Do. The. Next. Thing.

That’s what our day has been like.  We are preparing for a two-week trip into the interior of the county, and we leave tomorrow!  So I’ve been packing and washing clothes and shopping for sheet fabric and making what I’ll call “sleeping bag sheets” out of them and cutting up a pillow to make two smaller camping pillows.  Jay has been gathering funds and doing logistics necessities for our trip and for new colleagues arriving soon.  We’ve made sure our tents are in good shape and that they have rain guards and packed some coffee in plastic bags.   And somewhere in there, we had a Lingala language lesson.

Tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m. on our 28^th wedding anniversary, we’ll hop into a taxi with a young driver that we often use and head to the airport.  On the way, we’ll tell Cedrique some more of the Creation to Christ story that I’ve been sharing with him little by little as I’ve learned it in Lingala.  Also on the way, we’ll stop and pick up a local pastor who is traveling with us and who will help us with these trainings.  When we arrive in the city of Mbandaka, we have the joy and privilege of staying with two new missionary friends who invited us to stay in their home during our first training in the city. 

After Jay preaches at a local church on Sunday, we’ll start a “Tell His Story” training at the beginning of the week with a pastor from Mbandaka.  These trainings are some of our favorite things to do because it always brings such joy to people’s hearts to find that they can begin to have regular meaningful conversations with friends and family around stories from God’s Word.

The second part of our trip takes us on a 1 ½ day journey by motorized pirogue to another small town up the river.  I just love living life for Jesus; it’s always an adventure! There, we’ll conduct another oral evangelism training with church leaders in their town.  After that’s over, we motor back down the river (this time taking only one day since we ride with current) and catch a plane back to Kinshasa. 

How can you pray?

• Please pray for our taximan, Cedrique to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• Pray for safety and no unnecessary delays throughout the journey.
• Pray for prepared hearts of participants at both trainings.
• Pray for ordinary people to catch the vision to “tell His story, tell it often, and tell it well.” 
• Pray that we will be a blessing to our new friends that we’ll be staying with, even as they have already been such a blessing to us.
• Pray for good health during this time.  We’re taking our malaria prophylaxis, and we have a cure just in case, but we’d love to come home without having to use it.
• Pray for that sometimes-difficult missionary task of eating what you’re served.  As we head up the river, we don’t know what to expect as we’ve never been to the forest of DRC before.  But we know that the God we serve expects us to be gracious guests.

Praying friends, thank you so much for your participation in our journey and ministry.  We can’t do this without you!