Run Around

We are trying to get our preaching school students over to our house twice a week.  We are dealing with the US government, they NEVER make it easy.  Lee chased after a mysterious permission form to get, Erick, the 15 yr old above onto Kwaj. for classes.  After Lee spent days trying to find someone who knew about the form, he ran out of time and gained more things to get done at work.  It was pouring out most of Saturday, but I finally found someone who knew the answer to our mystery.  If they do not throw us any more curve balls, we may have everything set up for now.  Nothing ever stays the same with the government.  Some smarty britches will come along and decide to change everything. Pray for all 6 of the future preachers.

Lee is on Ebeye trying to get our stuff out of the kindergarten class room.  The Ebeye school is starting this week and they have not let us back into the room since they locked us out.  The place we are meeting right now is someones  house.  It is really hot in there and there is no chance for A/C.  I ordered a high capacity fan and there are a few 'last mile' fans.  Lee is going to see if he can fix an electrical plug in that room that is not working this afternoon while on Ebeye.

It always amazes me how creative people can be when you can't afford what you need.  I saw a toilet that had a toilet brush (that you clean with) as the float in the tank.  Nothing in the tank was the usual bowl innards.  It was totally rigged, but it worked. Hooray for ingenuity.

Blessings to all.  Keep us in your prayers.

Future Preachers

Four Marshallese Brothers and Lee started their preaching studies this week. Lee and I live on an Army base.  We have to go through security to get on or off the base. We decided to hold the first class at our house on the base which means we had to sign the Marshallese men onto the base.  To make a long story short, it ended up we could not get one of the boys on to the base.  Lee had already made copies of the DVD so I took my computer over to the dock and showed the DVD to one of the boys there.  It was less than ideal, but it worked.  They met Friday night on Ebeye.  It was less than ideal too, but it worked also.  The only thing you can count on in the Marshall Islands is that things will change quickly and you just have to move on to the next best thing. The preaching school is two years long.  Pray for all of these future preacher's success.

Our Sister who was teaching in the class room we were meeting in for church service decided she was not going to teach this year.  The Sunday that we got back from vacation we were locked out of the class room.  They let us have about a half dozen song books and bibles and no chairs.  We would have gladly gotten our things out of their way if they would have given us some notice or let us take our stuff then.  They should let us have them soon because school will be starting the second week in August. 

Blessings to all.

The Lord is in Charge

We will never go through the San Francisco airport again. We made good time from OKC to SF.  Unfortunately, SF was soped in with fog.  We circled several times.  We went into the fog cloud to land.  You could barely see the wing outside our window. Of course, you couldn’t help but think about the wrecked plane still sitting on one of the runways below you.  We went down, down, down and all of a sudden, we took off, straight up out of the fog.  They took us to San Jose where we circled several times and finally landed to sit on a section of there tarmac with about a dozen other diverted planes. We sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half.  I wanted them to pull up to the airport and let us off.  I knew we could get another flight to Hawaii. No such luck.  The fog finally let up enough to get into the SF airport two hours late.  They said check your flight, they may not have taken off yet. The lady at the gate told us to go to gate 90 (at the other end of the airport) we ran (I have too much trouble with my feet, I don’t run anymore) down there only to discover that gate 90 was going to Chicago.  We ended up in line for two hours to be re-booked to Hawaii.  All the flights to Honolulu were full so we had to go to Maui to sit for four hours in their airport before we could then fly on to Honolulu. Lee and I used to dream of going to Maui, we just didn’t plan that it would only be to the airport. The flight to Hono was delayed forty-five minutes. We finally made it to Hono but our luggage ended up at the other end of the airport.  From the time we got out of bed in OKC until we went to bed in Hono was 26 hours of travel. We only had 3 hrs sleep before we had to make our 6 ½ hour flight to Kwajalein.  United Airlines has a monopoly in and out of Kwaj, but we will never use them again once we move away from Kwaj.

Sunday, we were very happy to see that the road to Gugeegue had been grated the smoothest we had ever seen it in five years.  It had been taking 40 min. to an hour to travel the five mile road. We made the trip in about 10 minutes. It was great!

When we arrived to worship on Ebeye they would not let us use the kindergarten room we have been meeting in for church service for the past couple years.  No warning, no reason,….. you’re out.  We ended up meeting in a room of one of our members mother’s house.  The room wasn’t much smaller than the class room. It is a temporary fix.  A building became available on Ebeye before we went on vacation. We are going to look at it next Monday and meet with the landowner to see how much $$$ he wants to lease the building.  It would be a great location and space is so hard to come by on Ebeye. It is a 77 acres island with 17,000 people living on it.  God sometimes slams one door to open another for you.  If there is one thing we have learned while living in the Marshall Islands is if plan A does not work, move quickly to plan B, C, D, E,……. God has led us thus far, HE will lead us where HE wants us to be. Please pray for the church on Ebeye during this transitional time.