Protected by the Lord

March 01, 2013

This past month has truly been an interesting and challenging month overall. It started out with a little bit of a rough time spiritually and emotionally for us. We were all a little down and just needed to spend some quality time with the Lord. As always He proved Himself faithful and has restored some of the joy that we were lacking. On top of that we all experienced some type of illness over this past month. It was already a difficult month for us and the illnesses didn’t make it any easier. However, we also experienced some excitement as we found a house to live in Fort Dauphin. We are thankful to the Lord for providing us and Ashley with such nice homes that we desire to use for His Glory and Honor. We are really looking forward to moving closer to the heart of the Tandroy people. We are really looking forward to the ministry that the Lord has ahead for us. We have also spent some time planning the upcoming short-term trips for Southwestern Seminary and North Garland Baptist Fellowship. We are praying for the Lord to continue to bless us in these partnerships. We also were able to follow up with a few nationals from the last SWBTS trip and started a new Bible Study with a family. This has been very exciting and encouraging. The month also had a huge gathering of some of the local CEIM churches and we really enjoyed the fellowship with them. It was a nice time. Just as it seemed like we were moving forward and were ready to hit a new gear before the move the weather changed on us.

We had a Cyclone come through Toliara. It was a category 3 as it blew through Toliara so the winds were in excess of 125 mph at times. The people here had experienced cyclones before but it is normally the back end and not the front end of the cyclone. Needless to say the town and the areas around us were not fully ready for the cyclone. We decided to store up some food, water, and had an evacuation plan. As the storm started blowing through we began to have part of our roof come up. This section was flapping back and forth and was being rolled up. Praise the Lord it never came loose and all we had to deal with was the water that kept pouring in our home. Once the eye blew by we then experienced a shift in winds and heavy rains. This in turn started ripping up another section of our roof and we were about ready to leave for another place but decided to stick it out. The Lord was gracious to protect us and really our home during all this time. We praise His Holy Name! The days following the cyclone we have just spent getting our home back in order. We patched up the roof but it still needs to be replaced and we cleaned up the mess that we had in the house. We still don’t have electricity but thanks to Island teammates we have generators to let us have a little normalcy. However, we must say that we do miss our fans blowing at night. We will be glad once it all gets back in order again.

So what are we doing with all this devastation? At first we just tried to check on everyone and see if they are okay. The city flooded pretty badly and we have heard of over 150 people who died. Some of these are friends or family of friends. The Malagasy people immediately started cleaning up and helping each other out. We were very impressed with how they all worked together. Now that things have settled down we have partnered with some of the local churches and we are going to be able to offer a little assistance through the BGR (Baptist Global Relief). We are so thankful to all the Southern Baptist who have given and who will give to help us out in these efforts. The damages and the needs go beyond what we can give but we do know that it is a start and that we want the Lord to be glorified even in this storm. Thus, as we move into all the issues that come with offering disaster relief please keep us and the local churches in your prayers. Many have lost their lives, homes, health and much more. Please ask the Lord to give us wisdom during these times especially.

Praises: