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| Work and Fun | | |
| Harvest in plentiful!When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest." Matt. 9:36-38 (ESV) The rains have begun and are teams have gone but this has been an excellent dry season for us here! There were times when we thought we might go insane with all the work we had but we have persevered through and can look back at all the amazing things that the Lord has done. We have so many teams coming from America who have adopted people groups out here and are excited to be coming back and working among them. We had many vision trips this spring and look forward to them returning to really begin their work out among the people. These churches coming out have been amazing and some are even moving towards self-facilitating which means that they deal less with us which is good because then we can focus on the new teams coming out who still need some guidance in what to do. Churches have been started in predominately M*sl*m areas and have had many seekers (those who are searching for the truth but have not made that commitment yet). God is moving here and it is exciting to see. I love hearing from the teams as they come back from the bush and listening to all that has happened during their time out. The "harvest is plentiful" but we are always looking for more workers. Please pray with me that the Lord of the harvest will send His workers and they will respond to the calling!
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| Fun in Prague! | | |
| Work, Work, Vacation, Work, WorkWOW, it has been a long time since I have updated this, I apologize for that. Things have been going pretty non-stop for awhile now. We have had team after team coming in and we have been busily taking them out to the bush to show them different tribes so that they can choose one to adopt. It has truly been wonderful meeting all these folks for different places in America and seeing how they have a passion for the lost out here. God is moving out here! Along with all the teams we have been trying to finish up all of our research and we have just about accomplished that goal. There are only a few left and most of those we don't even think exist anymore because no one has heard of them as of yet. We have a couple weeks left of being really, really busy and then we will have a break because of the rains, we will not be able to go out to the bush and teams will not be able to come out. We have this map in our office of all the different peoples here in Nigeria and we have pins in the places that we need research done (white), those white pins are almost all gone now!! They are being replaced with green (meaning there are enough Christians among the people that they do not need our help), blue (meaning there is some work going on there, but they still need some help), red (meaning there is no evangelical presence), and now we have many yellow ones (meaning that we have a church from America or Nigeria who has adopted the tribe). God is so good!
The first week of May, Melanie and I took a much needed vacation to visit some friends in Prague. It was a great time of relaxing and just spending time with the Lord and with friends, being encouraged to finish strong! We came back refreshed and ready to take on this last month of hard work before the rains really hit us hard. (Pics to come soon.)
2 days after I returned from vacation it was back out to the bush to do some research with Katy, we found the tribes we were looking for after 2 long days of driving, driving, and driving. This weekend, I'm heading back out to the bush to do some training at a church with Melanie. Then I will have 2 teams in to finish out the month. Please pray as these teams are coming that their hearts are being prepared for what they will see out here and that they will be able to take it back to their churches in America and their churches will catch the vision for the lost out here. Pray that we will be able to finish this month strong and with enough energy and be able to find the rest we need to keep going. Thank you all for your continued to prayers.
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| Trip to Taraba pt. 4So sorry for the delay in finishing the story, but I have been out in the bush with teams everyday this week showing them different tribes. Here is what went on the last couple days on my research trip.
DAY 4
Well the morning came and we got all packed up and people
started coming to our truck carrying stuff in their hands and they kept coming
and coming. By the time we finally left
we had 5 chickens (yes they were alive and in the back of our truck and we did
not come home for another 3 days), 25+ liters of palm oil (which is very
expensive here but they make it out there), a few bottles of honey, a vine (or
whatever you call it) of bananas (aka a lot of bananas), a Nigerian broom, and
a huge bag of ground nuts (peanuts). It
was madness, I thought we were never going to get out of there. But we finally did and we are making our way
out of the bush and onto the next tribe.
Well immigration decides that they want to pull us over. Blah, those guys are so annoying. We show them our residence cards showing them
that we are legal to be here. He writes
down all the information and says that we can go. We are walking to the truck when he decides
that he really does not want to let us go.
He says that we need to show him a letter saying that it is ok for us to
be here. WHAT?! We don’t need a letter saying it is alright
for us to travel around Nigeria. We are like you already told us we could
leave we are leaving. Then it just got
into more of an argument and I had to calm one of the girls down. We did finally get to leave though without a
horrible amount of trouble. We made our
way slowly up the Mambilla Plateau (diesel trucks don’t exactly go that fast up
big ‘ole plateaus. We made it to the KK
people to find that there are very few if any Christians among them. However, we did find that there are churches
working with these people to reach them with the gospel. Apparently they used to be Christians back in
the day but then M*sl*ms came in and converted them all so now there is some
fear for coming to Christ. Pray that the
strongholds will be broken among these people and they will be unafraid and
able to see the Light!
DAY 5 & 6
The next 2 days we make our journey home. It went a little slower than we thought. You remember that bad gas we got earlier on
in the trip, well we were still having troubles with it and we could not go
very fast because it was still in the pipes or something. When we finally got home our mechanic had to
take the whole thing apart to fix the problem.
Gotta watch out with that black market gas!  haha, oh well, the important thing is that we
finally made it home. What normally
takes about 3 ½ hours took us about 5 hours, nice leisurely drive! Right, cause that is exactly the kind of
drive you want to take after a week like we had just had! Haha.
Good times, Good times! Hope you
enjoyed the craziness of my journey.
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