We have had a busy few months transitioning back to life in the U.S.  We have been enjoying time with family and friends, church services in English, and our favorite foods.  We have marveled at the many changes that have taken place in our home town and in the U.S. over the past few years.

Since our return, we have also had several opportunities to share about our ministry.  We have shared at our home church, a men’s breakfast, an elementary school chapel, a Bible college chapel, Awana at our home church and another church, and at an orientation for new candidates at our mission agency headquarters.  Just yesterday, we returned from a two week trip to New Jersey where we spoke at six churches.

During the last week in New Jersey, I flew to our mission agency headquarters in Orlando to spend the week interacting with new candidates for the mission field.  During that time, I found one person who is interested in joining our team in Guinea.  We are so excited at the prospect of a new teammate!

This coming Saturday, we will be off again to Tennessee and Georgia to share at a few more churches.  We have several more trips planned for this year that should take us to many other places including Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and California.  We will also be sharing at several churches in Ohio.

Please keep us in prayer as we travel heavily and speak at churches during these next few months.  Pray that we would find more members to join our team in Guinea.  Pray that we would be able to raise the necessary funds to return to Guinea on schedule next year.

Please keep us in prayer Sunday and Monday as we travel to the United States for our home assignment.  Our travel time totals nearly 24 hours including a four hour layover in the Paris airport.  Pray that there will be no delays or missed flights.  Pray that all our luggage will arrive, and nothing will be stolen or lost along the way.

On Saturday evening after the medical clinic, one of my colleagues invited me to go with him to greet the head imam (mosque leader) and give him Scripture.  This missionary had felt a burden to greet the imam but had been unable to find him.  We headed toward the mosque after the call to prayer.  When we arrived, we entered the courtyard outside the mosque but found that the imam was not there.  There are two mosques in the village, and the imam rotated between the two mosques.  We asked one of the men in the courtyard if he could guide us to the imam’s home.  He agreed and off we went, walking in the dark by the light of a flashlight.

Finally, after about a ten minute walk, we arrived at the imam’s home.  At first he welcomed us warmly.  We greeted him, and he brought chairs for us to sit on.  We chatted for a few minutes.  Then, we offered him a gift, the books of Genesis and Matthew in Pular Arabic script.  When he saw what we were offering, his attitude turned cold.  “I can’t read this,” he said.  At first we were unsure if he was unable to read it (illiterate) or unwilling.  After some more questions, it became apparent that he was unwilling.  He refused to even accept it.  We tried in vain to convince him he ought to accept it and read it, that it showed the path to eternal life in heaven.  Before long, he rudely ushered us out of his home.  Even though he didn’t want to, he guided us back to the main road himself because he didn’t want his grandson to guide us alone, fearing that we would speak to him about the Gospel.

As we arrived back at the clinic where we would be sleeping that night, we stopped and prayed for the stubborn imam.  We also prayed that he would not succeed in leading his community astray or turning them against our message.  You, too, can pray with us for the stubborn imam and his village.

One thing I love about working in the village is traipsing to the outhouse by the light of the moon in the middle of the night. (No, not really.) The first night we were in Loomal for the medical clinic, I went to the outhouse and accidentally walked through a swarm of cula (chew-la), also known as African driver ants. These ants travel in great swarms, up to 20 million strong. They like to swarm over something or someone and all begin biting simultaneously. They have been known to reduce a bird to bones in a few hours. Unfortunately, the cula did not start biting me until I was back in our room. They had gotten all the way up to my head, and were spread all over the floor. David helped pick them off me and I spent the next several hours feeling the lasting sting of their bites.

The second night in Loomal, I was determined to not have to go out in the middle of the night and thus reduce my chances of cula problems. You can imagine my surprise when I was jolted awake by David saying that cula were on him. That meant they were in the bed. David grabbed his flashlight and found that thousands of cula had entered the room at a ground level hole on the wall. They were swarming over our clothing on a chair in the corner. We were able to spray some bug spray around the legs of the bed to keep them from climbing up, and by morning, they were almost all gone. Our colleagues, who had their bedrolls on the ground did get bit a few times, but were able to shake the ants off and get away. The wife spent the remainder of the night in a folding chair and the husband slept on a long, wooden bench.

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This past weekend we helped out at a medical clinic outreach in a village deep in the Guinean countryside.  During the course of the clinic, we saw 92 patients.  Diagnoses ranged from the minor (heartburn) to the serious (heart murmur) to the critical (kidney failure).  We saw people of all ages from infants to a man 90 years old.  Billlie helped out mainly by registering the patients as they arrived.  David helped by showing the Jesus Film to people as they waited and by selling Scripture and health literature at the registration table.  Every person who came through the clinic was prayed for and received an audio cassette of Scripture before they left.  In the next few blogs, we will be sharing some of our experiences from the clinic.

This past week, a colleague and I went on an outreach to a village market.  We loaded up our backpacks with Scriptures and other literature and drove approximately two hours into the Guinean countryside.  There we came to a village where they were having a weekly market.

We prayed, got out of the car, and headed toward the market.  As we approached we saw some women dressed in the telltale head-to-toe covering of the most fundamental sect of Islam.  Fortunately, most women were not dressed this way.

We began calling out in Pular, “God’s Books, God’s Books!  Buy God’s Books!”  A crowd quickly gathered around us, and the people began looking to see what we had for sale.  We were carrying translations of Genesis and Matthew.  We also had Scripture calendars and some health books.

Almost immediately, people began buying Scriptures.  My colleague and I split up to cover more ground.  In places, a crowd gathered around me, a few people would buy some literature, and the crowd would gradually disperse.  Then, I moved on to another spot, and the same thing happened again.  It seems that people attract more people.  The people also seemed vaguely amused to see white people, dressed in African clothes, selling Holy Books and speaking Pular.  Some even asked if I was Arab.

As the day wore on, we sold more and more literature.  Eventually, it was time for us to head back home.  We had a quick meal of rice and peanut sauce at a lunch counter and headed back to the truck.

Some people ask why we sell Scripture in markets here instead of giving it away.  Quite simply, by asking a price for the books, we show that we are selling something valuable.  We know God’s Word is more valuable than anything else in the market.  Of course, we sell it for less than we paid for it.  We are not trying to make a profit, only to keep the books from ending up crumpled on the ground.  If people pay for something, however little, they are more likely to value it and read it.

Two days ago, while waiting outside a store, I struck up a conversation with the young man sitting on the bench next to me.  After some small talk, I asked him if he prayed.  That is a common question here to find out if someone takes their Islamic religion seriously.  It is also a good way to start a spiritual conversation.

The young man, “Sal,” responded in the affirmative.  He said that he does pray, and that he had studied the Qur’an.  I asked him if he could understand what he was saying when he prayed, since Muslims are required to pray in Arabic, and he said no.  He had simply memorized the words to the prayers and repeated them from memory.

He asked me if I pray.  Knowing he was wondering if I was a Muslim, I answered “yes, I do pray” but was quick to emphasize that I am a follower of Jesus, the Messiah.  To this he replied, “Does he live in your neighborhood?”

I answered, “No, I mean Jesus the Messiah who is written about in the Gospel.”  Our discussion continued on, and two days later I was able to bring him a copy of the Gospel to see for himself.

Pray for Sal, and the others that I met there that day, that they will come to know Jesus, the Messiah for themselves.

December 26 was David’s 30th birthday. We planned to get together with our colleagues at 8 p.m. for cake, cookies, prayer, and worship. At 7:30, after the buffet was set and the cookies were just coming out of the oven, a co-worker called to cancel. They had already baked a birthday cake for David when they remembered it was the first night of a country-wide 8 p.m. curfew. The wife quickly brought the cake to us, returning to her own home minutes before eight o’clock.

Just a few minutes after 8, gunfire could be heard all around our home. David quickly ran in from the office, bringing the computer with him. We turned on our two way radios so we could be in contact with our colleagues, turned off all our solar lights so we wouldn’t draw unnecessary attention to our home, locked all the outside doors and retreated to our bedroom on the back side of the house, the furthest room from the street. We prayed that a stray bullet wouldn’t hit us, our car, or our solar panels.

As we waited for the gunfire to stop, we watched a recently borrowed movie. About half way through, an extremely loud bang came from the office building that sits just beside our bedroom. “What was that?” I asked. David paused the movie, turned, with wide eyes and said, “I don’t know, and I’m not going to look.”

At about 11 p.m. the shooting stopped and David was able to go to the office to call his mom for a birthday chat. He opened the office door and saw that a stray bullet had come through the tin roof and landed beside his office chair.

It was later reported that soldiers were firing into the air to both to honor the late president, and to celebrate the fact that the new president is a military man.

We were thankful there was no serious damage to anyone or anything, and we were able to reschedule David’s party for the next day.

Today, we are living in a changed country.  This past Tuesday, the announcement came that the president of Guinea had died.  That very day, a military faction launched a coup in order to topple the government.  They took over the radio and television broadcasts announcing that the constitution was suspended and the current government dissolved.  For a day or so, the outcome seemed uncertain, with the government denying the success of the coup, but eventually, the government leaders were forced to concede defeat.  And so, today, Guinea is a changed country.  The old government is dead and we must wait to see what the future will reveal.

Personally, we feel safe for now.  Living seven hours from the capital has its advantages.  In our city so far, life goes on.  We haven’t gone out much, but when we have, we haven’t seen many signs of change.  Shops are open, people are buying and selling, people are going about their daily lives.  We appreciate your prayers during this uncertain time.

Last week, we finished formatting the 2009 Scripture Calendars and sent them to the printer in Conakry.  We expect them to be finished soon and ready for distribution.  This year we are printing 4755 total calendars.  One calendar is in the Susu language, another in Maninka, another in Pular, and the last includes both French and English.  These calendars will be used by over nineteen missions and/or missionary families throughout Guinea as a means of sharing the Gospel.  If each calendar touches ten lives, which is certainly possible if it is hanging in a prominent place in a family home, then these calendars could impact up to 50,000 lives!  The theme for the 2009 calendar is God’s Law and Justification by Faith.  The first ten months each deal with one of the Ten Commandments.  The last two months are drawn from Romans 3, and explain the purpose of God’s Law (to reveal our sinfulness and need for a Savior) and God’s provision of righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ.  The calendars include artwork for each month illustrating the teaching of the verse.  Please pray that there would be no problems with the printing of these calendars.  Pray that God would use them greatly to share the Gospel with thousands of people throughout Guinea.