Colossians, criminals and cake

We had a good service this Sunday. I was able to preach from the book of Colossians about walking worthy of the Lord. The message was a challenge to my heart as well. The best part of the message for me was the fact that even though I had every word written out in Swahili, I was able to freely ad-lib. I’m sure the grammar wasn’t perfect and the ad-lib a little choppy but it felt good. While that’s good for me, that may be bad for the people who have to listen to it. You know how prone preachers are to rabbit trails.

Sunday evening we were able to participate in a missions conference in Ohio. We used our computer and Skype to make the phone call. The church was able to use their web cam to show us a view of the church service making it feel like we were actually there. I was a little worried at first because our internet service kept cutting in and out and we had a lot of difficulty making the connection. But in the end it all worked out well.
By the way, if you would like to contact us via Skype you can use our id: cathybeej As long as we have electricity and internet service you should be able to phone us. Just remember we are 8 hours ahead of the Eastern time zone.

As we were heading to bed our security guard came to the window and quietly told us that there were some thieves next-door stealing tires from a vehicle. He then asked me what to do. I did a 3-second pause to think of my options: There is no 911 number to call, and if there were there are no police available to answer the call, and if there were police, they would not have a vehicle to get to our place, but if they did it would take them hours to get gas and organize themselves, but if they were prepared already and could get to our house quickly, they wouldn’t know how to get to our house because we have no street name and no address, but if we did and they could find us they would probably just take a cut of the profit from the thieves and let them go. Believe it or not it took me a whole 3 seconds to think that through. I then told the guard to make some noise and try to scare the thieves away. It worked. He blew his whistle and shined a flashlight at them while I tried to get the dogs riled up and barking. We would not see the last of them however. They returned at 3am and tried to finish the job. Again our guard scared them off. And again they returned a while later. This time they had 6 guys and a vehicle parked down the street. Our guard was too frightened to sleep on duty for once so he was easily able to hear the thieves return and scare them away. He was frightened for good reason. Many times the first duty of a thief is to kill the night guard using their machete.

We slept lightly but we did sleep in peace knowing God is in control and is our sword and shield.

When we awoke this morning we noticed that a terrible transformation had occurred in the middle of the night. Our oldest son Jay became an official teen-ager. 13 years old! Wow! When he was a toddler, I never thought he would live long enough to become a teen. I believe all of Jay’s former nursery workers would all agree. But by God’s grace and great mercy, he has arrived.

Happy birthday Jay!
Today we will brave the busy and dangerous roads and head to Arusha to celebrate at a nice restaurant of his choosing.

Please pray:
Always pray for our safety and well-being.
Pray as I continue to preach in Swahili. I feel a lot like Moses did, slow of speech.
Pray as we figure out the logistics of scheduling furlough, finishing the kids home-school and packing up to leave for 7 months beginning in June.