Feeling kinda twisted up today. Today is our Sabbath day. A weekly time of rest. Prayer is always a part of our day. Yet we started out more stressed than we would have liked. The power went off yesterday around 2pm when I was out with Steve in the village of Dekpo (deek-poe). When we came back a little after 6pm, Kelly said the power had been off most of the afternoon. We were able to get the generator up and running but then ran out of gas around 9pm when we were in the middle of our team church night. It was a relatively cool night, so we went to sleep without much difficulty. We woke with the power still off. Now we were beginning to have concerns about all the meats in our freezer spoiling. It was warming up already in the morning, so we went into town and, after some searching, found some gas. It was almost noon before we got the thing up and running. Not the way I’d like spend my day of rest. There’s also some frustration with some lingering stresses of problems in the different churches. The most talked about is a prominent former leader who has been disfellowshipped for flagrant rebellion, secret sin, and lack of repentance. However, a number of people are pushing and pulling trying to get us to loosen the rules and “forgive and forget”. We can’t do that, but they continue to talk behind our backs, trying desperately to rustle up support. As I write this, I know we must stand firm. It’s more difficult to do when you are facing these people face-to-face. We heard yesterday that there are some who are threatening to leave the church if we don’t accept this man back into the fellowship. Their thinking is “just let him come back, sit on the back row, not take the Lord’s Supper, no offering…just sit there quietly.” What? As my brother-in-law, Sam, said, “there’s no such thing as a Christian with restrictions.” The reality is this man would not be able to subscribe to such regulations if he did come back…he’d eventually exert his influence (a lot of it oppressive and negative). Just a sad and frustrating situation. We are praying for genuine repentance.
We are enjoying some RHCC colleagues, John and Linda Glover (above's a pic of all of us the night they arrived last week). They are here, in their retirement years, serving the Lord with us for two months. After this, they go straight to Uganda to work for 4 months. They are so neat and such a breath of fresh air. We have laughed a lot and team devotionals and church nights have already taken on a more encouraging tone…so refreshing (nothing wrong before, just great to have people from home among us!) So all is not bad, and we are trying to keep our head above the negative and think on the things that are praiseworthy. It’s hard when the enemy is so relentless. That’s what Sabbath days are for…resting our mind and heart so that we can overflow the glory of God the other 6 days of the week!
The shingles are much better…praise God for His healing power….and for the prayers of many. Also, Donny’s restarted his blogging again….worth a look!
-Rockin’ Randall
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