Dear family and friends,
These past few weeks have been quite busy. I have continued to have many things to catch up on in maintenance as expected, mostly electrical and plumbing. Kathryn has had somewhat of a schedule crunch with a paper due for her Masters this past Thursday while simultaneously getting ready for a teaching seminar this week and English class registration the day after getting home with classes beginning the following week.
We arrived in Bebalem about 60km (2.5hrs) from Koutou on Sunday. Kathryn said I enjoyed the “off”-road far too much and she was tempted to wipe the mud from my perma-grin. The seminars have begun well this morning with only a few concerns. 21 teachers were registered but due to the death of a well known person in the community it looked like we were beginning with only 9 participants. Just as we were ready to begin several others showed up from a neighbouring village that had not preregistered and by tea time we were nearing our quota of 21, yet 3-4 who had preregistered were still not present. I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Please pray for good understanding and aquisition. Many of the teachers struggle with the concepts but thankfully are eager to learn. We are blessed to have the use of one of the classrooms in the nursing school which has fans. The day was long and Kathryn is very tired. Pray for strength as the teaching is from 8am till 4:30 pm during which she is on her feet most of the time. This evening a thunderstorm has passed through leaving the air much fresher which should provide a good night’s sleep.
I am spending most of the day helping out in the class however early in the day I received a sms from a missionaary who upon returning to her station after being away a few weeks was unable to start her vehicle. After several valient tries a local mechanic showed up offering his help. Trusting this was an answer to prayer she invited him to help diagnose the problem. Unfortunatly after some unsucessful tries he began to dismantle the engine, pointing to a lack of oil under the valve cover and 3 bolts that were seemingly missing. Suspecting they had somehow fallen into the engine he removed the oil pan and low and behold they were there. He then proceeded to site thick oil as the problem and that new bearings were in order. Upon finding out this info and other erronious data I urged her to have patience until I can arrive on Friday and make further investigation into what seems to be a con. Pray that I will be able to get there and make a sound diagnosis. When praying for missionaries and their protection it is not always the spiritual but also not to be taken advantage of in vulnerable situations.
Thank you for your continued prayers on our behalf and for the furthering of Christ’s kingdom.
Paul & Kathryn