In July, we were blessed with the opportunity to teach at a five-day English camp in a nearby town.  Each day we taught three different levels of students, beginner, intermediate, and advanced.  Billie taught vocabulary, and I taught comprehension.  The students also studied grammar, dialogue, and numbers.  Perhaps the most important component, however, was the daily memory verse and Bible lesson.  Throughout the week, the students memorized Psalm 23 and learned Bible stories from the life of King David.  On at least two occasions, they heard the entire Gospel message of Jesus Christ and what he did for them.  Students who successfully memorized the entire 23rd Psalm received a New Testament at the end of the week.  The final day of the week, I shared my personal testimony and the Gospel message with the students.  We ask you to pray that the Gospel would bear fruit in the lives of these students.  Pray for the missionaries in their town who will continue to share the Gospel with them.  Here are some photos from the week.

In less than two weeks, we will be landing in Guinea, Africa.  Our time in the U.S. is drawing to a close, and it is time to return to work in Guinea.  We are so excited to be going back to the land where God has called us to serve.  At the same time, it is sad to think that we will be saying goodbye to our beloved family and friends here.  Please keep us in prayer in the coming days as we finish storing, shipping, and packing in preparation for our departure.  Pray for safety on June 20 in particular as we fly to Guinea with our twin daughters, Amelie and Annika on our laps.  It will be a long journey for such little ones.  We will be in the air for a total of about sixteen hours with another twelve or so spent in airports or traveling to or from airports.

The past few weeks have been a flurry of activity.  One praise is that we were able to get a fantastic price on our plane tickets.  Another, is that we were able to ship more items to Guinea.  We will be especially thankful for a solar fridge and freezer that we were able to ship over.  Here are some other things we took for shipment recently.

Another big praise is that we will not be traveling alone.  Billie’s great friend and college roommate, Lisa, will be accompanying us.  Here presence will be a great help as we attempt to navigate airports and endure long hours in the airplane with two little ones.  She will also have the opportunity to get an idea of what we do in Guinea as we settle back into life there.  She will be with us about two weeks.  Please keep her in prayer as well.  Here is a picture of her.

In January, we placed an order for $1800 worth of Arabic Script Pular New Testaments.  Other missionaries placed orders as well so that many could be printed at once.  Since then, the New Testaments have been printed in South Korea and are currently being shipped to Guinea.  These New Testaments will be a valuable tool to share the Gospel.  The Pular language can be written with two different writing systems.  We have had the New Testament in Pular written in Roman script since about 2007.  Now, the New Testament will be available in Arabic script as well.  There are many people who could not or would not read the Roman script who will be able to read the Arabic script.  Here are some pictures of God’s Word for the Fulbe people written so that they can read and understand it:

This past week our sending church held its annual missions conference.  On Sunday morning, we had a baby dedication for Amelie and Annika to commit to raise them in the teachings of Christ.

In the evening service, the church prayed over us and commissioned us for our second term of service in Guinea.

You can’t see us in the picture above, but we are kneeling in front of all the people gathered around us.  We would appreciate your prayers as well as we return to Guinea for another term.

For a PDF version of both front and back, click this link:

Prayer Card

While on a recent trip to Guinea, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Bah’s twin daughters.  They were born the month before our twins.

We have had a busy few months transitioning back to life in the U.S.  We have been enjoying time with family and friends, church services in English, and our favorite foods.  We have marveled at the many changes that have taken place in our home town and in the U.S. over the past few years.

Since our return, we have also had several opportunities to share about our ministry.  We have shared at our home church, a men’s breakfast, an elementary school chapel, a Bible college chapel, Awana at our home church and another church, and at an orientation for new candidates at our mission agency headquarters.  Just yesterday, we returned from a two week trip to New Jersey where we spoke at six churches.

During the last week in New Jersey, I flew to our mission agency headquarters in Orlando to spend the week interacting with new candidates for the mission field.  During that time, I found one person who is interested in joining our team in Guinea.  We are so excited at the prospect of a new teammate!

This coming Saturday, we will be off again to Tennessee and Georgia to share at a few more churches.  We have several more trips planned for this year that should take us to many other places including Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and California.  We will also be sharing at several churches in Ohio.

Please keep us in prayer as we travel heavily and speak at churches during these next few months.  Pray that we would find more members to join our team in Guinea.  Pray that we would be able to raise the necessary funds to return to Guinea on schedule next year.

One thing I love about working in the village is traipsing to the outhouse by the light of the moon in the middle of the night. (No, not really.) The first night we were in Loomal for the medical clinic, I went to the outhouse and accidentally walked through a swarm of cula (chew-la), also known as African driver ants. These ants travel in great swarms, up to 20 million strong. They like to swarm over something or someone and all begin biting simultaneously. They have been known to reduce a bird to bones in a few hours. Unfortunately, the cula did not start biting me until I was back in our room. They had gotten all the way up to my head, and were spread all over the floor. David helped pick them off me and I spent the next several hours feeling the lasting sting of their bites.

The second night in Loomal, I was determined to not have to go out in the middle of the night and thus reduce my chances of cula problems. You can imagine my surprise when I was jolted awake by David saying that cula were on him. That meant they were in the bed. David grabbed his flashlight and found that thousands of cula had entered the room at a ground level hole on the wall. They were swarming over our clothing on a chair in the corner. We were able to spray some bug spray around the legs of the bed to keep them from climbing up, and by morning, they were almost all gone. Our colleagues, who had their bedrolls on the ground did get bit a few times, but were able to shake the ants off and get away. The wife spent the remainder of the night in a folding chair and the husband slept on a long, wooden bench.