Flat Tire and Prayer!

This past Tuesday, Cameron and I were headed back on the long drive from the capital of Namibia.  We were coming back from taking Matthew to the airport to go home.  The trip had been pretty much uneventful until we were one and a half hours away from home.  This is when the day changed a bit for us.  We got a flat tire.  Getting a flat tire back home is bad enough, but being in the middle of nowhere in Namibia is something different.

Luckily it is still not hot here yet, and we blew out right in front of a nice shade tree.  I thought I had all the tools to change the tire, but unfortunately we were missing the wrench needed to remove the spare from under the van.  So we tried to flag people down, yes, in the middle of nowhere in Namibia. 

This is where the prayer part comes in.  Cameron and I are standing out waiting for what few cars come by and it is getting dark soon.  Driving in Namibia is not safe at night, and being outside in the dark stranded is even worse.  So I made the comment to Cameron, "Buddy I don't know what we are going to do if no one stops to help."  Cameron without hesitation said "Dad I know what to do.  We need to pray for God to get someone to stop."  I immediately agreed and we prayed for God to let someone stop that could help. 

So we then went back to trying to flag people down, and still no one. Then Cameron said, "Dad I remember the story in the Bible where they prayed for a boy three times and he came back to life, so maybe we should do that."  I said that sounded good, so I prayed once more and Cameron prayed.  Within the next five minutes a guy stopped to help.  We got the tire changed, but the spare was flat! What a day.  He then said, that last week he bought a brand new pump.  He said when he bought it he really did not know why he was buying it, but it was on sale and he figured it would come in handy.  Well, God knew why he was buying the pump, because he knew the man would be helping us out yesterday.

I was very proud of my son and his genuine faith in our God.  Cameron has always had such a huge faith in God, and yesterday he was doing what was natural, he trusted in God when a problem arose.  We can learn a lot from a six year old in the middle of the desert and on the side of the road with a flat tire.

Successful Hunt

Last Tuesday I took Matthew, our short term missionary, on a hunting trip for Kudu.  It was not a successful day then, so I took him back out again early this morning and he got a very nice Kudu Bull.  He enjoyed the experience of wild game hunting in Africa, and for the next two months we will enjoy the free meat from the Kudu.

Below are pictures of the big kill.

Taking it to The Streets (Update)

In May I had written about how God was leading me to change our youth meetings from meeting in the church to meeting outside in the down town area of Grootfontein.  Well I wanted to give a quick update to how this is going.

When we started in May we had around 15 youth that were consistently coming each week.  Well this past week we had the most youth there since beginning this change.  We had 33 youth to show up this past Saturday afternoon.  Praise the Lord!  Many of these new people are thanks to our faithful youth who are passionate about Christ, and passionate about their friends knowing the amazing man named Jesus! 

Thanks to God ,another church in our area, and one of our supporters in New York we were able to get 100 Bibles to hand out to the youth that we are working with.  This past Saturday we were able to give out Bibles to all of the kids at the youth meeting, and to see there faces when they got to have their very own Bible was amazing. 

If you do not know about our "Taking it to the Streets Ministry", we basically have our weekly youth meeting outside in the town area.  We meet under a big tree that is in front of the Town Hall building.  Lots of people walk through this area on Saturday's and it is amazing to see the people that stops and listen to what we are talking about, but even more amazing to see our youth spot a friend walking by and go grab them and get them to sit and listen to our Bible study!  And that is what this ministry is all about.  Taking Jesus where the people are, and to the people that need his forgiveness from their sins!  I play my guitar and we have a time of praise and worship and follow it up by Bible study.

I am now taking the kids through the basics of systematic theology.  Helping them to learn how we got the Bible, who is this God the Bible talks about, and so much more.  Last week after talking for nearly an hour, when I finished one girl came up and asked me why we didn't the Bible study last longer, that one hour was not enough and she wanted more!  Praise the Lord for the desire He has placed on the hearts of these kids here!

Here are some pictures from this past weeks Bible study.

World Cup and Jesus

About two months ago, while staying over in Windhoek, I met the Namibia Campus Crusade For Christ missionary leader. He and his family are from the UK and great people. He told me that he had a group of 17 Namibian College students coming to the north to do ministry work. So we opened all of the floor space we had in our home and hosted them for an overnight stay.

It was great getting to know these students, how God had changed their lives and saved them from a life of sin. Last night I had them come to our church to give testimonies, lead in worship and share about their ministry to the north. 180 of the youth that I work with each week showed up for the event and it was great. The worship was wonderful and God exalting. They even had three guys who have written a lot of Christian rap.

They then showed an excellent video that highlighted seven football (soccer) players that were in the FIFA World Cup here in Africa and how the Lord changed their lives and how they use their talents in playing football for God's glory.

We then finished the night by watching the World Cup Championship in our church via my video projector, through an old color t.v., and on a bed sheet we tacked up in the front of the church. The youth thought that was the best thing in the world. For one, most do not have t.v.'s to watch the game, but to see it so big made it all the better.



Here are a few pictures from the event.

9th Wedding Anniversary

This past July 7th was mine and Kristen's 9 year wedding anniversary. She is a wonderful, and godly wife to whom I dearly love and cherish. Not many women in the world would be so willing to follow God's call to take and uproot a family of 5 and move 9000 miles from home to a foreign land. But my wife has done that.

She is such an integral part of my life and to my ministry here in Namibia. She is also a wonderful gift of God to me and to our three children. And we all love her very much and thank God for her each day.

We never have had much of a chance for fancy anniversaries as we have always been far from family to keep kids, and then the one year when we had family close by, she was battling cancer. So this year I had a special little getaway planned just for her. She had no clue about the plans, and yesterday morning I told her to pack her bags for the night. She asked where we were going, but it was all a big secret.

I took her to a very nice farm that is a 30 minutes drive, mostly on dirt roads, to a great guest farm nestled in the valley of the Otavi mountain region of Namibia. We went horse back riding, took a long stroll through the African bush, and had a wonderful candle lit dinner at the farm. It was quite cool last night, but the farm house had a nice fire going for us in the lounge area and we enjoyed time together and even played some card games. But it was a wonderful, quite, and peaceful time away from kids, and ministry just to focus on each other.

Below are some pictures of our little getaway.

Brian's Garden

Many of you know that I (Brian) worked on a produce farm last year while waiting to get our work permits. Well one thing that I brought with me to Namibia was my love for nature and gardening. When all the kids were on break during the month of May during my free time I made a garden.

I planted broccoli, cabbages, okra, spinach, swiss chard and carrots. Well, God has blessed my toil and our harvest is starting to come in. We have lots of delicious spinach and swiss chard coming in, the Okra will take another month, but is growing strong, and the broccoli is finally in.

Here are some pictures of farmer Brian and his prized broccoli crown!

Traditional Namibian Meal

Tonight we went over to a house where four of my youth live. They wanted Matthew to see how they live, and how they cook, and what they eat most of the time.

Matthew built the fire and was then boiling water.

  Matthew and Suama mixing in the maize to make porridge. This is what a majority of the people in our area eat every day.

                                                    The water is ready for the maize mixture.

           
The family had some sugar cane plants in their back yard. So I got my first lesson in how to chew on the cane sticks. Was nice and sweet, but really hard to chew.

Two of my youth, Josh and Peter.  Their teeth are a lot stronger than mine are!

The picture is hazy from the smoke, and it was night time. The large pot in the back is being warmed for the nights
bathing water.

Corbin liked the sugar cane also and gave it a go and chewing.

Finally after a couple of hours the porridge was ready to stir.  Matt had some trouble with the stirring!

Cameron and Hannah hanging out by the fire before we ate.

Pictures of Cameron's Birthday

This link takes you to more pictures of Cameron's birthday party festivities.

Pictures

Cameron's 6th B-Day

OK so I am late getting this on the Blog, but man have we been busy with youth the last few weeks!  But this is a good thing.  Anyway, we celebrated the 6th anniversary of the birth of our Cameron.  His birthday was June 15th and we all enjoyed his special day.

It was quite different from his last 5 birthdays in many ways! For one, this was his first B-day in Namibia. Secondly, we normally have a pool party for him, but here in Namibia, it is winter time. So no pool party! Actually it was only 44 degrees in our house when we woke up on his B-day due to the cold weather and no heat in the house!


We had some of his friends over to enjoy some of his new toys that his grandparents gave to him, had some balloon fights, and lots of chocolate cake and ice cream.

It was a great day, and we are proud of our big boy and love him lots!

Short Term Missionary

Some of you that read our blog may already know that this summer, or winter for us, Matthew Paisley is here in Namibia working with us in our ministry. Matthew got here on May 31st and is living with us and working along side Brian and the youth.

The youth have really enjoyed his being here and it is making a huge impression on the youth as well. Matthew will soon be preparing and leading some of the Bible studies in the girls hostel, my high school Bible study ministry as well as our teaching in the park on Saturdays. So please pray for him as God has laid this opportunity before him this summer.

Matthew is also praying about entering seminary once he is finished with his undergraduate at NCSU in Raleigh, NC.

One of the girls here had fun giving him a Namibia hair style this past week and we have enjoyed teaching the kids in the location area the fun game of Ultimate Frisbee.

Attached are a few pictures of Matt, his new hair looks and our friends in the soccer park in the location area here in Grootfontein. Also, my bread baking is getting better. I made some more sour dough bread today and boy does it smell and taste good.

"Matthews Namibia style corn row hair.  Suama, one of the girls in my youth group, worked on this for a few hours the other day as we watched South Africa and Mexico play in the World Cup opening game."




"As I posted a few weeks ago, I have taken on bread baking.  This is my batch of sour dough bread getting ready to hit the oven."

"This is what Matt's hair looked like after taking the corn rows out."

"These are some of the youth that we were playing Ultimate Frisbee with at the location soccer field.  Notice that the soccer field is all dirt! Makes for a lot of fun sliding and some good strawberries on the knees when you fall, but we all had a great time.  We had many people watching and trying to figure out what we were doing.  Many laughing at us in good fun. Cameron made a friend as well, as you can see them in the bottom right of the picture."

"This is what my bread looked like after baking.  Boy was it good!"

Back to Work!

Wow, it has been a few weeks since I have given an update on things here in Namibia, and I feel bad for that. Two weeks ago Kristen's brother and his wife came over to spend a week with us. It was a great time and great to have some familiar faces, and especially family, with us.

We were able to show them around town, and show them where we minister at here in Namibia. We also got to take them to Etosha Game Reserve. This was a lot of fun. For the first time in our three visits we were able to get up close to elephants. They were all over the place. We even got as close as 25 feet from a male eating from a tree next to the path. This is quite rare, but it was great to see. And no charges at us this time as the male was all by himself and seemed more interested in his food than he was of us.

We then took them back to the airport to see them off. It was sad, but we were glad they came for the time they did. We then stayed in the Capital of Windhoek for a week as we waited for one of my youth from back in the states to come over.

Matthew Paisley arrived May 30th, but his bags did not. So we stayed an extra night to get those, which was good. The poor guy had not slept in over 24 hours and needed the rest. We then got up the next day and made the long trip back home. Matt is doing well and adjusting to the weather, time and culture. The youth here are really excited that he is here and so I am. It will be good to have him assisting me with the youth and sharing some of his experiences with them on how life is back in the US as a christian.

That then leads us to the "back to work" part of the update. The kids here have been on a school holiday for the past 5 weeks, which means almost all of my youth were gone north to the villages. I really enjoyed the slower pace for those five weeks and got to spend a lot of time with the Lord, and with my family. Now the kids are back and this past week we got things back into full swing. The kids were excited to see me and I was really excited to see them as well.

So that is the update for the last three weeks. Please keep our family in your prayers as we continue to minister here in Namibia with the youth and seek God's daily guidance on how to best minister to and with them for the glory of God alone!

God Bless!