Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Pray... for Email

The last couple weeks, we've wanted to ask you to pray for the situation with our only way to communicate with the outside world - email. Our email system fouled up field wide and we were unable to send emails (though we were able to receive them) since Nov 2nd. So while we needed prayer for this, we were unable to ask until now.

You might not think email is such a big deal, but when you live in the middle of the jungle with no phones, no internet, and no cell phone service, email becomes essential for day to day ministry and meting out of logistics. Supplies, flights, and other communication related to church development and translation, as well as keeping in touch with our friends, family and supporters back home... we do it all on email. We're thanking God that even though our IT guys were unable to fix the problem (though they were indeed putting double time hours into fixing it) the problem finally went away on it's own. Nobody knows what happened or if it could happen again. We regularly have problems like this, though on a much smaller scale.

While we're thankful for the fix, the problem has highlighted once again just how helpful it would be to somehow be able to have an internet connection out here in the bush. Satellite internet has been on our 'list' for some time, but remains prohibitively expensive at $5000 initial setup and $400 a month for service subscription. God knows our needs and what is best. Whether he intends for us to keep things the way they are, with a somewhat reliable email system, or to upgrade, we trust his perfect provision and plan. Would you join us in just lifting up this need (reliable communication) and let's just see how God answers.

Another note... One other thing that we were unable to report during our email outage was the result of the last fundraising garage sale. The garage sale managed to raise an astonishing $3400! No joke! Wow, God really pulled out all the stops on that one! What a huge blessing that is as it helps us take care of ministry expenses as we continue to serve here in Mibu. Thank you so much to everyone who donated items to be sold, helped transport items to the sale location, helped set up and price the items and then sell them over the weekend! Really, you're help made a difference! Late as it is now, we wanted to send a big huge thanks to all of you who helped make it happen.