Josh's Journal (April 9-16)

April 9
Last night Mandy and I went on a Date. The NCAA Basketball finals were going to be rerun on International ESPN at 7:00. We went to the restaurant to watch. It was quite exciting, Memphis was ahead by 5 with one minute to play…and the electricity went out. I would not believe it. I had to wait until today to find out who won (Kansas, after a last second shot tied the game to force OT - and I missed it)…I should have never looked and lived with the notion that Memphis won.
I had my birthday Saturday. It was a very fun day. We spent some time in our little pool as a family and had a nice birthday supper with chocolate cake. Mandy and the girls decorated the house and tried to make it real special. I am 30 years old now. Jesus was 30 when He began His ministry, up to that was just preparation I guess. It makes me excited to see what God has been preparing me to do. May He help me deny myself, pick up my cross and follow.
I am quite frustrated with the Bible college. Only one student has shown up - they were all supposed to be there Monday. Anyway, I got sick of waiting and I felt bad for the one student, so today I started teaching, just Abraham and I. I figured I would give him a head start on the group. Being patient can be hard.
April 16
Last week Mandy had a miscarriage. I know, most of you did not even know we were expecting. We had been celebrating privately with plans of making it public on my mom’s birthday (4-14-08), but we lost the baby a few days before that. I am really surprised how much we have grieved for this baby. Mandy especially has been having a very tough time. I also found myself thinking strange thoughts: will that child be in heaven? What do you do with a baby that small (including the sack it was only the size of a baked bean)? It has been a hard week.
From Sunday to Tuesday Mandy was in Kampala with her friend Tabitha. Tabitha had some medical issues that needed to be dealt with and it also gave Mandy a chance to see a better doctor than is available here in Soroti. I was home alone with Lydia and Grace. I gained a new appreciation for Mandy and what she does every day. I decided it is good for a woman to get away for a day or two - she deserved it.
Tuesday morning when I got up and walked into the kitchen, I could HEAR the ants in the back room / pantry. I know ants typically do not make noise, but when there are thousands of them, chewing, and laying eggs everywhere they do make noise. I am totally against using a DVD as a babysitter, but I broke my own rule for an hour Tuesday morning while I was cleaning up ants. Everything I moved revealed more ants, wings, and eggs. Bugs were absolutely everywhere. I hate ants!!!
Last night tragedy struck. About 10:30 the worst storm in 50 years went through the area. We drove around today to visit people who had been affected. The devastation was astounding. My language helper called to say he would not be coming because the roof blew off his house. After lunch I went to visit him - I have never seen anything like it. His house was not so bad: the walls were still standing even thought the roof was gone, and all his belongings were spread out in the sun to dry. Many of his neighbors lost not only the roof, but walls as well. His next door neighbor (a man with some mental retardation) had a one-room house. The roof and 3 walls fell, all of it fell out so the man was OK. Hundreds of houses were destroyed. Roofs, steal, belongings were everywhere. You could not look away from the destruction because it was everywhere you looked. The power company said power would be back within a few weeks. Hundreds of poles are down. Thankfully the power was knocked out early on, because many houses have lines draped over them. Today people were using power lines for drying their clothes. Trees were also down throughout the area.
When I got back home Mandy said she wanted to go out and see. We decided to drive over where we go to church. The roof of our church had been picked up and spun so it was now setting half on the church and half on the house next to the church (the house had lost its roof before the church roof landed on it). Stella is a member of our church who lives across the road from the church (she is a sister to Faith, the woman who died of AIDS two weeks ago). Stella cares for a number of children. They lived in a 3 room house. They were all huddled in the end room; it is the only room left standing. The roof landed about 20 feet away; all the other walls were leveled. We thank God she is alive. She knew of 6 people in their area who had been killed (walls fell on them or they were hit with flying debris). Even the Red Cross compound was leveled. People are trying to mobilize for disaster relief, but the devastation is severe. People with almost nothing lost everything they had. This afternoon we asked where people would sleep tonight, some said outside, others had no idea - they were still trying to sort out the pieces. Our end of town (the north end) was not hit nearly as hard as the South end. It is raining here again now. I pray it is not raining on the south side of town.
Please pray for all these people who have lost so much. I am having trouble processing what I saw today. A million dollars would help - but people would still be sleeping under the stars for several days (no one can begin rebuilding, because there is no electricity at the saw mills to cut lumber). This morning I was frustrated that the Bible College’s roof had been put on hold because they were waiting for lumber - it seems trivial now.
Speaking of the Bible College, only one student has reported to class, so I have been teaching one student for the past two weeks. He is from Karamoja, a place with almost no believers. He came to Christ a couple of weeks before coming to Soroti. He was a drunkard before that. He wishes their were more students, bt the teaching he has received has been more beneficial than if there were 20 students. We are studying Systematic Theology and he is eating it up. He is so excited by the verses we read, because he never read the Bible before. He is eager to change and apply God’s word to his life. But he also has a lot to learn. He had identified a girlfriend, but he is also married. However, as soon as someone showed him that the Bible condemns this, he stopped making plans. Seriously, he had no idea it was wrong, no idea where to find the book of Psalms, no idea if 2 Peter was in the Old or New Testament. But every day he is amazed at the things he is learning from the Bible - and so far we have only studied why we need theology, what is the Bible, and what is God like. I am excited at how God might change him, and use him to spread the gospel among the Karamajong. I have prayed often for Teso missionaries to be raised up to disciple in Karamoja, here God has brought a Karamojong to learn His Word. He will be a permanent missionary there.