Learning God's Word

 These are all our preaching school students.  They are showing up for every class. There are two more weeks on their first unit, then they take their first test. We intend for all six to succeed.

Lee preaches every other week at Gugeegue and Ebeye. Ramey preaches at Gugeegue the next week and Peterson at Ebeye. Our goal is for both churches to be independent churches with many Marshallese preachers to spread God's word.  God's will be done.

Half Way Through the First Unit

Our Bible students are doing well.  It is hard to tell when you are dealing with two languages if the students are actually understanding what is being said or not. We are about ½ way through our first unit. We will see exactly how well they are doing when we take our first test in about 4 weeks.

We still have not gotten the younger boy onto Kwaj.  He has been keeping up by watching the DVD at his home. Every week we are told a different story, every week he comes to the dock and they will not let him on.  This week his mother is coming with him, but I’m not counting my chickens until they actually let them on the island.  Even if he gets on this week, we are still not set up the way we need to be. We will keep fighting until we get things set up right. The US government has enough red tape to choke everyone to death. Surprise, surprise!

Lee and I used to think that the weeks went by fast on Kwaj.  They really fly by fast with the students coming over twice a week. We meet at 5pm, I feed them, we watch the DVD for class, Lee explains anything he feels they may not understand and we try to get them back on the ferry ASAP because one of the guys has to ride a bicycle from Ebeye to Gugeegue.

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.