4 point message, 50 Bibles and 1 sick kid

4 point message, 50 Bibles and 1 sick kid

On Sunday I preached a message entitled "4 amazing statements concerning Jesus". I used the text in John 1:1-4, which tells us that: 1. Jesus is eternal, 2. He is not God the Father- He is a distinct person of the Trinity. 3. Nevertheless, He is God, 4. He is the creator of everything. That's quite a message to preach in English and honestly, even though I wrote out every word of the message, I struggled quite a bit with the Swahili. My vocabulary is still pretty limited. I have a goal this year to improve my Swahili to the point where I can easily translate for you when you come here to visit us. :)

This week we were blessed to receive 50 Swahili Bibles to use in our ministry. A church in Tennessee did all the work in finding the Bibles, ordering them, and Praise the Lord- paying for them. They even had them hand delivered from a city 1 1/2 hours away to our neighborhood. What a blessing! Now I have the difficult task of distributing them. It's not difficult to hand them out- it's difficult because everyone wants one. Because we freely hand out John and Romans booklets I am asked all the time for a complete Bible.

Pray for Daniel. He has had a high fever the past few days. We are watching him to see if he begins to show the signs of malaria or something else. One of our hardest jobs is being both pediatrician and pharmacist for our children. Thankfully, our kids have been very healthy overall and the Lord has had his hand of protection on them.

John looks to be in good condition this week. I was glad to see him at church because he is the one who leads our singing. Thank you for praying for him.

Just for perspective:
On one trip to the grocery store, I paid $31 for 4.5 lbs of mozzarella cheese (which turned out to be spoiled- still working on getting my money back), $8 for a gal of milk, $8 for the cheapest cereal I could find and on the way home, $90 for 18 gal of gas. (I mentioned this on my Facebook status recently but my figures were off by a few dollars.)

Expecting the unexpected

Well, an interesting thing happened the other day. God made the almost impossible- happen. Many of you already know by now but I thought it was time to let everyone in on the big news. We are expecting our fifth baby next year in March. This is a huge surprise to us since we thought Cathy could no longer get pregnant. Apparently, God had another plan in mind. This changes our plans for our return to Tanzania but that is the life of a missionary.

The doctor told us that it would be very dangerous for Cathy to have another C-section so we are praying for a safe delivery of the new baby. It will also be a whole new experience raising a new baby in a 3rd world country so we would appreciate your prayers for the baby's health as well. The baby is due the end of March 2010.

Speaking of health, the whole entire Schultz family has been hit hard with colds, allergies and various forms of whatever is being passed around. I am really surprised at how much we have been ill lately. Please pray for us.

We have been busy preaching and giving a report of our work in Tanzania every Sunday at our supporting churches. However, this weekend we not be traveling but will instead be taking part in a huge teen outreach called "Harvest Fest". We are expecting 1100 or more teens and are praying that many will be saved.

This weekend will be the last weekend "off" until Christmas. The whole month of October will be extremely busy for me as I fly to LA twice, CO once and then drive to Ontario Canada for a mission conference. Please pray for me as I travel and for the rest of the family as the hectic schedule tends to wear everyone down a little.

Thanks so much for your prayers!

Experiencing some illness lately

Please pray for our family as many of us have been fighting various illnesses. Specifically pray for Daniel. He has been sick for more than a week and has had a high fever at times. Saturday night his temperature was 105 F. We had him tested for Malaria but the test was negative. Today he is fine if we keep him dosed up on Tylenol or Motrin.