A Journey Completed (almost) and Another One Starting

It was a moment to pause briefly and thank God, December 14, 2017—the final submission of Obedience marking the near-completion of our goal to develop and publish six modules of Biblical values curriculum on three age levels.  We began this journey of contextualizing a Values Curriculum for East Africa 4½ years ago.  As always, one never knows what will be involved in a journey, but God has been faithful through all of the computer glitches, electrical outages, machinery breakdowns or malfunctioning equipment, offset printers doing a poor job or not completing the job or making a fatal blunder or learning that our printing job has been padlocked inside the printer’s office due to non-payment of rent (and the landlord has the only key) or learning that the printer ran out of money because he lowered the quote to get the job without doing all the required math—all part of the process of identifying reliable printers, learning the ropes of publishing and adjusting to such realities as no built-in quality control, volunteers transitioning to other jobs and careers, protection in flooded roads and massive traffic jams with some caused by political unrest, being stretched about where the money would come from to publish and then being amazed at how God provides, being stretched even further when the reality set in that quick assurances that storage would not be a problem proved incorrect but once again seeing God work it out, and who would have ever guessed the number of meetings involved with consultants and test teachers and leadership and more consultants and on it goes. Although not all is off the press and into storage yet, our printer (an exceptionally reliable one!) is aiming toward everything being delivered before Christmas…a much-appreciated Christmas gift!

On that very same day, the 14^th of December, we were also celebrating the marriage of one of our staff members, Esther. She introduced us to her husband-to-be about a month ago—an owner and Head Teacher (Principal) of a Primary School who also loves the Lord. He seemed fairly quiet and reserved but wow, he certainly came alive as he and his wife danced to the front of the reception hall! We couldn’t help but think of the journey they begin…without knowing what they may encounter in the days and months and year ahead, but also confident that God will be faithful. We pray there will be people to stand with them and support them through the ups and downs…just as you have stood with us through prayer and encouragement as we’ve traveled this journey here. Thank you so much and celebrate with us the completion.