Saturday, September 3, 2005

The Watchi team joins all of you in prayer for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and for all of those aiding in the relief efforts.

Jeff and Brenda Holland

We had another fine week which kicked off with a great all-night rain. It has rained two more times since then. God has heard the prayers of the faithful. Thank you for joining us and the Togolese in praying for rain.

School starts on Tuesday. Our teachers, Jenna and Stacey, are putting the finishing touches on their classrooms and lessons. They are already a blessing. Join us in praising God for them. Also pray for Josiah and his classmates as they start school. The only kids on the team who will not be in school this year are our little girls. Speaking of the girls, since we traveled to the States earlier this year, Ellianna has been waking up very early each morning and often had a difficult time going back to sleep. Please join us in praying for a good night’s sleep (for her and us). Rebecca is actually sleeping through the night, so we praise God for that.

We are starting to put finishing touches on our work. Although Jeff will teach leadership training courses almost up to our departure, various tasks are being handed off to teammates and nationals. Praise God that all is going smoothly, and please continue to pray that the next 10 months of our phase-out will be a blessing for our family, our team and the Togolese.

Murphy and Christine Crowson

We are in Accra this week to greet the Koonces as they returned from furlough. They arrived safely last night and look great. We are so glad to have them back with us. Praise God for their safe travels!

We enjoyed a wonderful worship time with the Batoe Church this past Sunday. What a joy to see them rejoicing and praising God together. We were encouraged! Continue to pray for Batoe and Sendome Churches that they will stand stong in their faith and reach out and plant more churches in that area.

Stephen and Matthew are happily anticipating school starting next week. They are really ready to get back into a school routine. Matthew is very excited about starting Kindergarten and Stephen is looking forward to being in the second grade. We have already grown to love Stacey and Jenna, our new teachers. Praise God for sending them to us! Please pray for them and all the children as they adjust to a new school semester and being together.

Blessings to all of you! Thank you so much for your prayers for us and the advancement of God's Kingdom here in Togo.

Marty and Louise Koonce

After a three day journey, the Koonces are safely back in Africa. We began our travels on Tuesday, driving from Searcy, Arkansas to Little Rock. The flight from Little Rock to Chicago was going to be late enough to make us miss our British Airways flight, so they were going to put us up in a hotel in the "small pebble" that night, but all hotels were filled with refugees from the gulf coast. So they sent us on to Chicago that night and, to our advantage, we were put up in the Hyatt Regency O'hare. We left the following night bound for London and then on to Accra, Ghana. We landed safely, but our luggage did not make it with us. Not even one of our bags were on that flight! As of Friday, we have recieved ten of the bags and the rest are to arrive on Saturday's flight. We were very happy to be met by the Crowson family and are spending time catching up on each others lives while we wait for the luggage. It is our hope that we will be returning to Togo on Sunday. We are glad to be back in Africa. The weather is very comfortable, perhaps even cooler than it was in Arkansas when we left. The boys are glad to be back, but eager to get to their house and their dog. Many thanks to those of you who blessed us on this furlough through visits, support and especially prayers. Continue to pary for us as we reacclimate and reunite with our teammates and Togolese family.

Anthony and Maureen Parker

We began this week worshipping with the Kpeyidzi fellowship in the Dagbati cluster. Anthony was part of this church planting, but we had wondered if they were going to make it. However, since the elders in the region have started mentoring two of the men using the Train & Multiply curriculum, they seem to be much more motivated and ready to take responsibility for their fellowship. We had a good time of worship with the Christians there.

Sunday was also Jonathan's fourth birthday. The kids had a great time celebrating on Saturday with water play in the yard and then the whole team came for a pizza party that evening. You can see photos of our celebration at Anthony's blog site- http://abparker.blogspot.com .

On Wednesday we drove to Benin, the country where Anthony spent the the first eight years of his ministry in Africa, and where we were together five years as a family. The two purposes of our visit here are to obtain some legal documents for Maureen's eventual immigration to the States and to join the Fon churches in the launching of a new church on Sunday. We've been successful in getting the documents and look forward to an encouraging time of fellowship. Just before leaving for the trip, Anthony discovered that he had malaria, so our time waiting on the papers here has given him time to treat, rest, and recover from his sickness.