Coming Saturday July 12th!

Do you remember that we had begun Bible storytelling with a group of HIV+ patients who are members of a support group? They're part of a group known as ''People Living With AIDS'' or PLWA. Well, we've been reorganizing our storytelling group since our return from Ghana and having baby Tess. A new group will begin meeting this coming Saturday! Eight people signed up in June and we're going to try to meet every-other Saturday. To make it easier on them, we'll plan to serve a little meal before everyone heads home.

Please be praying for this group. One of the original members will be joining us, and this is a mix of about 2/3 Muslim and 1/3 Christian. We'll furnish you some names once we see who attends. But pray now for their hearts and their homes touched by this awful illness. Thanks!

Our Lopsided Bible

Monday morning's chronological Bible storytelling session with SALIFOU went well. We were in Exodus 19 & 20 and taking a good look at the ''decalogue,'' aka the 10 Commandments. Thank you for praying because it became a good lesson on the foundation of the whole Old Testament, or Alliance as we call it in French. Read Ex. 19:3-6 and you'll see what we're talking about.

The Bible is, admittedly, ''lopsided.'' A good three-fourths of the content talks about the old covenant formed with ancient Israel and how they were incapable of fulfilling their part of the covenant agreement, i.e. obeying the law. In a nutshell that's the story of the Old Testament: God chooses Abraham and forms a chosen people, gives them the Law through Moses, and Exodus through Malachi shows how they messed up royally.

So I was trying to help Salifou, Kassoum, and San-San see something very important for people with virtually no Bible background: if three-fourths of the Bible talks about the old covenant, what's this last part in the back, the ''new testament,'' for anyway?

Pray for us as we meet again Wednesday morning, about 5 am Missouri time. Thanks!

It's July 1st! Happy Canada Day, to our Canadian friends up north!

Bible storytelling with Salifou continues to move forward. Since we meet outdoors the rain poses a problem some days. But yesterday we listened to the parting of the Red Sea. It might surprise you how many people living in Ivory Coast have never actually seen the coast, nor the ocean. Nevertheless, this most famous of miracles from the Old Testament is still pretty impressive when people hear it for the first time.

We're moving toward the 10 Commandments, of course, and the importance of God's covenant with a (dis)obedient people. Please pray that our Muslim listeners will begin seeing that human effort to be good can only take us so far. Pray they understand that salvation is free and it's only found in the spotless Lamb of God.

Attending Monday 10 am June 30th was Salifou, Kassoum, Stephan, and a new guy named San-San. He's Lobi, a people group up north who is Muslim-background. He was very interested and wants to attend the next session. Lord willing we'll meet Thursday July 3 at 10 am GMT.

On a personal note, this past Sunday, June 29th, was a big day for me (Damon). It was my 30th ''rebirthday.'' (You would have never guessed I was ''thirty-something'' huh!) The day gave me a chance to tell the kids how I became a Christian, why and how I was baptized at Gasconade Christian Service Camp, and how the Lord has been so faithful. It also made me think of people who had such a big impact on my life: Mom and Dad, Crocker Presbyterian Church, Gary & Linda Squires, my best friend Little Gary who took me to the Christian Church, Mac & Reva McMillan, Charlie Worstell, and others. What John 1:16 says, ''From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another,'' seemed especially true on Sunday as I thanked God for the significance of 6/29/78. It's part of my personal story of what Jesus did for me, and part of why I'm here in Africa.

Thank you for helping us tell the Old, Old Story of Jesus and his love!

Learning To Be Still. (yeah right)

Oops

On Friday afternoon after doing some yard work with Daddy, Kate broke her upper left arm (humerus for all you medical people). After having some juice to cool off, Daddy swung her up on his shoulder and somehow, swinging her back down, her arm snapped. At the moment we're trying to take care of it here at our clinic but we're checking with some orthopedists in the US just to be sure we're doing the right thing.

We'd appreciate prayer for her healing and that she'll stay still enough for it to heal in the first place. Since she's been feeling better the past few days, and getting up and around, she's already fallen on it twice. We're trying to follow her everywhere, but boy that girl is quick AND stubborn. Ü

Devouring God's Word

Bear with me for a minute while I tell you something strange, before telling you something more important about our current work.

They're devouring God's Word. Unfortunately I'm talking about the roaches. Yes, ROACHES. We recently spent seven weeks away in Ghana, as you know, for the birth of baby Tess. One thing that always happens in our absence is the dreaded invasion of the roaches. They sort of have the run of the place when we're gone and we have to do some major exterminating when we come home. Actually it's more like hand-to-hand combat, but those are stories better told over dinner.

Anyhow, this time the roaches were literally gnawing away at two of our Bibles left behind. One is my French Bible I do essentially all my mission work with. They managed to buff the edges down quite a bit so that I can now open my Bible to the New Testament just by feeling around the edge. The second Bible was a keepsake copy of the Psalms I found for Juli. It's like an old grade school primer, black cover, large print, just the Psalms in old King James. The roaches really enjoyed it! They removed all the black faux leather on the cover except for one patch that, if I hold it just so, looks a lot like the shape of Greece.

People we know here are likewise hungry for God's Word. Juli mentioned that our storytelling sessions with Salifou have resumed. Salifou (SALLY-foo) runs the car wash, as you recall, and I go there several times a week to do a story. We have completed the book of Genesis and the patriarchal age. This morning we cracked the pages of Exodus and began the story of Moses. (We've moved the study time from the afternoons to the morning, so if you're praying that's about 5 am Missouri time :-)

Please pray for these guys. Salifou's wife just gave birth to their fifth child and hasn't been feeling well since. Vandals also came the other night and stole the spigot for his car wash along with the good buckets, and broke the rest of the things. It was pure meanness, whoever it was.
The next day the city came by to collect their monthly payment for his ''business license.'' Still, Salifou is absorbing the stories and seems encouraged by their message.

Kassoum is his young car wash guy. He's 18, appers to be pretty industrious, and at times catches things in the story that Salifou plainly misses. They tease him, because that's what you do when there's a ''kid'' around. Pray that he finds something really life changing in the sessions.

Diarra (JAR-uh) is our other regular participant. He's actually from Abidjan and came to Abengourou to visit his sister who lives about 200 yards up the hill. He came for a few weeks and has never left! He's about my age, knows the Koran quite a bit, and a knows a whole lot about a whole lot of things (politics, geography, history). Because he's out of work, I wonder why he's come to Abengourou ''for such a time as this,'' as the book of Esther says. Can God possibly have him right there on the wooden bench day after day just so he can hear the Good News of salvation before it's too late? I think so!

Ishmael is semi-regular. He's a student, studying computers, and likes to talk a lot. The first time he came I secretly hoped he wouldn't come back. But he's calmed down, maybe that he was able to impress me with his knowledge. He prays, meaning that as Muslim he fairly regularly observes the prayer times during the day. He also knows these early stories from their overlap with the Koran. But Ishmael also has a good dose of myth and superstition thrown in with some of the stories, things that the Bible would never say. We don't debate the details, but try to stick to the main point of the story.

Pray for us, please, while we keep moving forward in the weeks ahead with these guys. We'll let you know about some of our other possible sites soon so you can be praying for our selection of new storytelling groups. THANKS for your time--and prayers--today!

Back to Reality

We made it back to Abengourou on May 27th, the day after our 17th wedding anniversary and the day before Austin's 15th birthday. We ended up staying in Accra a little longer than planned to wait for Tess's passport and Certificate of Registered Birth Abroad from the US Embassy, making our total time away, almost 7 weeks.(We had only planned on 5) Needless to say we were glad to be back home, settled in one place, and to have more than 5 changes to clothing to pick from.

Damon jumped right back into the swing of life here by meeting with the leaders from several of the churches and holding storytelling sessions with Salifou at the car wash. He has visited several Djoula families and a few of those who were attending the storytelling sessions from the HIV support group. It appears that they aren't interested in continuing the sessions just yet because they are all very busy. It's hard to know if they really are just too busy or if they aren't interested. Damon is going to keep visiting them and try to resume the group. He'd also like to establish another one or two in the next few weeks. Pray that God will show him where to do this.

The kids and I jumped right back into school, trying to make up for the extra time we lost when we were "stuck" in Burkina and "stuck" in Ghana. I've even suspended working at the clinic this month to really try to cram in those last few days so we can be DONE with the 2007-2008 school year and I can have enough time to prepare for the 2008-2009 school year before it starts in August.

The kids are all doing great. Tess is growing like a weed and continues to delight us all.

For those who come to this blog wanting in depth updates on the work, I'm really sorry that you aren't finding it. The problem is that I'm the computer person in the family and Damon is the one doing the "mission" work (for the most part). He has every intention of updating the blog with real ministry information but he's often busy or out of the house until late in the evening and we often have visitors then. When he finally gets a minute to himself, not being a computer person, the last thing he thinks about doing is sitting in front of a computer. Therefore, for the most part, you're stuck with me and the things I know most about, and that's family news, with a little ministry thrown in here and there.

Hope you're not too disappointed. Ü