simply grateful

Big News in Lundazi For the last 17 months I have said that somebody needed to get a soft serve ice-cream machine here in Lundazi for a business.  Finally, somebody heeded my advice and got one.  Of course, I feel obligated to support them frequently to show how good my advice was!  With my success in bringing ice-cream to Lundazi, I think I will start trying to pitch the idea of Chick-fila!

We once lived in a parsonage on the church property and struggled to get to church on time.  Now our commute each Sunday is a little longer and a lot more adventurous.  There are five Baptist churches within an hour and a half of our house so we do a rotation to visit all of them.  (There are three more that we work with but they are about 5 hours drive and require crossing several rivers so we can only get to them during the dry season).  Anyhow, we thought you might want to tag along on our Sunday drive. We were excited to see that not only have they paved the roads in Lundazi, they have even painted lines on some of them!  The roads around town were pretty bad when we moved here 16 months ago, but they have really made some improvements!  (Roads with lines, according to Makayla, are "fancy roads.") But, Lundazi is where the pavement ends!  All the churches we go to (except the one in Lundazi) are far off of the paved road!  This is t...

Eight dollars.  That’s roughly what it cost in diesel to take me on a 41 kilometer round-trip to Vuu, a remote village, to lead a Bible study today.  It wasn’t just any Bible study, it was my first Bible study I have led since moving to Lundazi 15 months ago and it was done in Chitumbuka.   I thought that after I finished it that I would feel a sense of elation, of accomplishment.  Fifteen months of Chitumbuka culminated in this moment where I shared the story of Jesus calming the storm.  I thought I would feel a sense of relief and a bit of release from the intense program of language acquisition.  But much to my surprise, I really didn’t feel any of those.   As I drove back home I felt something I didn’t anticipate, a sense of gratitude and of urgency.  First, I was grateful to God for the opportunity He has given us to live in a different country and share the truths of His Word with people who are so eager to hear it.  I’m comple...

We were led by a man on a bike, down a footpath that was more than adequate for his bike but insufficient for the breadth of our vehicle.  His feet went round and round, one foot resting on a pedal and the other balancing on a metal peg where a pedal used to be.  I was actually surprised that one pedal remained, the terrain we were negotiating today was a daily occurrence for this pastor who was leading us out to this newest preaching point.  He had cycled an hour and a half through the bush to the point where we met him on a soccer field near a school only to find out they had changed their meeting place.  We were told it was less than a kilometer from the field so we decided we would just follow him on his bike.  In Africa, I prefer a used car to a new one so I don’t cringe every time a bush or thorns scrape the side of the vehicle, our journey today was no exception.  This footpath was not a road, that point reemphasized by the reception we r...

Here is a link to an article covering the 5K race the church I grew up at put on for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering on Christmas Eve.  Its a great article, check it out by clicking HERE

Often mission teams and missionaries come back to the States with stories of countless people giving their lives to Christ.  Lives transformed.  Stories accompanied with pictures of a long line of people waiting to get baptized in a muddy river with a backdrop of an African jungle.  Sure, there were sacrifices of extreme heat, struggles with (ahem) bathroom issues, challenges with the language but in the end, countless people gave their lives to Christ and for that, it was all worth it.  All that leads to this moment of hundreds braving a croc infested river to get baptized.  Insert picture here…   Oh how we long for those days (minus the crocs in the river of course!).  We can't wait to see people coming in droves to surrender their lives to a loving relationship with Christ.  We can't wait to send pictures of people standing outside an overcrowded church building listening intently to hear the Good News of Christ.  We can't wait to send ...

People often ask us what life is like in Africa.  We can't speak for the whole continent, but in our little corner of Africa the electric is sporadic.  Thankfully, we usually don't lose electric for more the 15 hours at a time, but it does happen frequently.  We may go 10 days without losing power and then lose power for the next 10 days straight.  Thankfully, we cook on a gas stove so loss of electric doesn't prevent us from eating!  But, it does mean that we have to use solar powered lights at night.  We have three permanent lights installed in our living room, kitchen and dining room (thanks to installation help from my Dad and some gift money from First Baptist Chester) but the rest of the house we light with portable solar lights.  We also received two solar battery chargers for Christmas from Heathers parents that we can use (and have used already) to recharge our phones, Ipod, and camera.   Yesterday we lost power at noon and it came...