a white sheet on tall branches, thus enabling viewers on both sides.
The second night after preaching, Isaac very suddenly felt very sick. We had just entered the church to have supper, and Isaac knew he needed to get out - now!! We excused ourselves in the nick of time. After vomiting a few times he was completely well again. We fully believe this was a spiritual attack, as Isaac had previously felt a heaviness and darkness in his spirit. But praise be to Jesus - He who is in us is more powerful than he who is in the world!!!
I know I’ve written very little of the spiritual things, but really, when Jesus sets free the captives, that’s the bottom line. We were blessed beyond measure by being able to pray for, encourage and walk along side a beautiful people.
Isaac, Colton and I were all changed on that mountain.
Our dear friend Alli, the one that runs the sewing/mechanic project with ex-prostitutes and child soldiers, has a guy working for her by the name of Deo. Deo is her “right-hand-man” at the project; he’s an extremely soft spoken, gentle spirited father of six. He had malignant cancer from 2002 - 2004, with a huge visible lump on the side of his throat. He was hospitalized, and the doctors gave him just a little while to live. However, God told him that he was healed, and so Deo would tell people this, all the while having this lump on his throat. Well, Jesus completely healed him, and that was 6 years ago!!!
Deo’s wife, Divine, age 30 (Mama Queen - oldest daughter’s name is Queen), was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago; it is now all over her body. She is very sick, and in need of prayer. The way things work out here is if you have someone working for you, you are responsible for the medical bills that the employee and his family accrue. Well, needless to say, the bills are stacking up, and Alli is left almost by herself to pay for them.
Burundi does not have any kind of cancer treatment, so before Christmas Deo and Divine took a bus to Kampala, Uganda 6 times for chemo. Alli said it’s not a pleasant ride at the best of times, never mind when you’re so sick. Hospitalization in a government facility is not expensive by our standards - not even $10.00 per night, but this does not include any medicines, painkillers, tests, nothing. Also, hospitals do not feed the patients, so all food has to be brought in by family/friends. The custom here is that there are many people with the sick almost constantly, so these people also have to be fed. So for the most part, Alli is feeding 5 - 6 people daily on top of all the medical bills. We have come to know and love Deo and Divine, and have been so blessed by them.
If Jesus prompts you to help out with the bills, please email us at: ircfroese@gmail.com
Blessings!!!
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Bubanza Crusade - Part 1
The crusade - wow!!!
First and foremost, many people accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour - PTL!!!!!
We left on Friday at 10:00 A.M. Destination - Kenenga, Bubanza province, a short 40 kilometers from where I sit; duration of travel - 4 hours. Some events/things that laboured our travels:
The last 10 km. is what took about three and a half hrs.
You cannot call what we travelled on a road by any means; at best it was a path that is used by motor bikes, which is almost the only type of traffic they see in these parts, and not many of these even. The path was sopping wet due to heavy rains; the soil is red and when it’s wet, it’s almost like a skating rink. We’re inching our way up the side of a mountain, and a number of times, in the blink of an eye, the 4 wheel drive would slide a few feet to the side. The edge - the steep, free fall, 100’s of feet to the bottom - that edge, is only about 2-3 feet from the tires in many places, and praise Jesus that we didn’t slide sideways in those spots……. Many times Honda’s boys had to push the vehicles for long distances. The truck hauling the African drums/ sound equipment etc. blew a tire, but as it has duals in the back we continued on our way (and back home), without changing it; one of the rental vans ran out of gas (thank goodness that Honda packed gerry cans of gas for the generator); you’d think the driver that came with the van rental would fill up, eh!? The other van’s door all of a sudden gave out and the guys would enter and exit through the windows, which was frequent due to having to push again.
After some time the van drivers decided they weren’t going any further, but the one guy was swayed by an offer of more money. After a while though, he’d had enough and did go back after all, which meant that about 25 people now had to walk the remainder of the way.
We drove through a flooded rice field, over a few bridges that were…. African, very, very African! Yikes!!!! We were 7 in the cab, sharing our space with our luggage. As a vehicle hardly ever comes to these parts there were several people, well, actually ten of them that decided to take advantage of motorized power versus muscle power. They just jump on, hang on and enjoy some loud banter amongst themselves, either over the cab of the jeep or through the windows. We had 4 people on the left running board, 3 on the right side and 3 on the back bumper as we made our way up the mountain. The fact that there were 3 mzungus in the vehicle made it even more memorable for our ‘outside’ passengers. In fact, once we reached our destination Honda was told that there had never before been a mzungu in the region.
In my previous blog I stated that it was Honda, Isaac, Colton and myself going. Well, we were a team of about 35 that went; many of them were Honda’s boys that he’s rescued off the streets. They are the ones that set up and operate all the sound equipment, lead worship, and they started drumming two months ago. They’re really good already. Only about a quarter of his boys came - he’s got sixty some guys. There are 6 boys from Sabe that are in the drumming group, and they came as well. Both of the leaders of the two boys homes, Aime and John came as well, as did Honda’s administrator, Eddy, as well as two pastors - assistant and youth from Iglise Vivant. So, after an adventurous trip, we arrived at the church. The guys started setting up straight away as we were late in arriving. We were escorted to the place where we would be staying, about a km. further up the road. We stayed at a couples house - he’s a pastor/head teacher, she’s the leader of the ladies ministry, and they were probably the wealthiest people by far in the area, judging by their house. Even as such, they had almost nothing. Our bedroom was about 6 1/2 feet squared; all three of us shared this narrow little straw mat with our 2 narrow ½ inch thick camp mats on top. Honda shared a bedroom with three others, and three were in the entrance/sitting room on the dirt floor/straw mat.
To brush our teeth (amongst the banana and papaya trees), in the morning we got a cup of brown, dirty rain water that we watched them collect the night before in a wooden trough fashioned out of a hollowed out log. For our shower, we were shown to a tiny, perhaps 3 feet squared ‘room’ with the walls that were about 4 ½ feet high, mud floor that had a few pieces of broken concrete put on it. No drain, just holes at the bottom of the wall for drainage. It was connected to the outside of a neighbours’ house, and they must have been cooking because there was thick smoke pouring into the shower the one morning I was in there from the adjoining wall, as the house wall has a big gap between the wall and tin roof. The second morning I shared the shower with a chicken that came in under the piece of material that served as the door. I stopped and stared, motionless, at the chicken; after some time it stopped pecking and lost interest in the shower. The material was about 1 ½ feet from the bottom, which was risky business, seeing that you had to kneel down to access the few inches of water in a bowl.
Breakfast was a cup of weak tea and a pc. of bread.
Why do I share so much detail? To make you realize the incredible level of luxury you live in. You need to know that these people would almost give the shirt off their backs for us - literally; they sacrificed hugely to accommodate the 10 of us. To say the least, hospitality has never been my strong point; these people, even in their poverty offered everything graciously, selflessly, lovingly.
Next time I’ll write about the crusade part, but in the meantime, may I challenge you to really think about the life you’re enjoying with all the conveniences/blessings etc.? I’m seriously not wanting you to go on a guilt trip about your financial status compared to what these people have, but are you living the life that God purposed you to live when He put you where you are? Are you distracted by materialism, education, career, etc.…. Only God knows why you were born where you were, and not on that mountain. Make your life count for the kingdom of God.
And for the record, I miss the blessings/conveniences of our home in Canada. I often pray: “ Less of me Jesus, more of You.”
First and foremost, many people accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour - PTL!!!!!
We left on Friday at 10:00 A.M. Destination - Kenenga, Bubanza province, a short 40 kilometers from where I sit; duration of travel - 4 hours. Some events/things that laboured our travels:
The last 10 km. is what took about three and a half hrs.
You cannot call what we travelled on a road by any means; at best it was a path that is used by motor bikes, which is almost the only type of traffic they see in these parts, and not many of these even. The path was sopping wet due to heavy rains; the soil is red and when it’s wet, it’s almost like a skating rink. We’re inching our way up the side of a mountain, and a number of times, in the blink of an eye, the 4 wheel drive would slide a few feet to the side. The edge - the steep, free fall, 100’s of feet to the bottom - that edge, is only about 2-3 feet from the tires in many places, and praise Jesus that we didn’t slide sideways in those spots……. Many times Honda’s boys had to push the vehicles for long distances. The truck hauling the African drums/ sound equipment etc. blew a tire, but as it has duals in the back we continued on our way (and back home), without changing it; one of the rental vans ran out of gas (thank goodness that Honda packed gerry cans of gas for the generator); you’d think the driver that came with the van rental would fill up, eh!? The other van’s door all of a sudden gave out and the guys would enter and exit through the windows, which was frequent due to having to push again.
After some time the van drivers decided they weren’t going any further, but the one guy was swayed by an offer of more money. After a while though, he’d had enough and did go back after all, which meant that about 25 people now had to walk the remainder of the way.
We drove through a flooded rice field, over a few bridges that were…. African, very, very African! Yikes!!!! We were 7 in the cab, sharing our space with our luggage. As a vehicle hardly ever comes to these parts there were several people, well, actually ten of them that decided to take advantage of motorized power versus muscle power. They just jump on, hang on and enjoy some loud banter amongst themselves, either over the cab of the jeep or through the windows. We had 4 people on the left running board, 3 on the right side and 3 on the back bumper as we made our way up the mountain. The fact that there were 3 mzungus in the vehicle made it even more memorable for our ‘outside’ passengers. In fact, once we reached our destination Honda was told that there had never before been a mzungu in the region.
In my previous blog I stated that it was Honda, Isaac, Colton and myself going. Well, we were a team of about 35 that went; many of them were Honda’s boys that he’s rescued off the streets. They are the ones that set up and operate all the sound equipment, lead worship, and they started drumming two months ago. They’re really good already. Only about a quarter of his boys came - he’s got sixty some guys. There are 6 boys from Sabe that are in the drumming group, and they came as well. Both of the leaders of the two boys homes, Aime and John came as well, as did Honda’s administrator, Eddy, as well as two pastors - assistant and youth from Iglise Vivant. So, after an adventurous trip, we arrived at the church. The guys started setting up straight away as we were late in arriving. We were escorted to the place where we would be staying, about a km. further up the road. We stayed at a couples house - he’s a pastor/head teacher, she’s the leader of the ladies ministry, and they were probably the wealthiest people by far in the area, judging by their house. Even as such, they had almost nothing. Our bedroom was about 6 1/2 feet squared; all three of us shared this narrow little straw mat with our 2 narrow ½ inch thick camp mats on top. Honda shared a bedroom with three others, and three were in the entrance/sitting room on the dirt floor/straw mat.
To brush our teeth (amongst the banana and papaya trees), in the morning we got a cup of brown, dirty rain water that we watched them collect the night before in a wooden trough fashioned out of a hollowed out log. For our shower, we were shown to a tiny, perhaps 3 feet squared ‘room’ with the walls that were about 4 ½ feet high, mud floor that had a few pieces of broken concrete put on it. No drain, just holes at the bottom of the wall for drainage. It was connected to the outside of a neighbours’ house, and they must have been cooking because there was thick smoke pouring into the shower the one morning I was in there from the adjoining wall, as the house wall has a big gap between the wall and tin roof. The second morning I shared the shower with a chicken that came in under the piece of material that served as the door. I stopped and stared, motionless, at the chicken; after some time it stopped pecking and lost interest in the shower. The material was about 1 ½ feet from the bottom, which was risky business, seeing that you had to kneel down to access the few inches of water in a bowl.
Breakfast was a cup of weak tea and a pc. of bread.
Why do I share so much detail? To make you realize the incredible level of luxury you live in. You need to know that these people would almost give the shirt off their backs for us - literally; they sacrificed hugely to accommodate the 10 of us. To say the least, hospitality has never been my strong point; these people, even in their poverty offered everything graciously, selflessly, lovingly.
Next time I’ll write about the crusade part, but in the meantime, may I challenge you to really think about the life you’re enjoying with all the conveniences/blessings etc.? I’m seriously not wanting you to go on a guilt trip about your financial status compared to what these people have, but are you living the life that God purposed you to live when He put you where you are? Are you distracted by materialism, education, career, etc.…. Only God knows why you were born where you were, and not on that mountain. Make your life count for the kingdom of God.
And for the record, I miss the blessings/conveniences of our home in Canada. I often pray: “ Less of me Jesus, more of You.”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Up Country Crusade
April 23 2010
Hi again; I know, three blogs in a week, what’s going on!!??
An update on the CRIB kids with Malaria:
The 5 kids that have it are:
1. Kwizera - 80% - at home, seemingly not much improvement yet
2. Francois - 80% - hospital, much, much better today than when we visited him two days ago
3. Clavier - 50% - same as Francois
4. Claude - 70% - at home, improving
5. Jacob - 70% - wasn’t responding well to meds. at home, so he was admitted to hospital last night; looked better already today.
Keep praying for them please.
Honda has invited Isaac and myself to preach at a crusade that he is organizing for up-country for Friday, April 30 - Sunday, May 1. Previous years there’s been about a thousand people in attendance. One evening “The Jesus Film” is being shown. On top of preaching two times (with a translator), we are likely to be involved in personal prayer ministry. We are very pumped about this weekend and can hardly wait to see how the Lord is going to advance His kingdom.
We will be in a very poor area; showers, if any, out of a bowl, behind some palm leaves. Bed - on the ground, with a straw “beach” mat is what will be provided, but praise Jesus, the day before we left Canada I was getting a few last minute necessities at Superstore, and I for some reason (thank you Jesus) bought 3 thin camping mats that are a scant 1/2 of an inch thick, so that will be luxury compared to just the straw mat.
This year Honda wants to try and drive further than previous years so the hike up the mountain to reach our destination isn’t so long and strenuous. It’s in a very remote area, so to carry all the gear up is quite taxing; this includes a heavy generator to power the mics. and movie projector gear. We will also be bringing basic things like soap that will be given away. Thankfully, the sponsoring church sends guys down the mountain to meet us to carry the brunt of the load. Honda said last year a guy carried the generator on his head, whereas normally it takes two people to carry it!!
Please pray for Honda, Isaac, Colton and myself for a rich anointing, empowerment of the Word. Pray that the people will come hungry and expecting to meet with the Lord in a very intimate way. Pray for protection, both in transport and from the transference of evil, especially in personal prayer times, This is Africa, and as you probably know, witchcraft and occultism run many generations deep in many people. Just this past Sunday afternoon at a function in church we witnessed two women get delivered from the clutches of Satan. It took four people, three of which were men, to restrain one women. Please pray that the Lord will give us wisdom, insight, knowledge, understanding, discernment, an increase in faith, perseverance in prayer……
…….energy, good restful sleeps, tolerance of the food - I tend to lose my appetite once I start chewing on rocks or sand left in the beans; Isaac and Colton can generally resume eating after picking the extra roughage out. Some of the African cuisine is pretty awful. Seriously!! Sombe is very common - a cooked, mushy, deep green dish which tastes like what I imagine fermented silage/grass clippings to taste like. Tiny fish with heads intact - bulging eyes and all, the infamous bugali - the maize type is not bad, almost entirely void of taste actually; it’s basically just mass to fill an empty stomach. However, the cassava bugali is awful - texture, taste…. Ugghh!!! And we’re not very picky eaters. Honestly!! And thankfully!!
April 26
So… an accurate update, straight from Debbie the head teacher, on the school riots.
The group that came to Primary was much bigger than I said earlier; there were in fact about 500 secondary kids in that group. And they weren’t overly concerned about Primary, since it only goes to year 6. They’ve been out of school now for two months, and things seem to be at a stand still. The possibility of all the grades having to be repeated next year is looming very real on the horizon. Please continue to pray that this issue will be resolved in a peaceful manner.
Our internet connection, or lack thereof, is very problematic as of late. I go on Facebook for a bit when I go online to see what’s happening in our friends’/families’ lives, and once I try to email the connection usually cuts off. The norm lately is that it automatically disconnects every few minutes, which is so time consuming with the system that we have here, to constantly log back on. This is very frustrating - please pray for better internet connections.
We thank you for your support in prayer.
April 27
As long as I can’t post this blog because of internet issues, I’ll just continue it.
All the CRIB kids are well on their way to recovery from malaria; everyone’s out of hospital, one’s back at school already, the rest are just basically regaining their strength. Malaria takes a lot out of a person. Thank you so much for your prayers for these kids. Love and blessings to you, our family and friends.
Hi again; I know, three blogs in a week, what’s going on!!??
An update on the CRIB kids with Malaria:
The 5 kids that have it are:
1. Kwizera - 80% - at home, seemingly not much improvement yet
2. Francois - 80% - hospital, much, much better today than when we visited him two days ago
3. Clavier - 50% - same as Francois
4. Claude - 70% - at home, improving
5. Jacob - 70% - wasn’t responding well to meds. at home, so he was admitted to hospital last night; looked better already today.
Keep praying for them please.
Honda has invited Isaac and myself to preach at a crusade that he is organizing for up-country for Friday, April 30 - Sunday, May 1. Previous years there’s been about a thousand people in attendance. One evening “The Jesus Film” is being shown. On top of preaching two times (with a translator), we are likely to be involved in personal prayer ministry. We are very pumped about this weekend and can hardly wait to see how the Lord is going to advance His kingdom.
We will be in a very poor area; showers, if any, out of a bowl, behind some palm leaves. Bed - on the ground, with a straw “beach” mat is what will be provided, but praise Jesus, the day before we left Canada I was getting a few last minute necessities at Superstore, and I for some reason (thank you Jesus) bought 3 thin camping mats that are a scant 1/2 of an inch thick, so that will be luxury compared to just the straw mat.
This year Honda wants to try and drive further than previous years so the hike up the mountain to reach our destination isn’t so long and strenuous. It’s in a very remote area, so to carry all the gear up is quite taxing; this includes a heavy generator to power the mics. and movie projector gear. We will also be bringing basic things like soap that will be given away. Thankfully, the sponsoring church sends guys down the mountain to meet us to carry the brunt of the load. Honda said last year a guy carried the generator on his head, whereas normally it takes two people to carry it!!
Please pray for Honda, Isaac, Colton and myself for a rich anointing, empowerment of the Word. Pray that the people will come hungry and expecting to meet with the Lord in a very intimate way. Pray for protection, both in transport and from the transference of evil, especially in personal prayer times, This is Africa, and as you probably know, witchcraft and occultism run many generations deep in many people. Just this past Sunday afternoon at a function in church we witnessed two women get delivered from the clutches of Satan. It took four people, three of which were men, to restrain one women. Please pray that the Lord will give us wisdom, insight, knowledge, understanding, discernment, an increase in faith, perseverance in prayer……
…….energy, good restful sleeps, tolerance of the food - I tend to lose my appetite once I start chewing on rocks or sand left in the beans; Isaac and Colton can generally resume eating after picking the extra roughage out. Some of the African cuisine is pretty awful. Seriously!! Sombe is very common - a cooked, mushy, deep green dish which tastes like what I imagine fermented silage/grass clippings to taste like. Tiny fish with heads intact - bulging eyes and all, the infamous bugali - the maize type is not bad, almost entirely void of taste actually; it’s basically just mass to fill an empty stomach. However, the cassava bugali is awful - texture, taste…. Ugghh!!! And we’re not very picky eaters. Honestly!! And thankfully!!
April 26
So… an accurate update, straight from Debbie the head teacher, on the school riots.
The group that came to Primary was much bigger than I said earlier; there were in fact about 500 secondary kids in that group. And they weren’t overly concerned about Primary, since it only goes to year 6. They’ve been out of school now for two months, and things seem to be at a stand still. The possibility of all the grades having to be repeated next year is looming very real on the horizon. Please continue to pray that this issue will be resolved in a peaceful manner.
Our internet connection, or lack thereof, is very problematic as of late. I go on Facebook for a bit when I go online to see what’s happening in our friends’/families’ lives, and once I try to email the connection usually cuts off. The norm lately is that it automatically disconnects every few minutes, which is so time consuming with the system that we have here, to constantly log back on. This is very frustrating - please pray for better internet connections.
We thank you for your support in prayer.
April 27
As long as I can’t post this blog because of internet issues, I’ll just continue it.
All the CRIB kids are well on their way to recovery from malaria; everyone’s out of hospital, one’s back at school already, the rest are just basically regaining their strength. Malaria takes a lot out of a person. Thank you so much for your prayers for these kids. Love and blessings to you, our family and friends.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
School's Out!! Hooray.... NOT!!
School’s Out. Hooray…… NOT!!! April19
The King’s School Primary, where I spend my days, was almost under attack this morning. Here’s what happened, and I want to straight away add that I do not have all the details, but this is what I know.
The public school teachers have been on strike here for about a month, and it’s looking like this whole current year will be a write-off for students attending public schools - in other words, if a student is presently in year 9, they have to repeat it next year.
To protest, students from public schools decided to throw rocks into the grounds of private schools; the thinking behind this is that if they can’t continue with their education and with the next grade next year, than private school students shouldn’t have access to education. This was instigated by teachers, believe it or not!!
So this morning, with quite a bit of commotion on the way to our school, between 150 - 200 students arrived at the school with the intent of throwing rocks over the fence and gate. The gate and the fence that surround the school are approximately 7ish feet high. The nursery class is right beside the gate, and the teacher of that class informed Aime, who works in the office, of the goings on.
Together they went out (brave souls - leave it to Aime and Olive to do this) and Aime started talking to the group. He told them that there were students from other countries than just Burundi, and that if they would get hurt, it would be worse. Moreover, these were little kids he informed them. They also had intentions of damaging Aime’s car which was parked right there.
Well, praise Jesus, this deterred them from throwing rocks, only with the intent on going to the International school (private) which is close by. I don’t know what happened after this.
This is serious, as there has been death as a result of this kind of activity in Gitega, a city that’s up country. I don’t know how many students were killed.
I imagine there will be more info. forthcoming tomorrow, and I’ll keep you posted.
We need your prayers.
April 20
Soooo, I tried desperately to post the above yesterday, but was unable to…. Internet access issues that are very frustrating.
Today there was a very heavy police presence close to our school, as well as the International school.
Like Isaac said before, prevention is so much better than dealing with a potential aftermath.
I know of no fear amongst the children, in fact I don’t think many even know about yesterday’s incident; there’s no talk about it from students. However, the Secondary kids were concerned/scared that they might become a target. We know of one close friends’ friend that was hit by a rock yesterday at a different school.
The timing for this is awful as well - just 2 months before a very sensitive presidential election. So the political parties are having a real go, trying to manipulate and use the strike to their advantage.
The school board has informed the teacher’s that if they continue with this strike, they will not help/support the teachers for the next 5 years. I wonder what kind of ramifications that would bring with it.
We need your prayers for a peaceful resolution.
CRIB is “under attack” with malaria - 5 kids have it as of this afternoon, with a few additional alerts pending test results. Two children have an 80%, two 70%, another 50%. This is how they measure the severity of the illness, with 100% being very, very sick, and death is not uncommon. Two of the 5 are hospitalized; one of the 80% and the 50%. The way they determine if you need hospitalization is if you can keep the tablets down or not. If you can’t you’re admitted. Malaria is accompanied by high fever, and if you can’t keep anything down, there’s a real risk of dehydration. It’s really hard seeing the kids so sick. The one that is the sickest is also one of two that is by far the most difficult at home and at school, but seeing him today made all 3 of us realize how much we love the guy.
The previous 2 subjects are heavy - I don’t feel like continuing, but I will for the sake of bringing you more up to date in our lives; I’m already behind with this.
During the last week of the two week Easter break Colton was so blessed to be able to participate in a soccer ‘school’. Honda and Libby had organized a group of 8 professional soccer coaches from the UK to come and run this. This was intended for Honda’s 60 boys plus 40 others by invitation, but things turned out very differently, as they often do here.
What’s a bored school boy to do when there is no school and he sees others engaged in an obviously unusual training camp, run by 8 muzungus!!?? Join in, of course!! By the end of the week, they played a bit of soccer and the coaches were managing at times near chaotic activity. On Friday there were almost 400 players on the two pitches!! As Honda remarked, “it’s much easier to let them play than to try and keep them off the field, and that way they don’t steal the equipment on the sidelines.” The team from the UK brought in loads of balls that they gave away, as well as huge inflatable nets that they’ll probably use again next year when they return - yep, they already said that they will probably come back next year. This is a huge blessing.
Well, Dave and Lynn, one of our pastor couples from Calvary Chapel is still stranded in London as a result of Heathrow being shut down because of the debris in the UK airspace from the volcano eruption in Iceland. They spent 5 days in London/Paris on a planned holiday after they left here, but involuntarily that holiday is lengthened substantially. What a rough life eh, - to be stranded in London!!!!!
It was a huge blessing to have Dave and Lynn here; we laughed, we cried, we prayed, drove through many potholes, were very grateful for Maryanne’s spirit that accompanied us up country, (only Dave and Lynn will understand this) we had fun, heard some of Dave’s near death experiences, re-positioned the fans in front of them yet again - I’m not complaining in the least tiny bit, it was just funny how hot they were. Oh, and Lynn got Colton pining for one of those cool IPOD touch gadgets. And they brought us Werther’s Originals. And Cows - the caramel ones. And Lynn gave me her ‘original’ , ‘Apple’ travel coffee mug. Lynn, I’m still pumped about it.
Seriously, we are very blessed to have Calvary Chapel as our church family, and that they see the importance of a pastoral visit when you’re so far removed physically. The Lord really knit us together a lot more, and we are very grateful for the visit, and for a deeper relationship.
Enough for today. Happy Tuesday.
The King’s School Primary, where I spend my days, was almost under attack this morning. Here’s what happened, and I want to straight away add that I do not have all the details, but this is what I know.
The public school teachers have been on strike here for about a month, and it’s looking like this whole current year will be a write-off for students attending public schools - in other words, if a student is presently in year 9, they have to repeat it next year.
To protest, students from public schools decided to throw rocks into the grounds of private schools; the thinking behind this is that if they can’t continue with their education and with the next grade next year, than private school students shouldn’t have access to education. This was instigated by teachers, believe it or not!!
So this morning, with quite a bit of commotion on the way to our school, between 150 - 200 students arrived at the school with the intent of throwing rocks over the fence and gate. The gate and the fence that surround the school are approximately 7ish feet high. The nursery class is right beside the gate, and the teacher of that class informed Aime, who works in the office, of the goings on.
Together they went out (brave souls - leave it to Aime and Olive to do this) and Aime started talking to the group. He told them that there were students from other countries than just Burundi, and that if they would get hurt, it would be worse. Moreover, these were little kids he informed them. They also had intentions of damaging Aime’s car which was parked right there.
Well, praise Jesus, this deterred them from throwing rocks, only with the intent on going to the International school (private) which is close by. I don’t know what happened after this.
This is serious, as there has been death as a result of this kind of activity in Gitega, a city that’s up country. I don’t know how many students were killed.
I imagine there will be more info. forthcoming tomorrow, and I’ll keep you posted.
We need your prayers.
April 20
Soooo, I tried desperately to post the above yesterday, but was unable to…. Internet access issues that are very frustrating.
Today there was a very heavy police presence close to our school, as well as the International school.
Like Isaac said before, prevention is so much better than dealing with a potential aftermath.
I know of no fear amongst the children, in fact I don’t think many even know about yesterday’s incident; there’s no talk about it from students. However, the Secondary kids were concerned/scared that they might become a target. We know of one close friends’ friend that was hit by a rock yesterday at a different school.
The timing for this is awful as well - just 2 months before a very sensitive presidential election. So the political parties are having a real go, trying to manipulate and use the strike to their advantage.
The school board has informed the teacher’s that if they continue with this strike, they will not help/support the teachers for the next 5 years. I wonder what kind of ramifications that would bring with it.
We need your prayers for a peaceful resolution.
CRIB is “under attack” with malaria - 5 kids have it as of this afternoon, with a few additional alerts pending test results. Two children have an 80%, two 70%, another 50%. This is how they measure the severity of the illness, with 100% being very, very sick, and death is not uncommon. Two of the 5 are hospitalized; one of the 80% and the 50%. The way they determine if you need hospitalization is if you can keep the tablets down or not. If you can’t you’re admitted. Malaria is accompanied by high fever, and if you can’t keep anything down, there’s a real risk of dehydration. It’s really hard seeing the kids so sick. The one that is the sickest is also one of two that is by far the most difficult at home and at school, but seeing him today made all 3 of us realize how much we love the guy.
The previous 2 subjects are heavy - I don’t feel like continuing, but I will for the sake of bringing you more up to date in our lives; I’m already behind with this.
During the last week of the two week Easter break Colton was so blessed to be able to participate in a soccer ‘school’. Honda and Libby had organized a group of 8 professional soccer coaches from the UK to come and run this. This was intended for Honda’s 60 boys plus 40 others by invitation, but things turned out very differently, as they often do here.
What’s a bored school boy to do when there is no school and he sees others engaged in an obviously unusual training camp, run by 8 muzungus!!?? Join in, of course!! By the end of the week, they played a bit of soccer and the coaches were managing at times near chaotic activity. On Friday there were almost 400 players on the two pitches!! As Honda remarked, “it’s much easier to let them play than to try and keep them off the field, and that way they don’t steal the equipment on the sidelines.” The team from the UK brought in loads of balls that they gave away, as well as huge inflatable nets that they’ll probably use again next year when they return - yep, they already said that they will probably come back next year. This is a huge blessing.
Well, Dave and Lynn, one of our pastor couples from Calvary Chapel is still stranded in London as a result of Heathrow being shut down because of the debris in the UK airspace from the volcano eruption in Iceland. They spent 5 days in London/Paris on a planned holiday after they left here, but involuntarily that holiday is lengthened substantially. What a rough life eh, - to be stranded in London!!!!!
It was a huge blessing to have Dave and Lynn here; we laughed, we cried, we prayed, drove through many potholes, were very grateful for Maryanne’s spirit that accompanied us up country, (only Dave and Lynn will understand this) we had fun, heard some of Dave’s near death experiences, re-positioned the fans in front of them yet again - I’m not complaining in the least tiny bit, it was just funny how hot they were. Oh, and Lynn got Colton pining for one of those cool IPOD touch gadgets. And they brought us Werther’s Originals. And Cows - the caramel ones. And Lynn gave me her ‘original’ , ‘Apple’ travel coffee mug. Lynn, I’m still pumped about it.
Seriously, we are very blessed to have Calvary Chapel as our church family, and that they see the importance of a pastoral visit when you’re so far removed physically. The Lord really knit us together a lot more, and we are very grateful for the visit, and for a deeper relationship.
Enough for today. Happy Tuesday.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Increase my Faith Jesus
So go back to the Sunday that Isaac, Colton and I watched the movie/documentary on George Muller (a few blogs ago), and once you’re there, you’re in the right time frame.
So on Sunday we watched the movie, and the Lord started talking to me about asking for that kind of faith.
The following day, Monday, our guard found an itty, bitty thing of a kitten next to our yard. He showed Colton, who brought it in.
Now you need to understand, I am so not a pet person - at all! They’re fine to look at, but quite frankly, they gross me out. It’s very important for you to remember that I don’t do pets, so that you’ll see that what transpired was a complete God thing.
When I saw this tiny kitten, which we ‘guesstimated’ to be about 1 ½ weeks old, I immediately felt compassion for it. It was meowing really loudly, clearly needing it’s mother. I went and got a tiny little plastic spoon and started spoon feeding the kitten. The poor thing sputtered, choked, and resisted. I wrapped it in a cloth so that it’s wild paws couldn’t hit the spoon and dump the milk. As it opened it’s mouth to meow, I’d empty the milk into it’s mouth. It was a long, slow process.
Well, it sort of seemed like we had a baby in the house all of a sudden; I had to feed it before school. In fact one day it made us a little late for staff devotions; I had to feed it upon returning from school, before bedtime, before going out, before…
Our domestic help vehemently declined to feed Belle the one time we asked him to. We’ve since found out that to an African a cat is akin to what a mouse is to us. I certainly wouldn’t dream of spoon feeding a mouse…
Isaac was saying that maybe we should (gulp) kill the kitten. Not to be mean or cold hearted or anything, but she was struggling with the feeding, she was far too young to be away from her mom, and that way she wouldn’t have to suffer. Now normally, it would be my nature to have agreed entirely with this suggestion. But not this time. You see, God was doing something in me with, or perhaps through this cat. I couldn’t put my finger on what, or how, but I just liked this little thing, and I had a very strong feeling that God was behind it. I told Isaac this numerous times when I’d be patiently feeding it, or if he would mention getting rid of it again.
I found myself talking to Belle - the name Colton gave her - and I’m thinking to myself, “what’s going on - I’m talking to a cat!!!”
She meowed a lot, and Colton, compassionate Colton, even got tired of it. The second day we had her he announced: “ Yesterday she was my kitten, today she’s our kitten, but I think tomorrow she’ll be your kitten.”
Well, that Wednesday, 2 days after Belle came, I prayed that prayer of wanting that huge, massive faith, and thinking about and wondering about all the ‘implications’ that could come with praying and receiving such a faith.
On Thursday, the next day, I was responding to, and writing emails in the evening. I don’t even turn our computer on nearly every day, so when I do, often there’s lots of stuff to tend to, and it ends up getting late. Isaac had gone to bed before me, and so when I finally finished my stuff at about 11:30, I was going to feed Belle, and hit it as well.
I got her wrapped in the cloth again, and I started to feed her. All of a sudden she died, right there in my hand!! I just stared at her. After some time I started to try and make her move - I held her up, moved her legs, her head, but nothing. She was as limp as a rag doll. After about three or four minutes, her little mouth opened and her tongue came out. Her eyes where still open, so I closed them. This was not good, how would I tell Colton… yes, he didn’t appreciate everything about her, but he wanted to see her grow and thrive.
All of a sudden, this strong feeling came over me and I laid my right hand on the tiny thing that I was still holding in my left hand, and I prayed; “Jesus, in Your name I ask You to raise this cat from the dead.” I removed my hand to look. Nothing. I repeated the same thing and looked again. Nothing.
At this point, two things rushed into my mind. One - Jesus said in Mt 14:12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” And two, the Holy Spirit lives in me, and as such, I have the power and authority to raise this cat from the dead in the name of Jesus Christ.
I laid hands on it again and said; “ In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to live.” I looked, nothing. I repeated the above. Nothing. I repeated it a few more times, to no avail. There was a little puddle on the floor, indicating that her bladder had relaxed. Well, I tried. But then the thought of putting the kitten in the big box that had been it’s home since Monday, and placing her outside and having to show Colton in the morning that she died didn’t appeal to me at all. This compelled me to start again.
And nothing happened after numerous times. I thought, “okay, that’s it, I tried and it didn’t work.” But right on the heels of that was this powerful thought; “persevere.”
And so I persevered. I kept repeating, “ In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to live.” And I’d look, expectantly. And repeat; and look; and repeat... By now a fair amount of time had passed - probably close to 10 minutes, but I continued.
All of a sudden, little Belle began to move!!! I could hardly believe it!!! I started praising the Lord as Belle came to life more and more. I was whooping it up, loudly, very conscious of the possibility of Juvinal, our guard coming to look in the window ensuring that all was well, but I didn’t care if he saw me having a party with the cat in my hands, praising and worshipping Jesus.
At one point I figured I’d go and tell Isaac what happened. With Belle in hand, I went to our bedroom and exclaimed, “ honey, wake up, Jesus just rose Belle from the dead!!”
Isaac, squinting, rolled over to face me and half propping himself up, he said; “oh man, why didn’t you just leave her dead?” and lay back down.
I said, “honey, Jesus just performed a miracle in my hands - he raised this cat back to life.” Needless to say, he wasn’t going to join the praise party, so I went back to the living room and continued on my own.
Little Belle was fine. I set her down, and she walked/pulled herself along as she had done before.
I was pumped beyond words! I saw, with my own eyes, the resurrecting power of Jesus Christ!!! My faith was soaring to new heights.
I excitedly related the previous evenings’ happenings to Isaac and Colton in the morning.
Colton told some of his friends at school, and they had started a debate. Some said, yes it was possible for Jesus to raise the dead, but not a cat; a dog maybe, but never a cat!! : )
Well, after supper that day, Colton was playing guitar on the couch, and I’m sitting beside him on the same chair where I always sat to feed Belle - the chair where Jesus performed the miracle the previous night. I’m feeding her, and all of a sudden, just like the night before, she died. I watched as the life drained out of her; Colton noticed something was going on, and he asked me if Belle was dead. He slid closer to me, and we just looked at her.
Of course, after what happened the night before the thought occurred to me, but there was no compulsion in me to pray over her this time. I just continued holding her, thinking of how much this kitten had come to mean to me, how the Lord had used her to increase my faith in Him. I sat there for about 45 minutes, reflecting on the last 5 days. Finally I handed her to Isaac, and I went and cried on our bed.
I’m talking to Jesus about my desire to see Him raise particularly non- Christians from the dead so that they can have an encounter with Him, and be spared living in hell for all eternity.
Two thoughts - 1. never dismiss God’s sovereignty in using anyone/anything, in teaching, molding, shaping His children, no matter how unlikely. 2. Like Colton’s classmates, do we doubt that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, and that he still does radical miracles?
So on Sunday we watched the movie, and the Lord started talking to me about asking for that kind of faith.
The following day, Monday, our guard found an itty, bitty thing of a kitten next to our yard. He showed Colton, who brought it in.
Now you need to understand, I am so not a pet person - at all! They’re fine to look at, but quite frankly, they gross me out. It’s very important for you to remember that I don’t do pets, so that you’ll see that what transpired was a complete God thing.
When I saw this tiny kitten, which we ‘guesstimated’ to be about 1 ½ weeks old, I immediately felt compassion for it. It was meowing really loudly, clearly needing it’s mother. I went and got a tiny little plastic spoon and started spoon feeding the kitten. The poor thing sputtered, choked, and resisted. I wrapped it in a cloth so that it’s wild paws couldn’t hit the spoon and dump the milk. As it opened it’s mouth to meow, I’d empty the milk into it’s mouth. It was a long, slow process.
Well, it sort of seemed like we had a baby in the house all of a sudden; I had to feed it before school. In fact one day it made us a little late for staff devotions; I had to feed it upon returning from school, before bedtime, before going out, before…
Our domestic help vehemently declined to feed Belle the one time we asked him to. We’ve since found out that to an African a cat is akin to what a mouse is to us. I certainly wouldn’t dream of spoon feeding a mouse…
Isaac was saying that maybe we should (gulp) kill the kitten. Not to be mean or cold hearted or anything, but she was struggling with the feeding, she was far too young to be away from her mom, and that way she wouldn’t have to suffer. Now normally, it would be my nature to have agreed entirely with this suggestion. But not this time. You see, God was doing something in me with, or perhaps through this cat. I couldn’t put my finger on what, or how, but I just liked this little thing, and I had a very strong feeling that God was behind it. I told Isaac this numerous times when I’d be patiently feeding it, or if he would mention getting rid of it again.
I found myself talking to Belle - the name Colton gave her - and I’m thinking to myself, “what’s going on - I’m talking to a cat!!!”
She meowed a lot, and Colton, compassionate Colton, even got tired of it. The second day we had her he announced: “ Yesterday she was my kitten, today she’s our kitten, but I think tomorrow she’ll be your kitten.”
Well, that Wednesday, 2 days after Belle came, I prayed that prayer of wanting that huge, massive faith, and thinking about and wondering about all the ‘implications’ that could come with praying and receiving such a faith.
On Thursday, the next day, I was responding to, and writing emails in the evening. I don’t even turn our computer on nearly every day, so when I do, often there’s lots of stuff to tend to, and it ends up getting late. Isaac had gone to bed before me, and so when I finally finished my stuff at about 11:30, I was going to feed Belle, and hit it as well.
I got her wrapped in the cloth again, and I started to feed her. All of a sudden she died, right there in my hand!! I just stared at her. After some time I started to try and make her move - I held her up, moved her legs, her head, but nothing. She was as limp as a rag doll. After about three or four minutes, her little mouth opened and her tongue came out. Her eyes where still open, so I closed them. This was not good, how would I tell Colton… yes, he didn’t appreciate everything about her, but he wanted to see her grow and thrive.
All of a sudden, this strong feeling came over me and I laid my right hand on the tiny thing that I was still holding in my left hand, and I prayed; “Jesus, in Your name I ask You to raise this cat from the dead.” I removed my hand to look. Nothing. I repeated the same thing and looked again. Nothing.
At this point, two things rushed into my mind. One - Jesus said in Mt 14:12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” And two, the Holy Spirit lives in me, and as such, I have the power and authority to raise this cat from the dead in the name of Jesus Christ.
I laid hands on it again and said; “ In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to live.” I looked, nothing. I repeated the above. Nothing. I repeated it a few more times, to no avail. There was a little puddle on the floor, indicating that her bladder had relaxed. Well, I tried. But then the thought of putting the kitten in the big box that had been it’s home since Monday, and placing her outside and having to show Colton in the morning that she died didn’t appeal to me at all. This compelled me to start again.
And nothing happened after numerous times. I thought, “okay, that’s it, I tried and it didn’t work.” But right on the heels of that was this powerful thought; “persevere.”
And so I persevered. I kept repeating, “ In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to live.” And I’d look, expectantly. And repeat; and look; and repeat... By now a fair amount of time had passed - probably close to 10 minutes, but I continued.
All of a sudden, little Belle began to move!!! I could hardly believe it!!! I started praising the Lord as Belle came to life more and more. I was whooping it up, loudly, very conscious of the possibility of Juvinal, our guard coming to look in the window ensuring that all was well, but I didn’t care if he saw me having a party with the cat in my hands, praising and worshipping Jesus.
At one point I figured I’d go and tell Isaac what happened. With Belle in hand, I went to our bedroom and exclaimed, “ honey, wake up, Jesus just rose Belle from the dead!!”
Isaac, squinting, rolled over to face me and half propping himself up, he said; “oh man, why didn’t you just leave her dead?” and lay back down.
I said, “honey, Jesus just performed a miracle in my hands - he raised this cat back to life.” Needless to say, he wasn’t going to join the praise party, so I went back to the living room and continued on my own.
Little Belle was fine. I set her down, and she walked/pulled herself along as she had done before.
I was pumped beyond words! I saw, with my own eyes, the resurrecting power of Jesus Christ!!! My faith was soaring to new heights.
I excitedly related the previous evenings’ happenings to Isaac and Colton in the morning.
Colton told some of his friends at school, and they had started a debate. Some said, yes it was possible for Jesus to raise the dead, but not a cat; a dog maybe, but never a cat!! : )
Well, after supper that day, Colton was playing guitar on the couch, and I’m sitting beside him on the same chair where I always sat to feed Belle - the chair where Jesus performed the miracle the previous night. I’m feeding her, and all of a sudden, just like the night before, she died. I watched as the life drained out of her; Colton noticed something was going on, and he asked me if Belle was dead. He slid closer to me, and we just looked at her.
Of course, after what happened the night before the thought occurred to me, but there was no compulsion in me to pray over her this time. I just continued holding her, thinking of how much this kitten had come to mean to me, how the Lord had used her to increase my faith in Him. I sat there for about 45 minutes, reflecting on the last 5 days. Finally I handed her to Isaac, and I went and cried on our bed.
I’m talking to Jesus about my desire to see Him raise particularly non- Christians from the dead so that they can have an encounter with Him, and be spared living in hell for all eternity.
Two thoughts - 1. never dismiss God’s sovereignty in using anyone/anything, in teaching, molding, shaping His children, no matter how unlikely. 2. Like Colton’s classmates, do we doubt that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, and that he still does radical miracles?
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