F L A M E

African Journals

"Settling In Again"

What draws us back to this land year after year? The love of the people we work with and most importantly God`s calling to minister to these people. We enjoy living in a spacious house with a view of the water by comparison to our living in America in a motor home these past five years. The trip from America is like running a marathon; it just goes on and on. As we continue to get older it gets harder and harder. We left Seattle on the evening of December 1 and arrived in Canchungo in the afternoon of Friday December 5. We did spend two days in Bissau on business such as exchanging money, buying supplies, etc. We arrived in Canchungo with the anticipation of greeting our friends and neighbors. Indeed our friends were here waiting for us. Teresina, Pastor Chenda`s wife, prepared a delicious evening meal. One thing we always routinely do is check the instrument panels on our solar power system (SPS). When we did this we were shocked at our discovery, there was practically no electricity stored in the array of eight large batteries. We immediately went out on the veranda where the batteries are located to check the acid-water level. To our dismay the batteries were so low it took four liters to fill them. We determined that we must not attempt to use any electricity from the SPS. That meant we would not have any lights, fans and running water. We also discovered our refrigerator that operates on Butane gas was not working properly. In view of the fact we have not been here for eleven months, there was thick dust everywhere. There was a long list of things missing from the house. Hopefully we will be able to track down most of them. We ate dinner by candle light but it did not seem very romantic under the circumstances. We had not expected to return to all of this. We went to bed feeling discouraged but not defeated. We decided it was time to focus on the positive things and to thank God for all good things. We had a safe trip all the way to Canchungo. We had received a favorable money exchange rate of 512 FCFA per USD compared to 412 earlier this year. Also, our 1985 Suzuki is still running fine.

We awoke the next morning to a day of overwhelming challenges. Where do we start? Martha and Mpili, our house keeper, tackled the dust problem. They spent most of the day on cleaning and dusting. Herb determined what was missing from around the house and started the long process of reassembling the supply and tool room. We are not used to working in this hot climate where it gets up to 95 to98 degrees every afternoon even now in wintertime plus we are still suffering from jetlag. We went to bed tired but with a feeling of accomplishment. Again, we found it beneficial for peace of mind to count our blessings and thank God for His love and encouragement.

Today is Sunday and we are looking forward to worshipping with our church family here. We walked the one and a half miles to church because the car was almost out of gas. At the moment there is not any gas available in Canchungo. We got lots of hugs and kisses at church. We spoke to the church and brought them greetings from America. It takes some adjustment to three hour church services but we will manage.

Monday was our first opportunity to see Jesus Industrial School in operation and to give personal greetings to our instructors, students and property guards. We were delighted to hear that we currently have seventeen auto mechanic students and twenty-three computer students. It was with sadness we learned there are no sewing classes at this time. Francesca our sewing instructor died of cancer a few weeks ago and Joel our headmaster is looking for a replacement.

We heard through the internet that a failed assignation attempt was made on the Guinea Bissau President Nino. We pray every day for this country that God will have mercy on it and bring salvation through Jesus and political stability and peace.

After spending time at school we walked to town to do some shopping in the market place. We were surprised to see three new buildings are being built. One of them is a bank. It seems whenever we go to town we always end up walking home at high noon otherwise known here as “hot noon”. After walking to school and then onto town and back home we had traveled four miles. Needless to say, we were hot and tired.

We are getting back in the swing of taking bucket showers and flushing the toilet with a bucket of water. The bucket showers feel very cool to start with but by the time we are done it is refreshing. Flushing the toilet with a bucket of water is tricky and a precise operation that we will not go into detail explaining!

Nene, one of our daughters in the Lord, came to see us this evening. We spent an hour together talking on the veranda. It is considerably cooler on the veranda in the evenings than it is in the house. Nene is growing in the Lord and trying to raise her children to be Christians. Martha communicates well in kiriol so she was able to converse with Nene. Herb struggles with the language but his hearing problem is a hindrance. We are still without telephones and it is a hindrance to our accomplishing our work. Herb is about ready to start bargaining with some of the natives to get some tom toms (drums)!

This week is going by rapidly. We are expecting the arrival of Okorie Kula, North African Navigators Director, on Friday December 12. Also, on Friday we are anticipating the arrival of our cargo container in Canchungo. There is never a dull moment around here! On Thursday December 11 Herb began experiencing an irregular heartbeat. Reluctantly he began taking beta blockers to correct this problem and thank God it worked. Herb will continue to take the beta blockers for now and review the situation with his doctors when he gets home in March.

Indeed our container did arrive today on December 12 in Canchungo. That was the good news. The bad news is it arrived after dark and we determined we could not unload it until Saturday. We had to smile at the action of the government Customs and Military inspectors who came with the container to break the seal and to inspect the contents. They took one look inside the container in the dark and exclaimed it looks okay to them. They signed it off and headed back to Bissau (We sense they did not want to get home late for dinner!).

As mentioned earlier, Okorie was scheduled to arrive on the twelfth. He also arrived in Canchungo after dark but not in the container! We had a nice evening meeting together. Late in the evening Martha developed a sore throat and congestion in her sinus, a fever and a cough. Herb now took on multiple roles of chief cook, guest entertainer and nurse to Martha.

Saturday morning was a busy time unloading the container. We thank God that everything arrived safely and undamaged. Our biggest challenge was to unload the eight battery arrays weighing approximately 1100 pounds each. Okorie was a big help in overseeing part of the unloading. Three or four people in a supervisory capacity are needed to oversee the energetic volunteers and helpers. They cannot read English so THIS SIDE UP and FRAGILE means nothing to them. Teresina made us a very nice noon meal knowing we were busy unloading the container all morning. We finally got our phones today so Herb can call off his search for Tom Toms!!

Martha is still feeling sick today so she did not go to church. Today marks the first Sunday back in the church building in three years. As mentioned in previous journals, Chenda’s church has been meeting in our largest school classroom these past three years because they had out grown their church building. They have now extended their church building to accommodate all their people. It was a happy day for all the people. Currently we are storing the contents of the container that arrived in December in this classroom.

We do our best not to focus on the things we miss such as electric lights and fans, running water and our refrigerator. We are very thankful for Chenda’s family carrying water from the well into our house. We have four large tubs we store the water in.

We had meetings with Okorie all day and into the night. The two of us met with Okorie in the morning to discuss issues relating to cultural things and ways to be effective in discipling. There is much to be learned from Okorie in both of these areas. We also had meetings with Joel and Chenda, and this time was also profitable. We had arranged earlier for Teresina to provide the noon meal for us and all of our staff which now includes ten people. Okorie did a wonderful job of talking to our staff by taking each word from our acronym FLAME (Freedom Life African Ministries Emmanuel) and expanding on it. We finished our meetings for the day with the elders from Chenda’s church. During the meetings with the church elders, a friend and fellow worker named Benedict, in the Navigators organization came all the way from Gambia to spend a little time with Okorie. They shared with each other late into the night. Benedict stayed overnight with us.

It is Tuesday morning and Okorie is leaving to go home in Nigeria. We deeply appreciate the time we spent together with him. In the future we will be exploring more about the Navigators and FLAME partnering together in Canchungo. Benedict stayed with us an additional night before going back to Gambia so we had additional time with him sharing about his Navigator work in the public school system. It was a real challenge for us having two guests and no amenities. Thankfully we have lots of candles and everyone pitched in to get water from the well including Okorie. Benedict insisted on doing the dishes for us for the meals he was here for.

Today is Martha’s birthday. Thankfully she is feeling better. It has been a slow process of recovery. Herb fixed a birthday dinner of toasted cheese sandwiches and chili. With limited resources around here that is as good as it gets! Herb has now come down with the same bug Martha had but it only “bugged” him for one day. We have the theory that Martha wore the bug out before it got to Herb so he got a lighter case!

As we look back over these first two weeks back here and the hardships we have endured, we sense the neighbors and Christian community around us have increased their respect for what we are doing in “God’s work” without complaining regardless of losing things we have enjoyed here in the past. God’s Word has been our source of strength. We find comfort and peace in the midst of these trials from 2 Corinthians 4:8-9: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair: persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed”.

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