Pilgrimage on the Backroads ... continued 3

No, Not More Bad News! - During the week at Siriat, we had worked out a way to configure a borrowed modem that would work with our computer so that we could at least download email and check on our family on Facebook, hungering for news about Marcus’ condition. Shona had written a long detailed email of the what happened, apparently dictated by Marcus, recounting the story of the accident and the events that followed and God’s obvious protective and provisional hand in it all. How sweet it was to get that message! What an answer to so many prayers! Nearly all of our children wrote something in the thread of messages that followed and all of this was so precious to us. Now all of that was locked in the dead computer.

But we managed to get Nancy’s computer online long enough to download some messages that evening. One message, titled ‘little issue’, caught my eye immediately. It was almost as if I was expecting some more bad news. Our teammate, Caleb Beck wrote in part, ‘It looks like someone may have broken into your house [in Rwanda] and stole at least one computer...’ My mind raced over the possible implications of this ... investigations, police reports, assessing what had been taken. We had not been home in over two months ... we knew so little. Immediately, we and our friends were in prayer about all that we did not know and could not do anything about.



Later that evening we heard from another teammate, Chris, who had spent hours that day working with Vicent, our guard, changing a door-lock and assessing what had happened. As it turned out, Vicent, a student who was working on his major senior project, had been working on a borrowed laptop until late at night, then went to bed in his separate quarters. The burglar/s had come in and apparently only taken the equipment Vicent had been working on. Nothing else in the house had been disturbed. It was a very mysterious incident and the first time this has happened at our house in Rwanda. While we knew Vicent would greatly disappointed at the loss of his research project, we were relieved that it was not a greater loss than it was.

It had been a stressful, tiring week; one in which we felt the Lord has tested us and the devil had tried to discourage and/or to distract us from the mission at hand. I began to think we must be threatening Satan a little for him to be lining such an array of worrying and distracting events in an attempt to keep us off balance. Mustapha and our Kenyan friends were such an encouragement to us and we were able to sweep the worries away and resolved to remain focused on the mission.

On to Lake Victoria Our hosts at the Siriat Bible School, Joseph and Christine Bett, were so gracious and generous to us. They provided ample meals for us and while the prevailing diet and lack of indoor plumbing was something we had not experienced for a while, the hospitality and warmth of their home was so much appreciated. On Friday morning we said our goodbyes and Joseph accompanied us to Kericho where he helped us find a connecting minibus on to Kisumu 70 miles further on the east shore of Lake Victoria. Dino met us at the central bus station and took us on to the Dew Church Drive Hotel that our host, Jared Odhiambo, had reserved for us. The hotel room was small and dark, but it was clean and air-conditioned. Overall it was a restful weekend that included a tour the Ringroad Church and orphan day school and clinic, a visit to the shore of Lake Victoria and a couple of nice meals out on the town of Kisumu. On Sunday we worshipped with the Ringroad church before packing onto another matatu shuttle for the two-hour ride to Rongo in South Nyanza Province.