Separation and Reunion

Yesterday, we held our annual Christmas outreach at the airport where MAF's hangar is. In addition to MAF and other aviation groups, a large portion of the airport is for military use. Each year we host a service with music, a gospel presentation, and refreshments. We also distribute gospel tracts and Scriptures.

We had a large crowd this year and several decisions were made for Christ. 





Maurice, one of our long time national staff, was the "emcee."

The choir from the International Protestant Church of Kinshasa (IPCK),
led by my friend Sandy, a fellow MAF wife. They were fabulous and sang in Lingala, Swahili, French and English!

Passing out Scripture literature and refreshments.

Have you ever experienced the anticipation of seeing a loved one you've been separated from? Maybe planned a trip to see them and gone through the process of packing, buying gifts, etc? Or perhaps you invited them to come see you. You rearranged furniture and cleaned house, bought gifts and their favorite foods, planned things to do together, did your best to make an environment for them that said "you are loved and cherished." It didn't even seem like work and you didn't worry about the cost, because you were doing it for someone you loved. Maybe even as you did so you were reminded that Jesus is preparing a place for you to one day come home to.

Being away from those we love is painful, painful, painful. Even just the anticipation of a reunion is cause for joy. Last Sunday our pastor shared a thought from Max Lucado that Jesus would rather die for us than live without us. He loves us that much. And that is why He chose to come here. The little card in the photo above says it all: Jesus is the real reason for Christmas. 



This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. - 1 John 4:10

Have a joyous Christmas!

Photo fun - Multifun Calamity Attack

Today a group of us got together to do a Congo version of an "ugly Christmas sweater" party. We decorated tank tops and t-shirts, ate Christmas cookies, played Christmas music and just had a good time visiting with each other. I'm in the back row, far right. It was a fun time and I am glad someone managed to get a photo of us.

Here are some photos I managed to get over the last few weeks of things I found funny, odd, or interesting.

I went to a local bakery for lunch with a friend and picked up a copy of their carry-out menu. I got a chuckle out of it later when I read it. I honestly don't know how they expect to sell a plate full of "Calamity" to anyone.

I still can't find black olives or pickle relish anywhere, but this was an unusual and interesting option at our local supermarket. I have actually seen what it does and it really is a smart shoe cover machine. It puts a cellophane cover over just the bottom half inch and sole of your shoe. This is way high on the "husbands do not buy this for your wives for Christmas" list.

I really like all the variety and fun in the fabrics that are available here, but you have to be a brave seamstress to be willing to try cutting into this brand of fabric.

Not sure what "CTION RACKS" are, but they are MULTIFUN. 

These are actually quite popular here. They are collapsible racks for drying clothing. Something weird happened in the translation from Chinese to English.

Two games I won't be buying here. In Kinshasa a Twister game is $65.00 and Battleship costs $102.00. 

I saved my favorite for last. When you work in a place that has no indoor plumbing or electricity, you have to be resourceful. This entrepreneur hair salon has placed their chair with its back to the outdoors so that they can have the sunlight to see what they are doing. They pour buckets of water to wash hair and they have rigged a hose to the portable sink so that it drains into the culvert. Clever!

Our First Furlough Christmas and a Big Announcement!

This year we did our Christmas in multiple phases to accommodate the schedules of our families. First we drove to Emily's school to get her for her break. All of us then drove to Josh's to have a Christmas party with him and Kristen. A few days later we went to Tennessee and had a birthday party for my dad and two more Christmas parties. Here are a few highlights.

Josh's contribution to Kristen's tree: the sock monkey I made for him last year.

David always used to read Luke chapter 2 at the beginning of every Christmas celebration. When the kids learned to read, they began asking if they could read the Christmas story.

Emily and Kristen

The perfect ornament for someone who lives for bacon.

Sock monkeeeeees! Very cool beans!

I don't understand how a kid who turns the Raggedy Ann and Andy ornaments around backwards on the tree because "they are creepy" can then proclaim that this is "awesome."

Meeting up with Jim and Nancy Smith for lunch. They are dear friends and fellow missionaries that we met in Congo. It felt a little strange to be seeing them on this side of the Atlantic but it was a real treat to get to spend time with them.

We had a very nice Christmas season and we are grateful. We also feel grateful and blessed to share this very Cool Beans announcement: We have reached 100% in our ministry support and are going back to Congo on schedule! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to the many who pray and give and make it possible for us to go. We are ambassadors for Christ but we also represent you and we are honored. 

Happy New Year with love from the Burtons!

Mary Had A Baby Pooch

Nativity scene on display in Perstorps kyrka, Sweden. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For those of us who are detail people, I don’t know if there is a single truly accurate nativity set or painting out there, anywhere. Even discounting the fact that no one knows what Mary or Joseph looked like, how many shepherds, etc were there, or even what the manger looked like, every single nativity scene or figurine of Mary the mother of Jesus that I have seen depicted her as being radiant, with perfect hair and beautiful skin and a nice flat tummy tucked behind her belt. In real life, Mary had a baby pooch. She had, after all, just given birth. She probably also was exhausted and had circles under her eyes. Joseph might have looked a little haggard too.

When I was a kid, I used to let it bother me that most nativity scenes I came across depicted Mary as a blue-eyed blonde. Didn’t anyone read their Bible and know that Mary and Joseph were Hebrews? I have since seen many different nativity scenes featuring several nationalities but it no longer bothers me. I guess I decided that the intended message being conveyed wasn’t that Mary looked like this or that but that Jesus came for ALL mankind. 

Sometimes we can get so caught up in the details of something that we miss the simplicity. The beautiful, simple truth of Christmas is that God loved us and sent his Son, and loves us still.

I hope your Christmas this year is sweet and simple, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Merry Christmas!

Tis The Season

We are off in just a bit to northern Missouri to get Emily! We will have her for three weeks! Ironically, even though we spent the last three Christmases in Africa, the first Christmas we will experience without all three of our children will be here in America. Our oldest has grown up and has responsibilities now and has to work. So we are taking Christmas to him tonight and celebrating a bit early!

I had sad news in my email box this morning. A year ago, I wrote about "Operation Clean Kinshasa" in THIS POST. The police are at it again. As you can see in the photo above, there are many vendors all over Kinshasa who set up tables and sell whatever they can to get by; fruits and vegetables, bread, phone cards, etc. Police are cleaning up the city by clearing out the vendors, and they are doing it in cruel fashion - by assaulting people, destroying and burning their tables and inventory, etc.

In Kinshasa most people live hand to mouth, using each days meager wages to feed their families for that day. To have to begin again with no inventory and no money is devastating and frightening. As in the U.S., shoppers generally spend more this time of year. Expats are buying extra food and goodies for the holidays and this could have been a good time of year for the vendors, but as long as this clean up operation continues, it is not safe for the vendors to even attempt to restart their businesses. Instead of a season of extra earnings, more food in the kids' bellies, and good cheer, Kinshasa vendors are having a season of violence, loss, and fear.

Please pray for those affected by this, the vendors and their families, the police who are being ordered to do this, and the working people who are now having a difficult time finding affordable wares. Satan would have this serve him as a way to distract people from the real meaning of Christmas - that God loved us and sent His Son to save us from our sins. Pray that instead, people will look to God to be their salvation, their refuge, and their provider.

A Homemaker Displaced

christmas tree ornament (Photo credit: zaimoku_woodpile)

Last weekend we drove to Tulsa, OK and spoke in our old church there. Except for the horrible weather, which prevented many people from being able to come see us, we had a wonderful time seeing old friends and catching up with one another.



Besides speaking in churches, we've been doing a lot of this kind of activity:


What is this? It's basically a meal, a dessert, or just coffee at someone's home. They invite their friends to come and learn about our ministry in Congo.  It's much more personal and informal than a church presentation and allows for more direct interaction with the guests.



We came home recently and discovered that the lovely couple we are staying with had put up their Christmas tree and decorated the house while we were gone. I was very surprised at the mixture of emotions I felt when I saw it. I was excited and happy, yes, but some little thing inside me was disturbed. I couldn't put my finger on it at first. I just knew I was less happy than I thought I ought to be. Later it came to me. We haven't been missionaries for all that long and this is our first furlough, so maybe there's a name for it and I just don't know it. I was conflicted because even though the tree was beautiful, it wasn't MY tree. The ornaments weren't MY ornaments. Self-centered? Probably. I just felt a bit displaced, like I was home but not really, even though the family we stay with loves us and we love them.

I feel really convicted about it. I thought about Mary and Joseph, and how displaced they must have felt when Jesus was born, again when they were in Egypt, and yet again when they went to Nazareth.

And then there's Abraham: "By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents," Hebrews 11: 9.

We don't live in tents, but we do live in temporary locations, in other people's homes.

It's nice to be rooted. I remember that feeling. But I am beginning to think there are things I can learn and gifts I can receive only by being uprooted and transplanted. It's a gift to read about Mary and Abraham going to foreign lands and to really know what it feels like to be displaced and foreign. How precious to think I might have something in common with her: knowing what it is like to be a mom raising children in a strange country without the closeness of extended family!

No More Anonymity

photo credit: Sandy Francis

I don't know why but in the last week my comment box has had a plethora of spam comments, most of them  benign but some are offensive. Since I moderate all comments, this saved my blog from having them posted all over the place but my email box has been flooded with them. So...I am not allowing anonymous comments anymore, since that is the avenue the spammers use. Can you still post comments? Yes. But now you must identify yourself using either your own URL, AIM or OpenID. If you have an ID with Google (think gmail), Yahoo, Blogger, Flickr, MySpace, AOL, or WordPress then you already have an OpenID and you can find out what it is by clicking HERE. I'm sorry for the inconvenience but I really would not look good if I pulled all my hair out and this was the alternative. Many of you already know me and prefer to send me comments via facebook or email, and that's fine too.

The Christmas season is the time of year when I get the most interaction with our national staff, even though David sees many of them several times a week. In addition to the Christmas worship service we do together for people who work at the airport (see photo above of David and some of the other guys singing!), we also have an annual Christmas meal together with Congolese food. I really like the fact that we work with our nationals to do the Christmas outreach event because besides sharing the gospel with others, it reminds all of our MAF staff that we are in ministry together.

Remember this? Last September we paid the local vet to spay our kitten, Lily. She nearly died afterward of complications. I suspected pneumonia.

We are about 95% sure that our SPAYED kittie is pregnant. We just went through this less than a year ago with her mama, Piper, and all the symptoms are the same. I was there for Lily's surgery and SAW the vet remove SOMETHING, but obviously it wasn't what he thought it was...

...anybody want a kitten?

We are having a wonderful time visiting with Josh! We had a nice, relaxing family Christmas with devotions and gifts and homemade treats and a ham dinner. I am working on a new post but might not have it up by tomorrow. I'm still getting used to our new computer (Christmas gift, yaay!) and our internet has been unpredictable. Pray for our water situation. We are out again, so tomorrow morning David will have to drive the truck to haul water for the third time this week. When we moved here the water was great and we never ran low. We have no idea why suddenly it's off most of the time.

I'm not on the "A-list."

My portion of this post will be short today because other things are getting priority this week. Our son, Josh is back for a visit after a year's absence and we are relishing every minute. We've really enjoyed doing things together as a family again, talking and catching up, and just basking in his glow (kidding, but we ARE very happy just to have him around).

We love our new home and all its little quirks, but we have not been enjoying the regular flooding we've been experiencing every time it rains. Since this is rainy season, we are talking about several floods a week in our basement. One area is just for storage. Another area was a laundry room until David rerouted the plumbing and wiring for me and moved the machines up so I wouldn't have to go down steps in the dark or in the rain. But one room is for our guards to keep their stuff in and to have a place that is theirs. Here's a picture of the water line from the flooding. It's over two feet high.







Part of the problem was trash (coke bottles, motor oil, broken dishes, old soccer ball, etc) that had washed down into our drainage system. A huge part of the problem, though was our neighbor's yard. This drainage ditch runs through several yards, the entire length of our backyard, and drops off into a ravine that feeds the nearby river. When it works properly, those concrete slabs are over the culvert, rain water drains into pipes like the one in this photo and travels out of the yard. But in our yard, instead of water going into the pipes, sand is washing out of them and water is flooding the yard and the basement.

Matthew came over and the guys started prying up the concrete and found that our culvert was filled 12 inches deep with sand that had washed down from the neighbor's yard! So the neighbor is getting a new retaining wall and repairing his side of the problem. An unexpected blessing with that is that one of our guards is skilled in concrete work and masonry and will get the job, so his family will have a little extra money this month.




I wanted to write something inspirational for Christmas but haven't been able to get my brain to switch to creative mode. My friend Shawn Lantz wrote a piece about the birth of the King for her blog that I think is well worth reading. She makes several good points, one of which is that the shepherds who received the birth announcement would not have made society's "A-list" and those who would have at the time were unaware of the birth of Christ. I will never make the "A-list" by society's standards either, but because Jesus humbled Himself and came as a baby for me, I am now a daughter of the King! Check out Shawn's article, "A Foolish Birth Announcement."

Sewing in the Congo: making stuff out of stuff

     During our Christmas break from home schooling, I managed to do a little sewing.  I took some curtains and sheets and made, well, curtains and sheets.  I bought some curtains from a departing friend a few months ago and had not managed to get them hung anywhere.  They are the kind that has large eyelets at the top.  In the states I would just run to Wal-mart or Home Depot and get the hardware for hanging that type of curtain.  Not an option here.  My mom sent me some lime green ribbon and thread for Christmas by way of Josh, so I turned the curtains upside-down and sewed the goofy European-style whatever-you-call-it (seriously, I have no idea what it is called) onto the new top to make it compatible with the tracks/hooks system thingy (sorry, don't know the name of that either) already installed in the house.  Then I ran the ribbon through the eyelets, wrapped the ends around to the back, and tacked it down.  We really like it. The curtains weren't wide enough for the window so I made a center panel out of a white sheet. 

I also fixed a fitted sheet for my bed. We foolishly packed queen size sheets for our bed when we came here. I don't think anyone here has a queen sized bed unless they shipped it over from the U.S. MAF loaned us a "Congo-king" size bed when we first arrived. The mattress was made locally out of foam, so I was able to roll it and stuff it into my too-small sheets.  The flexibility of the foam combined with the really snug sheets in such a way that when we got into bed each night the mattress enveloped us like a hotdog bun and cooked us in our own body heat.  (no comments about pigs in a blanket, please)  It also made getting out of bed an interesting challenge in the mornings, sort of like the commercials where the little old lady says "help, I've fallen and I can't get up!"  We eventually bought a bed from some other departing friends. (Do you see the trend here? If no one ever left this place we wouldn't have anything in our house!) It's a California King from the states and my sheets were not going to stretch that far. So, when I had the chance to buy some king-sized sheets from my friend who sold me the curtains, I grabbed it. I took a strip off the top sheet and rehemmed it. Then I added the strip into the fitted sheet, near the bottom so it wouldn't show when the bed was made. I didn't have any instructions and had to "wing it" so the project took a lot longer than I wanted it to, but we have a fitted sheet now that doesn't have to be tucked back under the mattress every morning. Yaaay!
AND...I finally finished scrapping my Christmas photos. FROM 1993! I made one layout and reused it for the sake of expediency. I had a ton of photos because that was Josh's first Christmas and everyone has a bajillion photos of the first baby. (I'm really, really sorry, middle and youngest children.)

This past Christmas while Josh was here I took unusually good photos. I do that about once every five years. Then I took my memory card out of my camera so we could put one of the photos on Facebook for Josh. Now we can't find the memory card and that one photo is all I have from Christmas day. So, since the photos I took a couple days after Christmas can't tell the whole story, we had a great day.

Josh even blogged a little about it. He is a contributing writer on a blog for TCK's - third culture kids. You can see the wonderful sweet things he said about his family HERE.  I think I might go read it a few more times.

How Missionaries Really Want to Travel

I hope you had a very merry Christmas! We did! The power went out for several hours, but we didn't let it ruin our fun. We read the Bible together, gave our gifts to eachother, called family, and watched movies. David loved the rug I made for him and Josh loved the sock monkey. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can see photos HERE. It was so nice just to be together! I am going to be a mess when Josh goes back to college, I can see it now.

There are very few advantages that I've found thus far to having my first-born attending college 6,000 (not a typo, it's really that far) miles away. With no dishwasher and a washing machine roughly the size of a blender, it is a plus that we have fewer dirty dishes and less laundry. Possibly the biggest advantage, and still not big enough to outweigh how much we miss him, is that when he came to visit for Christmas he was able to bring us stuff we can't get here - like Christmas presents! We were able to shop online and have items sent to Josh. Josh then became the Burton version of Santa, flying Brussels Airlines instead of a sleigh, and carrying suitcases instead of a magical weightless and bottomless red bag. But wait! What if I could find a magical weightless and bottomless bag? I would be willing to pay a fortune for one! Imagine the possibilities! Missionaries and other world travelers would line up to buy them like people waiting for the stores to open on Black Friday. Anyway, David bought "The Pioneer Woman Cooks!", by Ree Drummond. Then Santa - I mean Josh - brought it to me. I love this book! Nevermind that I can't get all the ingredients here for all the recipes - I can definitely get some of them. I really enjoy her writing style and she wrote her cookbook in much the same style that she uses on her blog. Just a few days ago I read her post "All I Wanted Was A Doughnut". Oh! How I miss doughnuts! If I just had a weightless, bottomless bag I could bring a whole term's worth of doughnuts back with me every furlough. I could bring enough doughnuts back to give one to every cop in Kinshasa. Gasp! I read Ree's story aloud to my family because I thought they would enjoy it. They did enjoy it, but after I finished reading it my youngest asked "What is a doughnut case?" I never, ever, ever, thought in a million years that one of MY children would not know what a convenience store doughnut case is. I shall remedy this when we go on furlough in 2013, and I shall do it well. Read Ree's doughnut post to end your year with a smile!
Happy New Year!

Something Old, Something New, Something Baked, Something Blue

Something Old:
Over a year ago I was shopping and found fabric with a snowflake pattern, in Africa, so I bought some with the intention of making a wrap skirt. Finally, I have gotten around to actually doing it. Red and yellow are kinda strange colors for a snowflake theme, but then again, this is Congo.

Something New:
When I asked my oldest if there was anything special he wanted for Christmas, I told him to keep in mind that I can't just run to Walmart or the mall to buy things. He asked for "a sock monkey with a rasta hat." Ok. Sure. I happened to have the socks leftover from one of Emily's school projects. I begged yarn off my friends and went to work to make a monkey with dreadlocks. The rasta hat is made from a black sock and I stitched it with yarn to make the stripes. I hope I never have to make a sock doll with hair ever again, but I don't think this one turned out too bad. Hopefully Josh will like it. Don't tell him I posted this on my blog. He's been instructed not to look until after Christmas.

Something Baked:
I baked cookies this past week to contribute to gift bags for our national staff and decided to take the rest to the commercial center in my neighborhood, along with some tracts, and give them out. I invited my friend Myndii to come along and she made up a plate of cookies for the police station. (The police station is really a metal shipping container about the size of a short train boxcar, used as headquarters and office for a small group of police officers.) We took our wares down on Thursday and were greeted warmly by the police officer and his friends, who gave up their chairs and invited us to join them in conversation for a few minutes. We made sure to give treats to Papa Joseph, Mama Lily, Papa Kabuya, Titi and TonTon - people we conduct business with regularly, then passed out goodies to everyone we could until it was gone. Sadly, there were more people who wanted one of my gifts than I could have prepared for. Pray that the gospel tracts and the gestures of Christian love are well-received and that the seeds grow.

Something Blue:
I purchased some curtains from friends of ours who were leaving Kinshasa. David really liked the blue in the fabric, so after adding a strip to the bottom of one set to make them long enough, they were hung in our bedroom. I had a bunch of the matching fabric left over so for a Christmas gift I made a "toothbrush rug" for David. Don't tell him you saw this until after Christmas either. Now my kids want me to make rugs for them. It's so easy I think I might let them make their own. If you are interested in making your own, I learned how to do it using instructions from this website: toothbrush rugs.

Why I'm Glad I'm in Congo for Christmas

Even when it isn’t in the throes of post-election mayhem, Congo is ranked near the top of the list of the world’s worst places to live. The cost of living is outrageous. Corruption abounds. It is a violent and unstable place. The infant mortality rate is high and the average life span is low compared to other nations. During the Christmas season, there is no snow. No parades. No Salvation Army bell ringers. No Christmas songs playing on the radio or over PA systems in the malls (no malls either), no decorated lawns or lights on the houses. No Charlie Brown Christmas special(I should have bought the dvd). Shopping for gifts is an exercise in futility and frustration. Toys and games are outrageously priced, mostly in other languages, and if electronic, zoned for European-made devices, not the American devices we brought here with us. A bag of m&m’s for a stocking stuffer costs $15 or more. Maybe the stores will have turkeys, but maybe not.
So what’s a family to do in Congo at Christmas? Without all the trappings and hoo-ha, we find ourselves having a lot more time and a lot more space in our thought lives to actually focus on what really matters: the incredible love that moved the God of creation to send his Son for the likes of us. We’ve learned not to take even going to church or having fellowship with friends for granted. We’ve simplified our expectations and our desires. We’ve become more grateful and less greedy. We are more keenly aware of how deeply the Savior loves us and how blessed we are. It’s a change I am not sure would have happened if our family had never come to Congo, but one that as a Christian wife and mom I am extremely happy to have observed and been part of. I struggled our first Christmas here as I learned to let go of the way I thought Christmas should be observed and open my hands to receive the Christmas God wanted to give me. My kids displayed just as much excitement and gratitude over the simple things we gave them and our little second-hand crooked tree as they used to show over more lavish gifts and fancier decor. We wished our Congolese friends a "joyeux Noël." We went to church and sang about the Son who came for all mankind with people from many different nations, including Congo – a little taste of heaven.
A Little Bit of News:
Last Sunday our oldest son arrived safely from the U.S. all in one piece and his luggage arrived Wednesday. We are extremely grateful to be reunited for two weeks and are enjoying every minute! Thanks for all your prayers for his travels!

Jesus Under the Stove (and other unusual places)

Photo: Nancy Burton coolbeans3.blogspot.com

I was able to go to the United States for Thanksgiving to visit our college aged daughter and see most of my family. We had a nice visit but OH! The trip back was so LONG and exhausting. It took me a while to get back in the groove after the time change and with all the emotions of missing my mom. Holidays won't ever be the same without her, although I do have hope that they can be good. David, Daniel and I are having a quiet family Christmas this year. Missing mom has made us more sentimental, resulting in us doing things we don't normally do here because old traditions are either very expensive or near impossible to keep here. We splurged on a new little tree. Our ancient missionary hand me down tree bit the dust last year. I brought back pumpkin from the states so there will be pumpkin pie. We bit the dust and paid the outrageous amount for a real turkey instead of the usual chicken. I used up my chocolate chip horde and baked cookies to give away. All totally worth it.

When I first wrote this blog post on Dec 18, 2011, my mom told me she really liked it, which made it a favorite of mine. I've blown the dust and cobwebs off and revised it a bit for you:

I don’t understand why, because it is often always the messiest room in the house, but our kitchen is a people magnet. Often when I am cooking, other members of the family will come in and talk to me. So we were all in the kitchen together last night when we noticed David on his hands and knees looking beneath the stove. Conversations and activities ceased as we all stared until he noticed and responded.
“I’m looking for Jesus.”
“I’m pretty sure you won’t find Him under the stove.” This was followed by much laughter.
Minutes later:
“I found Jesus under the printer.”
“Didn’t I tell you He wasn’t under the stove?” More laughter.
“He was just as likely to be under the stove as under the printer.”
“I guess you have a point there.” 

My husband was searching for Jesus in bizarre places because our cats held a soccer game while we slept during the night and scattered the pieces of Emily’s nativity scene all over the house. The other pieces were found quickly but we couldn’t find Jesus, the most important figure. Once He was found, everyone was happy. Like our cats, we humans tend to make a real mess of things. We sometimes lose sight of what the most important things are in our lives. Our nativity Jesus was never truly gone, we just couldn’t see Him because He had been moved from his place of prominence to a dark and dusty corner. I don’t want to relegate Jesus to a dark and dusty corner of my life. I want Him to be the absolute center, the focal point no matter what angle anyone sees me from so that they are shown the way to Him. And I am so, so grateful that even when I fall and lose sight of Him, He is still there.

I hope this Christmas and always that He is in a place of prominence in your heart and life.

Merry Christmas!

image created using "One Night in Bethlehem" kit by Janniscrap Designs

Food for the Stomach and for the Spirit, Times Two

One interesting difference between the cultures here and in the U.S. is the way people react when you offer them a gospel tract. I found some French and Lingala versions of the Four Spiritual Laws tracts at a Bible store downtown and while I was grocery shopping yesterday with friends, we passed one of them out the car window to a police officer who was directing traffic. He accepted it, looked into our vehicle at all the bags of food and candidly remarked that he wished he could have one of the loaves of bread. We gave him some money to buy bread for himself and his partner and told him thank you for working hard to keep the city safe. The other officer then asked us if he could have a tract of his own. We gladly gave him one. I've been told that this is a very common response. Never in the U.S. has anyone asked me for a tract. Often people didn't want them and told me so either politely or otherwise.
Today our entire team, both U.S. staff and national staff, held an outreach event at the airport. Planes were moved out of the hangar to make room for chairs and a sound system. We shared a little bit about MAF, sang in English, French and Lingala, and had a Christmas worship service. The key speaker was Fideline, who is a local pastor and the wife of Maurice, one of our national staff members. God has blessed one of our MAF wives, Sandy Francis, with amazing musical talent. She sang Jesu Bambino/O Holy Night in English and French and nearly brought the house down. It is a real treat both to hear her sing and to hear Congolese singing praises in Lingala. Several people responded to the invitation to pray and receive Christ. Everyone was given tracts, Bibles, and refreshments. Hopefully they all went home both spiritually and physically fed.
Please pray for the two officers, and those who came today. Many of them requested extra tracts. Who can say how many others might receive one? Pray the seeds will grow! Also, even though the supreme court confirmed Kabila yesterday as the winner of the election amid some controversy, things are calm here so far and we are grateful. Pray for Josh - in just a couple of hours he boards a plane to come visit us!