Thursday in the Congo

Tuesday, I was a dead man walking! I think I had something like a 24 hour virus. You know the symptoms: regurgitation and diarrhea. Though I missed my Tuesday time slot, I was able by Wednesday to do 3 hours of presentations and was feeling much better. Thursday, today, I feel as normal as ever…praise God! It is scary to be sick in a strange place. But with Tim Cook’s Gatorade and Gordon’s medical advice, I felt very cared for and not alone.

          Paul tells us that we are in transition here between the dry season and the rainy season. As a result, it rained all day Wednesday and was very cool. I would guess that the temperature never got above 75. In fact, I wore my light jacket all day and was glad I had been told to bring one. I get cold anyway. The night cool down anyway….maybe down to 65.

          The Conference is going extremely well. The people have been exceptionally receptive. After a week of Annual Conference, these people have remained another week for this teaching/training. We had planned for 60 and have over 70. Some just hung around as observers and have stayed the whole week. We did not have enough books for all of them, but it just illustrates how good the material is and how hungry the people are for teaching.

          We have a mixture of pastors and lay people, men and women. I believe we have about 12 women. All of them are key leaders in the United Methodist Church in the Central Congo Conference. They come from all over and will take this material back to about 14 districts!  They are being challenged intellectually and spiritually. This has been a difficult conference to “pull off” and has had its difficulties in translating into cultural context.

But their enthusiasm and gratitude is obvious, and the fact they none have left bears testimony to the effectiveness of what we are teaching them.

          We will finish the conference this Friday evening and our African leaders will be flying out and leaving us on Saturday.

          Gordon, Tim, and I will remain to go to worship Sunday in Tshumbe at the church that our church has built through Paul Law. It will be the first Sunday there, and I will preach there. Sunday afternoon, we will begin a 6 hour journey to Paul’s home in Lodja. This will be traveling about 5-10mph over trails and roads that no car can go over. We will catch a ferry to cross a river, and then on to Lodja! We will spend Monday touring Paul’s ministry and home area. Then Tuesday, we fly out from Lodja back to Kinshasa, hopefully. You can seriously pray for that!!! Lol

          My Internet access has been spotty so I will now try to send this blog and hope it goes!! Thank you so much for your prayers. You have no idea!

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