We praise God for the teachers' safe arrival and thank you for praying that God would bless their trip. We spent last week finishing up the repairs on the schoolhouse, setting up the desks, rearranging the rooms and hanging up the black boards. Everything is ready now and school starts tomorrow :-) we're excited about the new school year and so thankful for the churches, individuals, and families who have given so generously to provide for our children's education. Most especially we are thankful for the teachers who work so hard to bless our children. Please continue to pray for the Batoe church as they seek to plan a new church in their region. For the past few months they have been evangelizing in the village of Agodeke. Last Sunday the Batoe church met early for worship and then went to the village of Agodeke to worship with those with whom they have been studying the Word of God. 12 people said that they would like to be baptized into Christ and become Christians.
One of the couples had a little four your old boy who was sick. They prayed for the young boy and gave the family the equivalent of four dollars (three week's worth of Sunday contributions) to help them take him to the clinic. Monday the Christians returned to pray for the little boy again but the family was gone to the clinic and had not returned.
Tuesday when I went to the village for my leader's meeting the father came to greet us and give us an update. They had been to a small clinic which then referred them to another hospital who then referred them to a bigger hospital where they spent the night. The child was having internal bleeding and the last hospital said that he needed emergency surgery which they would not begin until they received $300 from the family. The Christians in the village at that time gathered to pray for an hour fervently that God would save this child and reveal his power for those of us who believe.
After our meeting we decided to go visit the child at the hospital to pray for him. We saw the father on the road on our way to the hospital and he told us that his child had died and that the hospital would not release the corpse until the family had finished paying the bills they had incurred during the night. He got in the car with us and we continued on to the hospital to try and get the body so that we could take it home to the village for burial.
We drove for an hour and a half to reach the hospital and then spent an hour trying to find the little baby. All the workers had changed shifts and there was no record of the baby in any of the books. We went to the morgue but there was no record of the child being there either (don't be surprised at this, most African hospitals do not have computers nor do they have good record-keeping systems). What we did not know was that the father's older brother had come and picked up the baby before we arrived, taking him home.
I took the Batoe Christians and this man back to Tabligbo were they went on a motorcycle to the man's home village to see if they could find out what happened. The next day the father came by my house to thank me for taking them to the hospital and to tell me that they had buried the child before he arrived home.
Africans usually believe that sickness and death are results of things that are going to spiritual world. It is safe to assume that Satan is going to use this little child's death to try and put fear in the hearts of those 12 who said that they wanted to become Christians. I've heard many stories of Christians who, when they were deciding to put their faith in Jesus, had neighbors, relatives and friends come and discourage them saying "if you become a Christian your children will start dying because of the voodoo gods will be angry and bring harm to your family." Satan loves to put fear in people's parts and I can see him using this little boy's death to try and make people afraid to put their faith in Jesus. Join us as we pray against this, that God would prevail, that the faith that has been planted in their hearts will grow and that they will trust Him and give their lives to Him.
Please continue to pray that God with smooth out the road before us as we adopt a precious will girl from China. Right now our documents are in China being translated into Chinese. When we began this process the wait for a referral was six months after your documents were sent to China. The last eight months the wait for a referral has grown from six months to 13. We ask you to fervently pray that this waiting time will go down to at least 10 months so that we can bring our baby girl home next summer. We also ask you to pray that God will provide all the funds we need to complete the adoption. In addition, there is legislation right now in Congress which could make the validity of our documents and extend them from 18 to 24 months. Pray that this will go through so that our documents do not expire before we receive our referral from China. Otherwise we would have to redo our documents and go through the whole process again. |
