MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 01-28-2007

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Greetings from the East! We've completed a brief tour of the East Coast, and will be heading back to St. Louis on Monday. Last Sunday, we were in Faith Baptist Church in Berlin, MD (Pastor John Abent), and 1st Baptist Church of Seaford, DE (Pastor Michael Hopkins), respectively. The Abents spoiled us with this fabulous room in the big resort Holiday Inn right on the beach in Ocean View, MD. We had an oceanfront room on the eighth floor, with a glorious view of the ocean. Since we had to be up for church bright and early on Sunday anyway, we got to open our curtains and watch the sun rise over the ocean. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Cold, and windy, but beautiful. That morning was a technical morass of unexpected problems. We got ready to get the DVD for Pastor Abent so he could get it to his a/v man and couldn't' find it. So, I went out to the car to burn another one. As I began to do so, the DVD-RW tray almost falls out in my hands. My drive is toast. I can't burn anything to any disc. So, thinking quick, I ran the laptop inside, and we got it hooked up to their system so we could show the video presentation off the laptop. Then, that night, the DVD player they had in Seaford didn't like our disc, and proceeded to insert bad static into the audio. You could still mostly understand, though, and the church was very understanding. The meetings went very well, and God blessed.

On Wednesday, we were in a conference in Pineville, NC, in South Charlotte Baptist Church with Pastor Charlie Scott. It was a great conference. Dr. Clayton Shumpert preached, and the services went well. I got to speak in their Spanish church, and this morning I presented the Gospel to 69 kids, of which most were bus kids. It was a tremendous series of meetings, and it went very well.

They had us in their prophet's chamber, which was very comfortable, and very convenient for us. However, on the first night we were there, we had an interesting experience. They have an ADT alarm system, which Pastor Scott showed me how to arm, including bypass codes for the parts of the building where we were, so the doors would still be armed, but we could still walk around. I got confused, because the button I was supposed to hit to arm it was marked 'Away', and the one next to it was marked 'Stay'. I assumed (big mistake), that since I was supposed to hit 'Away' when we left, then we must be supposed to hit 'Stay' when we were in for the night. Apparently, that feature was disabled, and in fact, placed the whole system into a sort of 'Hot Mode', where so much as a fly sneezing would set off the whole thing without warning. Anna walks into the large area where the Spanish church meets, and instantly alarms start shrieking, lights start flashing, and I race over to the keypad to try to get the thing shut off. I'm frantically punching the key code to turn it off (no help), and trying to dial ADT at the same time so the cops don't come and, being a false alarm, cause the church to be fined. I got them to cancel any dispatch, and, klaxxons still howling, called the Assistant Pastor to find out what to do. Turns out, I needed to go through the church, find the panel for the fire alarm system, punch in its code to silence that, and then disarm the ADT system on its keypad. Now, had that been the only instance, it would have been crazy enough, but the confounded thing went off TWO MORE times before I figured out what I was doing wrong. Anna eventually holed up in our room and wouldn't come out any more that night, because it only seemed to go off when she made a move. We finally got it all straightened out, got everyone settled down, and went to bed, and we didn't have any more trouble after that, but boy, what an interesting first night.

Sunday evening, we had a meeting in Sunset, SC in Antioch Baptist Church (Pastor Barry Pace). We left in good time, and arrived at our destination by 5:30 PM, but, as it turned out, my information was wrong. I had the right address, but it was the Pastor's house, not the church, and the only number I had for him was his home number. We drove all over Six Mile, SC looking for the church for the next hour and fifteen minutes, asking people for directions (nobody had heard of the church), even driving back to their house to see if their neighbors might know, but to no avail. We located practically every Baptist Church in a thirty mile radius, but none of them named Antioch. Finally, in desperation, we called another Baptist Church in Easley, SC, and the Assistant Pastor turned out to be Deputy Sheriff for the town, so he had us call his dispatcher, who got us the right address (we couldn't find a thing anywhere on the internet), and we punched it into our GPS and finally arrived just as everyone was heading home. Not good. I went in, expecting to get a tongue lashing, but Pastor Pace was very gracious and kind. He took us out to eat, had us a hotel booked in town, and is going to recommend us to his deacons to support us anyway. Can you imagine? It seems that in our absence, they decided to have a testimony and worship time, and the Holy Spirit moved, and folks were down at the altar in droves, and it was a great time of blessing for them and glory to God. We had prayed as we were heading over to the right address finally, that God would somehow get the glory out of this after all, and it turns out He did. We're making arrangements to come back later this year, now that we know for sure where to go, so it all worked out for the best.

Good times, folks. Life in the ministry is never boring, I can promise you that. Tomorrow we head home, and on Wednesday, I will be flying up to Great Falls, MT for a pair of conferences up there. Pray for ours, and my, travels, and for the months ahead as we continue to travel, minister, seek support, and continue on the road that ends in Uganda.

 

Imagine…..

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Let’s say you are aged 5 years and younger and are staying in yet another place away from home without your toys, books and things to do and are bored. What would you do? For my kids it was easy. They played restaurant! We’ve been on the road for the last little bit and have stayed in 5 different places in the last 5 days so it has been stressful. James and I were busily getting ready to go to our next meeting and they were busily looking for things to do. I noticed that suddenly things seemed very organized. The table in the room was covered with Ethan’s special blanket for a tablecloth. James had a piece of paper and was taking orders. “What would you like to drink?” he asked. They went around the table where everyone else was sitting. Soda was the general consensus, though one of them wanted apple juice. (This is kind of funny since they don’t get soda very often – only a few times in the year!). He carefully “wrote” this down and then went and got each person’s water bottle and set it in front of them. Then he wanted to know how old they were – a common question we get when we go to restaurants since some of them are the right age to still eat for free! Ethan declared himself to be the ripe old age of 7. John said that Elizabeth was his girlfriend and they were both 10. Guess its time to have a talk with them about dating! Finally, he wanted their orders. Ethan wanted pizza and tacos and other things. They all wanted brownies and ice cream. Elizabeth wanted chocolate cake and ice cream and John wanted tacos and brownies. Actually, the majority of their orders were dessert foods!

Then they switched. James was still taking orders but this time Ethan was “cooking”. Again, drink orders were taken. Then food orders. This time, when he asked their ages, John and Elizabeth discussed it. He thought they should be 17. She thought she should be 12 and he should be 17. Then they ordered again – tacos and chocolate cake and ice cream!

Isn’t it funny to sometimes see life through the eyes of a child? I would never have guess that they were paying such close attention to the happenings around them but apparently they are! It’s so nice to know that they enjoy life and the things we are all living right now. We get to do things that I never even thought about doing as a child but they all take it in stride and enjoy every minute of it.

The Little Things

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God is so concerned with everything that goes on in our life – even the little things. To be very truthful, the last week of getting ready for this trip that we’re on right now had been stressful for me. It seemed like there was so much to do. That, and the fact that we were leaving our house again for the first time since it had been broken into. I was nervous about leaving, longing for a modicum of normalcy and just very very tired. Frankly, I had a bad attitude. So I got my attitude fixed, got everything pulled together and we left. Travel was good. The weather was supposed to be terrible but we didn’t have any problems with it. Saturday as we neared our destination, James called the pastor to find out where we were supposed to be for the night. He had gotten us into a very nice hotel in Ocean City, MD. Because it was the off season we were able to be in an ocean side room with a balcony! (of course it was in the 20’s that night with quite a breeze so we didn’t spend much time outside enjoying it!). Sunday morning we got up and thoroughly enjoyed the sunrise over the ocean. If I’d have stayed home like I wanted I would have completely missed this!

Monday, our route took us down through Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia on Hwy. 13. (They call the region “Delmarva” a combination of all three names since the states are only a few miles from one to the other.) Ever since I’ve known him, James has talked about his time of living in Virginia Beach. We didn’t have time to stop but we did get to drive through on our way. Our way also took us across the Chesapeake Bay, Bridge Tunnel complex! Wow! I’ve seen documentaries about this and heard so much about it! It is an amazing thing! And we got to cross it! If I’d stayed home I wouldn’t have been able to participate in this either!

So God, who is faithful, had it all under control. The trip that I viewed as being too difficult to go on has turned into a trip filled with marvelous blessings. There have been other things, too, where God has blessed. He is so faithful to make our way easier, with just a few little things.

MISSION: Uganda Blog Update 01-18-2007

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Greetings! Much has happened since our last email. I had sent out a prayer bulletin last week to let you know about the break-in. Well, when we got home, we discovered that it wasn't nearly as bad as it sounded over the phone. The items they took were small and, well, pointless. Like, for example, they took our change jar, which contained ALL OUR PENNIES! Five dollars in change, gone, just like that!! It's a moral outrage! Yet, the innocuous, cowboy boot piggy bank next to it was stuffed full of quarters, and the braniacs didn't think it was worth having. They rifled through our drawers, didn't find anything worth snatching at the moment, and, it would seem, got spooked and took off before they could take anything really valuable. The only really upsetting, and rather odd, thing they did was to take an album full of our wedding pictures, and strew them about in the back yard before they hopped the fence and left (The photos were rescued before weather could harm them). Our pastor and family went above and beyond the call of duty. They called the cops, hung around until they had the evidence they needed, replaced our locks front and back, and nailed plywood over the glass on the back door. Anna and I have been fingerprinted now, and the cops are working on nailing the ne'er-do-wells responsible.

As of the writing of this email, however, the full amount, and then some, which we needed to replace these ancient doors has been provided. Praise the LORD! I am already beginning preparations to get things moving that way. We have a contractor in our church that's going to install them for us. I just have to get them ordered, and as soon the back door, which has to be custom made because of it's non-standard size, arrives, we can get them installed. It's going to be really great to have some good doors, and will increase our peace of mind knowing that people can't just come walking in and abscond with our stuff. So, between the steel doors, and the dozen or so diamondback rattlers I plan to release in the house before each trip, we should be fine.

Tomorrow, we'll be starting the first leg of our trip up to Maryland and Delaware, for some meetings up there on Sunday. We'll be heading to North Carolina for another conference starting on Wednesday after that, before swinging back by home the following. Then I fly up to Montana for some conferences in Great Falls to round out the month. Pray for us as we travel, and as we continue to seek the support we need to follow God's leading to Uganda, Africa.

Bandits!

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Hello everyone! Things are going well in South Carolina at the moment. However, and the reason for the email update, is that things at home in St. Louis are not. We just found out that our house was broken into sometime in the last 48 hours. At the moment, and we won't know for sure until we get home, it does not appear that they got anything. Other than rifling through our belongings in the bedroom, it does not appear that they took anything. Praise the LORD! The police are taking care of it in our absence (my wife's parents are there to keep an eye on things). Pray that they catch whoever did it before they hit anybody else's house in the neighborhood. Anna's pretty upset about it, understandably, so pray for her peace of mind. One need we do have that you can pray about, which this incident underscores, is a need for new doors. The front and back doors are in terrible shape, and are original to the house. We've been needing to replace them, and the storm doors, for some time, but just haven't had the money to do so. Please pray that God will provide. We have to be gone a lot during the year, and need to know that our house is secure in our absence. Unfortunately, I'm afraid our doors don't provide much impediment to thieves at the moment. It's a legitimate need, and something will have to be done about it soon. The irony is, before we left on this trip, I was having a guy from our church, a contractor, take measurements so I could try to get a feel for what would be needed and how much it would be cost to replace these doors. Please pray about it. We have to do what we're doing if we're ever going to raise our support and get to the field. It would be nice, however, if in our frequent absences, people were not breaking in to our house and making messes for us to clean when we get home.

And we wanted adventure…