Busy Time

This seems to be quite a busy time of year. I’ve been working in the yard when I get a chance. I haven’t done a lot of that in the past several years, but I seem to have gained quite a bit of strength since I quit taking cholesterol medicine. Seems like the cure was worse than the disease.

A number of activities have been taking place. Of course, earlier this month was Easter.

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Then Monday evening, we had a missionary speaker at our church. She is stationed in South Africa. I’d like to go into some detail about some of the things she told us about. She was talking about how in the Africa Region (she works in the regional office), she sees much evidence of the African Church being much like the church of the Book of Acts. One thing she mentioned specifically was the amount of time they spend in prayer. She told of one pastor who will often walk four miles to get to his “special” place of prayer up on a mountain. Sometimes he will spend the night in prayer. Once, after one of those nights spent in prayer, he felt the urging of the Lord to go to an area that was very unfriendly to Christians. There was a factory there, and he was led to go to that factory. At the gate of the factory, the guard challenged him. I can’t remember the exact words the pastor spoke when responding with his reason for being there, but essentially that he was there to bring the message of Christ to the people. The guard asked him what the book was that he was carrying, and he told him it was the Bible.

There was, right next to the gate, a sort of furnace/oven type thing that was used in the manufacturing process (I don’t remember what that was), and the guard told him to throw his Bible in there. The pastor hugged the Bible to himself and said, “Oh, no, I can’t do that! This is the words of my God!” The guard said, “OK, then, put your arm in there.” The pastor agreed, and put his arm in the furnace. When he pulled it back out, it appeared not to have any effect at all from the fire – not even a hair was singed – like the Hebrew children in the book of Daniel. The guard said, “You didn’t keep it in long enough! Put it back in, and keep it in longer!” The pastor did so, with the same results. The guard said again, that it wasn’t long enough; that he should put it back in and keep it there until he (the guard) told him it was long enough. This time, it was longer, but the pastor’s arm was still intact when he withdrew it.

About this time, a senior guard came by, and seeing the pastor with the Bible, he told the other guard to take the Bible & throw it in the furnace. The first guard refused, recounting what had happened with the pastor’s arm. The senior guard grabbed the Bible and threw it in.

Some time after, that senior guard took a stray bullet in the head, from some kind of a gang fight, I think. The people of that area, who, as I mentioned above, were quite unfriendly to Christians, did an about face, and welcomed the pastor to their area.

I think it was this same pastor who did a pictorial presentation of the 16 articles of faith of the Nazarene Church. When I get a copy of it, I will post it here.

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I am still trying to get the “check engine” light in my car to go out. The mechanic has tried numerous things; after replacing all the plumbing connecting with the charcoal cannister, a smoke test showed everything secure, but the light still came back on. He tried something else yesterday. He said that on more modern cars, the computer test is more specific, but on mine (a ’98) it’s almost as vague as “check engine”!

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The first Sunday in May, we will be having our Faith Promise for missions service. Our speakers are retired missionaries, whose son-in-law pastors a church of another denomination in our community. This couple – with their daughter – went to Chile (the field of their missonary work) in October, for the celebration of the denomination’s 100th anniversary. They will be showing slides of their trip.

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I had an indirect message from my great-niece Meghan about two April birthdays that I missed – hers, and her step-sister Taryn’s – both on April 1. Meghan, you should have just commented on the blog!