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!!