Dearest Friends,
REJOICE!
To are great delight, God delivered our bags to us yesterday afternoon. This is was an incredible miracle! When we arrived, the airport was filled with stacks and stacks of bags that were late arrivaling. A large room was filled with more bags that they had not yet delivered. It appeared that it had become the norm for no ones bags to arrive with them. We were told that they were unsure when the six bags would arrive and they had no plans on how they would deliver them to us. We are hours away from the airport, in a country that has very little gas. Things did not look good.
Immediately we began to pray and asked God what we should do. We visited the airline offices in downtown Kathamadu and meet with the manger. We made other phones, but mostly we prayed. We waited for the next flight, hoping that are missing bags would be on it. For the next five hours we sat in a parking lot and slept and talked and prayed.
We were thrilled when we found out that all of our bags were waiting on us! They had arrived on the afternoon flight. Praise God! These ten suitcases are full of gifts for a Christmas outreach and supplies for training our friends in Nepal in telling children about Jesus. We also have 29 soccer balls which will unlock the doors to 29 schools so we can tell the children about Jesus. We have chalk and balloons and puppet customs. We have 125 children’s coats that will be used to d an outreach in a very remote village where most of the homes were destroyed by the earthquake. Many children lost their parents and their friends in this disaster. We also have money with us to provide rice for the families who are suffering greatly. The government has yet to bring any aid to this village. We see this as a great opportunity for these people to discover God’s love for them. We had no clothes in these bags, but it’s contents were far more precious.
THE JOURNEY
It is a good thing that both Heather and I can appreciate a good adventure because we had a hard time getting to Chitwan last night. We were very late leaving Kathmadu because of the baggage problem, so we were driving on mountain roads in the night. Sometimes I think it is good you can’t see what is waiting for you over the edge of the cliff. No matter what happened, we both kept smiling. Twice we ran out of gas and we had to stop in the middle of no where. There is no gas available in this country right now because of the dispute between the countries of India and Nepal. We saw trucks and buses lined up in Kathmadu that had been waiting for fuel for days. We had to get here because we have promises to kept to the children. Twice we saw God sent new friends to rescue us by offering us gas. An old friend also came to our rescue, providing us enough gas to arrive to Chitwan at about 11 last night.
Yesterday was a good reminder of how dependent we are upon God. We could do nothing about our bags or the gas situation, but God took care of everything. These trips are a constant reminder to me that every day of my life, whether I see it or not, God is taking care of the details. We need you to keep praying about the details of this trip. There is a serve gas shortage in this country which is only beginning and is expected to get much worse. Our friends have been diligently stock piling gas so that they would had enough for us to do these shows. Tika Rambaral and his friends have sacrificed greatly to get us the supplies that we will need. Heather and I expect this to be a great and glorious adventure. Please stand with us in pray.
In Jesus,
Linda and Heather