Coming back to America

Well, thanks to everyone who has been praying! It is hard to believe that Lord willing I'll be heading home tomorrow! My time has flown by!  We made it back to the capital city safe and sound.  I will be going to church tomorrow with Lorraine Green, the lady who got me into all this.  :-)  

Please pray for safe travels, and also that God would direct my thoughts as I start to process this incredible experience. When I get to a better internet connection, I'll start uploading pictures.

Thank you all for praying!

Praise God for healing me!

Thank you all so much for praying!

God does answer prayers. I didn't have dysentery....I took the medicine,
and it didn't really help. I was still having fevers and headaches and
body aches and general weakness. We talked to the doctor again, and by 
that point, my fevers had started getting higher. He noticed an
inflammation on my tonsil. His conclusion was that I might have either
Mono or Strep, and only time would tell.

But with people here and back home praying, God worked a miracle! I
starting feeling better, my fevers got lower and lower, and as of
right now, I am basically healthy!

Friends, I was not getting better, I was getting worse. It was't
looking good. I was starting to think that it would be a miserable and
painful trip home. But through the prayers of his people, God worked a
miracle!

Since I've been better, I've been doing a few activities. Right now, I
am working on building a desk for one of the Downing kids. It's been a
real struggle every step of the way. The wood is sometimes just rough
cut with a chainsaw, and is warped and bowed and bent worse than
anything I've seen in the US! But once it's cut and planed and sanded
way down, it doesn't turn out too bad. I have a new appreciation for
places like Menards! I spent a whole day working just to get the
wood to a point where it looked like a Menard's 2x4!

Also, I've been helping the Downings plant a small corn patch. The
ground is hard and dry, but this is the beginning of the rainy season,
so it should grow! But not without much sweat and toil. We worked that
ground with hoes and picks and shovels, and this afternoon we planted.
About half way through planting it started to sprinkle, and we
continued to have a cool wind and rain until we were done! We thank
God that he held off the big rains until we got all the seeds planted!

Its hard to believe that I've only got a few days left in the swamp,
before heading to the capital. I'll be at the capital for a day or
two, and then start the series of flights back home, Lord willing!

A few things to pray for:

-Thank God for healing my body!
-A safe journey home:  ETA the evening of July 1st
-That I'd be able to finish up things here
-Thank God for an amazing trip so far!

Thanks for your prayers! I can feel them! 

--Josh

Please keep praying

Hi all,

This is Josh's mom again.  The missionary doctor thought Josh had dysentery so they gave him the normal 3 days of medicine for that.  However he still has a 101* fever and he is weak with body aches.  So they are not sure what sickness he has now.

So please pray that the Great Physician would completely heal Josh.  We are so grateful for the wonderful experiences he has had on this vision mission trip so far.  He is planning to head back to the capital city in a about a week.  Then he will stay there a few days and leave Chad on June 30th.  He will arrive, Lord willing, in Grand Island, Nebraska on the evening of July 1st.  We will be SO GLAD to see him again.

Thanks so much for keeping Josh in your prayers.  As he has said many times, they know when people in the USA are praying, and when we stop praying. So let's keep the prayers rising like incense up to heaven.

God bless you all!

Well Drilling

Thank you all for your prayers. We have been busy the last few days,
drilling and flushing a well.

Not far from the town we're staying in, there is a small village. A
few years ago, we helped a local team drill a well with local methods.
The well worked fine, until recently when it stopped working. When we
opened it up, we discovered that it had filled with gravel. We're
still not quite sure how it happened. We tried for a whole day to
flush out the gravel in the well, but we were unable to. So we decided
to dig a new one. We hired the same team, and spent an entire day
drilling the well. We did not use our machine, since we didn't have
time to get it ready.

The local method is hand dug. But not with shovels...with a drill.
Basically the equipment consists of a 6 inch handmade drill bit,
mounted on a 9 foot pipe. Then there are 4 handles that attach to the
pipe. Four guys grab hold, and spin that thing around. Slowly, with
quite a bit of pressure.The mud pump pumps water through the drill
bit, lubricating the bit, and pushing the cuttings up to the surface,
where they flow down into a pit. After 7 or 8 feet, they attach another
drill stem section, and keep going. Those 5 guys rotate shifts, and
spent about 10 hours drilling that well. By the then of the day,
they'd gone 42 meters into the ground. I tell you what...that is back
breaking work. I would be hard pressed to find another set of 5 guys
that would be able to work that hard, and still have a smile on their
faces at the end of the day. But they were pretty much wiped out. It
was incredible to see them do it. I took lots of pictures and video,
which I will put up on the blog when I get home!

Then a few days later we took a generator and an electric pump to the
well, lowered it in, and flushed the entire water system for about 2.5
hours. When the water was starting to look clear, we pulled it out and
dumped some bleach down in it. We'll go back in a few days and set the
hand pump.

The whole village was overjoyed to have water again. The women had
been walking over a mile to muddy water to drink, ever since the first
one broke. It provides great opportunities to talk about the Living
Water!

It's hard to believe that I have just a little over 2 weeks left in
this country. My time has flown by here. God has given me many
experiences, and taught me many things. I have much to be grateful
for!

And thank you again for all your prayers. Without your prayers,
nothing really can happen out here. Because people like you are
praying, we can stay healthy, have water, and have great conversations
with people about the True Way.

A few prayer requests:

-That the city water would come so that we don't have to keep buying
handcarts of water

-That the team here in the Swamp would continue to unite in one
purpose and passion

-That there would continue to be peace in this region, and that the
enemies of God would not rise up and cause trouble.

-That God would give me strength and endurance to finish my time here

-That God would work through us and the conversations we have with people

-That in all things God would be glorified!

God bless you all!  Hope to see many of you this summer when I'm back!

---Josh

Short update: More to Come

Thank you all so much for praying for Nicholas! Thanks to your prayers, he is doing better! His temperature has returned to normal, and he basically had a normal day today! Praise God for that!

 

Tomorrow we are going to be going to a local village and drilling a well, using a local team and local methods. I will update as soon as I can.

 

Thank you for your prayers!

A bit of a Prayer Request

One of the other missionary family's son is sick.

His name is Nicholas. He has been sick for a few days now, and they just took him to the hospital because of high fevers and vomiting. However, when they arrived, because it is night time, there is no one who was able to help. So they are taking him home, and are planning on taking him back to the hospital in the morning.

So please pray for healing for Nicholas, for peace for the family, wisdom for the doctors, and that we'd all trust God in everything!

Thanks again!

--Josh

Settling into life at the Swamp

Thank you all so much for praying. We can really feel your prayers!

Water has come on a few times... but we still are occasionally hiring
the handcarts to bring us water. Supposedly one of the generators is
broken.

The past few days have been a cultural and linguistic overload for me. I
didn't think that one day's drive to another part of Chad could feel
like such a different place...but it is!

The language here is Chadian Arabic, and I am actually picking it up
much easier than French. Culturally, the main religion is I$l@m, and
so people dress very conservatively. Most of the men wear long robes,
called Kapitans, and some men have turbans. A tailor is sewing two
 for me, so that I'll blend into the background a bit more.

A few prayer requests:

-That we would continue to settle into the house and back into a bit
of a rhythm.
-One of the Downing's girls, Selah is sick with Malaria, so pray that
she'd get better.
-That I'd continue to pick up the language and culture.
- For the presence H0ly $p. in all we do.    

Thank you so much for all your prayers!

Here at the Swamp!

 

Well, after a few delays, we have arrived safely at the Swamp, where I'll be until the end of the month. Everyone finally got their papers in order, and we made the trip on Saturday.

 

Thanks to everyone who was praying for me while I had a relapse of malaria...I was very encouraged. As far as I know, I am better. I'm still not back to my full strength, but I'm on the mend!

 

We had a really great trip here...about 12 hours total. Thanks to all who were praying for that...we really could tell you were praying! We didn't have any flat tires, the roads were good, we got through the check points just fine...it was a good experience. But the bonus was the wildlife. We saw (and I got pictures of) Antelope, Kudo, Warthog, Marabou Stork, Baboons, Red Monkeys, and many birds and camels! What a great experience...the first real wildlife I'd seen the whole trip.

 

Up here in the Swamp, the main language is Chadian Arabic. Which means that the vocabulary I've been learning over the past 7 weeks has become relatively irrelevant. But I really enjoy learning this dialect of Arabic, and I am picking it up faster than I did French!

 

A few things to pray for:

 

-That we'd get all settled in, and get the house running and working again.

-There has been a water shortage, so we're trying to conserve water. Pray that the city water comes sooner rather than later.

-That the tribes in the area would continue to be at peace with each other

-That I'd adjust quickly and smoothly to the new culture and language

-That God would completely heal my body of malaria and the treatments

-That we would shine as a light in the darkness in this spiritually dark part of the world!

 

Thanks for praying!