Today is a rest day, and after ministering six days straight, and ten days total here in Uganda with only one day out as a sick day, I am quite grateful for a day off. As I write, there is a massive storm raging – one crash of thunder in particular sounded like the lightening strike was almost on top of us.

As I have already shared, this week I have been ministering at a youth conference. The theme was End Times (not a favourite topic of mine, as there is so much garbage taught in relation to it) and I was just one of a number of speakers. That is always a challenge, as you don’t know what the others have said and whether they have cut across what you have been saying. So I have talked about things that are not “end times” but tied in loosely with the theme. On Monday I shared my testimony, on Tuesday I spoke from 2Peter 1:5-8, Wednesday and Thursday on prophecy, and yesterday I talked about growing in God, and shared some of my experiences. At the end I urged them to make a decision that, no matter what the Lord may ask of them, their answer will always be Yes. I invited those who were prepared to make that commitment to stand in their places and to pray after me, then I prayed a general prayer over them (time did not allow for me to pray for them individually.) The anointing that came over me as I prayed for them was so overwhelming that I was hardly able to remain standing, and I am sure that for at least some of them it would have been a life-changing moment.

On Thursday I was ministering in the morning – all the other days I was on in the afternoon – and we were able to stay and listen to the next speaker. To be honest, I was not at all impressed with his preaching – more “Praise the Lord”s and “Hallelujah”s than anything of substance. But at the end, five people came out for salvation and I had to repent of my judgement of him. It reminded me of a time, back in the 1980s, when I went to a Billy Graham meeting in Sydney. I remember being likewise unimpressed with him, and thinking “If I were not already a Christian, nothing in this message would convince me to become one.” I guess I just don’t “get” evangelists!

Meanwhile, I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the arrangements here. When I am doing a missions trip I like, if at all possible, to stay in the homes of our pastors. This gives me an opportunity to get to know them and their family, and to develop the relationship. This Apostolic Network is not meant to be just an organization, but to be a family where relationships are developed and nurtured. Normally, this works quite well. But here, even though I am staying in the pastor’s home, it feels like I am in a hotel. I’m pretty sure his family don’t like me, and possibly are resentful of my being here. Not that they are nasty or mean to me: they simply treat me like a guest at a hotel rather than like a visitor to their home. There is no conversation other than to tell me that meals are ready, and if I try to start a conversation they quickly brush it away and leave. I am served all my meals by myself, and if I go out into the lounge room and someone else is there, they immediately get up and leave. So I spend all my time in my room, because I don’t want to feel that I have chased them out of the lounge. Yes, I do spend a lot of time in the Word and prayer, which is necessary for the intense level of ministry that I am doing, but a bit of human interaction as well would be nice. Meanwhile, the pastor himself has been away all week, and has not communicated with me at all.

On a different issue, I have been trying to find out what I need to do to get my visas for Ghana and Liberia. Pastor Mac in Liberia is chasing the information for that one for me, but for the Ghana one it looks as if I am going to have to visit the Ghana Embassy here in Kampala. I will keep you posted on how that one pans out.

As well as recording the details of my trip, I am hoping through this blog to give you a bit of an idea what life in Africa is like. So for this post I am just offering a few random observations.

NOISE:

Africa is noisy. Life goes on at high volume. About 5.30 in the morning the local mosque starts wailing (I know this because I am usually up at 5 for my morning prayer time.) People start going about their business (and making noise doing it) before the sun comes up. Some churches have early morning services, which of course are broadcast out into the community. Market stall holders spruik their wares, sometimes using a recorded message playing on endless loop to save their voices (but not the ears of the hearers.) Someone has their favourite playlist running continually. Television sets run all day, even when nobody is in the room. (This baffles me. I have seen some of the TV programs offered here, when I was not able to avoid them, and they are even worse than some of the rubbish we have on telly at home. Why anyone would want to pump that garbage into the atmosphere of their home is beyond me.) People talk loudly on their phones in even the most public of places. (Just as in Australia. I have never been able to understand how people can have the most personal and private of conversations in public – such as on a crowded train – then complain of invasion of privacy if a security camera happens to catch them as they walk down the street.)

And the noise doesn’t stop at night. There appears to be no regulations about noise control after certain hour – or if such laws exist, they are totally ignored (just like the road rules.) People can be still hammering and banging at midnight. Roosters whose internal clock is waaay off assert their authority over their harem in the wee small hours. Guard dogs go off in a fury of barking at the slightest provocation. It’s annoying if you are trying to sleep, yet at the same time strangely comforting: life is going on all around.

Strangely, one area where there is not noise is on the road. Of course there are the engine sounds of everything from boda-bodas to tuk-tuks to massive trucks, generally greatly overloaded. But there is not the frantic blaring of horns that is the soundtrack of roads in Asia. There is  none of the aggressive blasts (“Get out of my way!” and “You’re an idiot!”) heard in Australia. At most there is a gentle toot (“Watch out, I’m passing” and “Thank you for letting me pass”).

Land:

I had seen this sign last time I was here, and was curious about it. The sign actually appears multiple times in different places around this block. This time I commented to my driver that I would love to know the story behind it. He pointed out that it is a very big block (I would guestimate 1 to 1.5 acres) and told me that when the original owner died, instead of willing it to be split between his family he willed to to the whole family to be held in common. If it is ever to be sold, it has to be by a decision of the whole family made together. No one member can sell it, or even part of it. The sign is to prevent anyone in the family from trying to sell without the agreement of the rest of the family (obviously a few family trust issues happening here.) I had assumed something similar, but I thought that maybe someone who had no claim on the land at all had tried to sell it. I have heard of this being done in Africa, and actually being carried through so that the real owner has had to battle the unwitting buyer in court.

Livestock:

Unlike Australia, there are no laws about where you can keep animals, or what you can keep (or again, if such laws exist they are totally ignored.) In Australia, in the house where I lived before I moved into the caravan, even with a very large yard, I would have been able to keep a maximum of five chickens or ducks, and absolutely no roosters or any other form of “farm” animal. Here virtually everyone has chickens and roosters, sometimes ducks or geese. Anyone with more than a pocket handkerchief of land has other livestock as well. Goats rule along every roadside, and it’s not unusual to have to wait for a recalcitrant cow to move her backside before you can proceed down the road.

Pets, on the other hand, are rare. Dogs and cats are working animals: cats to keep the mouse population down, and dogs to guard the compounds. (As I have mentioned before, security is a major issue here. All but the poorest of houses are in locked compounds surrounded by high walls, generally topped with nails, barbed wire, or broken glass.) The idea that a dog or cat would be kept just as a companion animal is simply not on their radar.

Today was my second session at the youth conference here in Kampala. The young man from David’s church who has been interpreting for me has also been my driver, picking me up to go to the meetings and dropping me back to David’s afterwards. Today he was supposed to be here at 2, but didn’t arrive till after 2.30. African time, I thought.

But no, when he arrived he apologized and said that the car had a problem and had been with a mechanic, who took longer than promised. No worries, we still had plenty of time. Then we got half way up the hill from David’s house and the car stalled. It was out of fuel. (The road is much steeper, and in much worse condition, than it looks in this picture.)

He reversed to the bottom of the hill, a task that demonstrated admirable driving skills. The next step was to get fuel. This meant phoning back to the church (which took several attempts to get through), getting someone to go to the bank and draw out some money, then that guy had to come to where we were to pick up the jerry can. A young local boy was co-opted to ride pillion carrying the jerry can as they went to get the fuel and come back.

My driver was getting a little anxious, but I couldn’t help smiling. The devil was obviously trying to run interference, which told me that God had something good planned.

When we finally were able to move, we got part way up the hill, and were stuck behind another car which was obviously having trouble. He stopped and started, stopped and started, and finally stopped right in the narrowest part where only one vehicle could fit. I almost laughed out loud. “Really, Devil?” I thought. “Is this the best you’ve got?”

Finally the other driver was able to reverse to a slightly wider section of road, leaving us room to barely scrape past. After a stop at a service station to fill up, we arrived just before the end of the worship. I preached under the anointing and the altar call saw another soul brought into the Kingdom of God. Hallelujah!

My interpreter/driver is an impressive young man with a great heart for God and an obvious apostolic call on his life. On the way back he shared that he was quite offended that nobody there had offered me water, either yesterday or today – particularly today as toward the end of my message I was having to clear my throat a few times. He ended up asking them for water for me, and actually offered them money to buy it, which shamed them into saying no, they would get it. To me it was a minor detail, but to him it was obviously very important.

I wonder what God has in store for tomorrow.

The conference I am speaking at this week turns out to be a youth conference. As I will be here for five days, I felt that it would be a good thing for them to know a little of my background, so yesterday I began the week by sharing my testimony.

Unfortunately I misunderstood what I was told about the program. I thought I was being given two hours to preach, and whilst I knew I wouldn’t take that long I thought that would give me liberty to expand a bit and then do an altar call. Wrong! The whole program was two hours, and when I reached one hour my interpreter whispered that we needed to wind up. Oooops! I had covered the salvation aspect of my testimony, but would have liked to also share some of what God has done in my life in the 49 years since. And no opportunity for an altar call. I will be much more careful of my timing for the rest of the week.

I did have prophetic words for a couple of people, one of whom was a little girl of about six or seven, who was part of the praise and worship team. This kid could dance! but she wasn’t just dancing, she was worshipping. The Holy Spirit was all over her. I would not normally prophesy over a child that young, but this just had to be spoken – God is anointing her as an intercessor and worshipper, and as she grows in Him that anointing will grow, and she will be used to release others into intercession and worship. What I didn’t say is that she is called as a prophet – I won’t release that to a child, because it is too easy for them to run with wrong ideas, but if I get a chance I will share it with the pastor and urge him to make sure that she has mature prophetic ministries around her to mentor her.

This conference runs through till Friday. I don’t know if I will be doing anything on Saturday, but I will be preaching at David’s church on Sunday. Next week we are going up to the north of Uganda. It was going to be travel on Monday (all day), minister Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, then travel back on Friday, but now that has changed to travel Thursday, minister Friday, Saturday and Sunday, travel back on Monday. One of the things I find challenging here is the speed at which things can change, and the lack of communication and notice of what is happening. For instance, it was yesterday morning before I actually knew what I was doing yesterday. I praise God for Normie Styles, the pastor under whom I served my “ministry apprenticeship” all those years ago, who was prone as I walked into church on a Sunday morning to say, “You’re preaching today, Lynn!” He trained me to be “instant in season, out of season” – something I most definitely need here in Africa.

The last few days have been a bit of a roller coaster. The first two nights of the conference in Iganga were great. I preached under a strong anointing, and the people responded well.

On the Friday night the Lord had led me to preach on the fire of God, and afterwards to pray for everyone. I really felt that the Holy Spirit wanted to move in power and do something very special.

When we arrived at the church it was to find that the power was off in the whole area, and some of the guys had gone off to find a generator. So we sat under the mango tree and waited. Now, sitting under a mango tree is very pleasant – but not when you really want to be in the meeting, worshipping the Lord and preparing for Him to move.

Finally the meeting got started, about an hour late. Obviously many of the people had heard about the blackout and thought that the meeting would be cancelled, as the congregation was about half the size of the previous nights. By the time I got up to speak I was feeling very tired (it was only late afternoon, so there was no apparent reason for this) and I struggled through the message. No spectacular move of God that I had hoped for. I prayed for everyone, and by faith believe that they received, but again nothing spectacular.

Yesterday I woke up feeling incredibly tired and aching all over. We were travelling back from Iganga to Kampala, where I was supposed to speak yesterday when we arrived, and this morning. First we went back to the Iganga church for breakfast and a presentation of a gift from the church – yet another new dress. Then it was the drive back, which with traffic jams stretched out to about five hours. By now I was feeling positively wretched – not only tired and achy, but feeling like I was either going to pass out or throw up, or both. There is no way I was going to be ok to even go to the meeting, much less speak at it. I hated to disappoint them, but I begged out and went to bed  for what remained of the afternoon.

This morning I was ok, so I assumed that it was just some passing bug. But we had a healing meeting at home last night, and Linda told me today that they had prayed for me, so I’m sure that helped greatly.

I spoke at the morning service at Pastor David’s church today. The anointing was back and I know the Lord was speaking to hearts. At the end I gave an altar call for salvation. At first nobody responded, but then a young man came out with a friend who was obviously encouraging him. Another precious soul out of the kingdom of darkness and into the Kingdom of Light. Praise the Lord! I have spent many years telling people I am not an evangelist, but that doesn’t change the thrill of seeing someone come to the Lord.

Two things here I find rather discomforting: the first is being constantly referred to as Apostle Lynn. Yes, I know my calling as an apostle and prophet, and have functioned in those offices for many years, but I’m still not totally comfortable with the word “apostle” being used as a title rather than a job description, at lease when it applies to me (but I have no problem referring to others as “Apostle So-and-so”). Maybe it’s just one of those “Just get over it, Lynnie” things. The second is the custom of those, particularly women, who want to honour someone kneeling before them. I’m nobody special, nobody should be kneeling to me. I know it’s part of their culture, but it makes me very uncomfortable.

Next week we were supposed to be going over to the western part of Uganda, but when we looked at the costs involved it was just beyond the budget. I have a small amount I can put in each fortnight toward on-ground expenses (basically what is left of my pension after I pay my  tithe at home and pay my bills) but the cost for this would have well exceeded that amount. So instead I am going to be speaking every day at a week-long conference here in Kampala.

My first three days here in Uganda are in Iganga. This was one of the towns I came to on my first trip to Uganda, back in 2010. At that time Pastor David was running a school here. The building was very rough and far from the building standard, so the local authorities stepped in and tore it down. They have since changed the location of the school to a nearby village where they have been able to get enough land to have gardens and livestock to help feed the children.

These are some of the children in the original school at Iganga. Of course, they would all be young men and women now.

Iganga is a large town (population around 54,000) in the eastern region of Uganda. Typically African, it has heaps of markets along the road, and (sadly) also piles of rubbish at the roadside. The roads themselves, even those that are sealed, are in appallingly bad condition, and are heavily congested.

The church where I am ministering is on the same site as the old school, and is not in much better shape than the school was. They are in the process of raising a new building, but finance is limited so progress is slow. At the moment it stands about five bricks high.

I am speaking at a three-day conference, again primarily to pastors and leaders. I so love that I get to do this! The responses for the first two days have been great, and I am believing for the Holy Spirit to do something really special here tomorrow.

The spiritual atmosphere here in Uganda is quite oppressive, and I have been under some heavy attack, but I am holding on to my victory in Christ. The attack just tells me that God has something good planned.

You all know I love Africa (I’ve said it often enough) and I love missions in general. Nonetheless, missions work does have its challenges. Most of them I have learned to cope with.

I can cope with squatty toilets – I still don’t really like them, but I figure they are good leg strengthening exercise  (I could be paying to go to the gym to do squats.) In any case, I have encountered far fewer squatties on this trip than on previous ones.

I can cope with appallingly bad roads and kamakaze, take-no-prisoners driving habits.

I can cope with the heat, though I will most certainly grab a fan and/or air cond if it is available.

I can cope with whatever kind of accommodation may be on offer.

But African time (“It’ll happen when it happens” “hakuna matata” – yes, that is a real Swahili phrase, meaning “No Worries”, just like in the film) – African time drives me crazy.

Now I freely admit that I am an “on time” person. It was drilled in to me as a kid that unless there was an extremely good excuse, to be late was just plain bad manners. As a result, I am not obsessively early, I am simply obsessively not late, which usually translates into my being early.

But here, time seems to have very little meaning. If they say something is happening at 9am, take that as meaning “any time after 9am, but not very soon after.” Meanwhile, I’m ready and waiting, fancifully hoping that maybe this time 9am will actually mean 9am. So I wait. And wait. And play far too much Mahjong on my phone. And fret about the productive things I could be doing in this time.

Another challenge that I find particularly difficult is language. I did try to learn a bit of Swahili before I came, but the last six months or so at home were so busy that it got pushed aside, and I have forgotten most of the little that I did learn. In any case, it would only have been useful in Kenya and one or two other countries. The people here, naturally enough, speak in their own language, even those who speak in English. Even Adams, whose English is excellent, told me that he has to translate from his own language as he is speaking. I but for me, sitting in a group with conversations going on around me but not being able to understand a word, is beyond frustrating. Even worse is when it is obvious that they are making plans for me, but forget that I can’t understand what they are saying and fail to let me in on the plans. The other side of that is that communicating what I want can be a major challenge, as they misunderstand what I am asking.

Today I had another frustration, this one unique to Uganda (at least I hope it is.) When I went to go on Facebook last night I received a “site not secure” message, and it refused to load. I tried numerous times, with the same result. I thought someone must have hacked Facebook. When I still couldn’t get on there this morning, I messaged our KOGMI Pastors WhatsApp group to ask if anyone else was having problems. Adams came back to me and told me that the Ugandan government had blocked Facebook, and even though in theory the block had been lifted it has still not been restored. The answer was to get a VPN. I tried the one he recommended, but it would only load to my phone, not to my laptop – and I don’t do Facebook on my phone. Tried a couple of others. They either didn’t work at all, or didn’t work in Uganda. I’ve given up. I’ve contacted my Associate Minister, Linda, and thrown her the responsibility of handling all our KOGMI stuff on Facebook, and asked her to let everyone know that I won’t be on the site for the next month. I have to say I’m pretty ticked off with the Ugandan government!

In spite of all the frustrations, I still love this calling. I know that I am exactly where God wants me to be, doing exactly what He wants me to do, and that overrules every frustration that life or the enemy can throw at me.

I was supposed to be leaving Kitale to go to Uganda on Monday, but Pastor David in Uganda called to say that they were having some problems with the car, so could we come on Tuesday instead, so Monday became a day off. This was a blessing, as our King of Glory Ministries board meeting was being held back in Australia, and through the wonder of a WhatsApp video call I was able to join in. It was soooo good to be able to see the girls and be part of what is happening back home. (I love WhatsApp. People had been telling me about it for years and saying I should get it, but I had resisted not thinking that it would be any use. I was wrong. This amazing little app allows me to keep in contact, no matter where I am.)

One of the items from the board meeting was the acceptance of four new affiliated pastors into our Apostolic Network, two from Kenya, one from Tanzania and our first one from Ivory Coast. The acceptance of new affiliates involves quite a bit of paperwork – their details have to be entered into both our database and our prayer list of affiliated pastors; they (and their referees, if they have agreed to it) have to be entered into our mailing list; they have to be listed on our “Meet Our Pastors” page on our web site; if they are on WhatsApp they have to be added to our KOGMI Pastors chat group; a Certificate of Affiliation has to be created for them; and they have to be notified by email (remembering to attach the Certificate.) Doing all that for our four new pastors took me around four hours.

On Tuesday it was time to leave Kitale, and Adams’ home, for now. I will be back in three months time, for the last two weeks of April before returning home.

The compound where Adams lives would be roughly equivalent to two large suburban blocks at home. Like most homes in Kenya, it is surrounded by high fences and a high, locked gate. Security is a major issue here. Within the compound are Adams’ house, a small hut where his father lives (by choice), pens for cows and several other sheds. The house is home to Adams, Mary and their three children, as well as several other helpers and assorted guests, and one small and very cute cat. The yard houses three cows (there were nine, but Adams recently had to give six of them as a much-belated dowry for Mary), several sheep, one goat (that was supposed to be Christmas dinner, but was rescued by the kids), numerous chickens and a few dogs.

The last few days have been very busy for Adams and Mary, as all the kids are moving to new schools – Judah into high school, Abbie into junior secondary, and Marcie to a new high school. Both Judah and Abbie will be going to boarding schools, which for reasons I don’t quite understand is a normal thing here. Everything is dependent upon exam results – those who do well are offered places in the best schools, whilst those who don’t do so well have to hunt for a school that will accept them. Fortunately both Judah and Abbie did very well, so had their choice of schools.

With all that finally sorted, we left Kitale at 11am to drive to the Ugandan border. A fairly easy drive, until we were within around 20kms of the border. Then we encountered the line up of trucks waiting to be processed, taking up the whole of the outward lane and forcing other traffic in both directions to use the single lane heading back into Kenya. There were a few hairy moments as we dodged trucks and busses coming back from Uganda, whose drivers were not happy about sharing their lane.

As we approached the border I was a little apprehensive, as the crossing last time was an extremely unpleasant experience, but this time there was none of that drama. We arrived at the border around 2, and were through by 2.30. Then we found a cafe to have lunch and wait for David to meet us. We waited. And waited. Mary and Abbie went of window shopping. I played a lot of Mahjong on my phone. Finally Pastor David arrived around 6, having been further delayed by the car problems. It was then a further two hour drive to Iganga, where I will be ministering for the next three days. The people from the church insisted that we go there first, as they had prepared a welcome meal for us, but because of our being delayed many of them had gone home before we arrived. I had to disappoint them by telling them that I don’t eat at night, only breakfast and lunch, but David and his wife were hungry as they had not had lunch, so they made short work of the meal.

I think I have shared before on this blog that my normal sermon preparation is to ask God, “Father, what do You want to say to Your people this time?”, and then simply listen to what He says. At home I usually ask that question immediately after I have preached, in preparation for the next time. Sometimes He answers straight away, giving me a theme or a verse, or occasionally dropping a full message into my spirit. At other times I get to Saturday night and I still don’t have the message for Sunday morning, and I’m saying, “God! You’re driving me to chocolate! What do You want to say to Your people?”

Increasingly since I have been in Africa, I have nothing till the last moment, and then just a theme or dot points. Sometimes the Lord will lead me to use a message I have preached somewhere else, but even then because I don’t have notes it never comes out the same way twice. (Some people at home think I just have an amazing memory, that I have notes but memorize them so I can preach without notes. But, no, I just don’t have notes … not any. Teaching is different – when I am teaching my seminars or courses, because these are designed to be repeated and I want to have at least some measure of consistency across repeats, for these I use notes. But when I am preaching all I have is what the Holy Spirit gives me.)

Because of all this, I was a little surprised yesterday. Knowing that I was going to be preaching this morning, I asked the Lord my usual question and immediately He gave me not one but two themes, similar but not the same. I was sitting here praying about how the two might flow together, when Adams came in (around 4pm) and told me that I would be taking two sessions this morning, not just the one. I had to laugh. I wasn’t ready for that one, but God was.

So this morning I was preaching at Connect Chapel, one of the outreach churches from East Gate Chapel, where Adams is the pastor. My first message was on loving the Lord with all our heart, soul and strength. It was anointed, and I could tell it was getting through to people, but there was no spectacular outcome. I gave an altar call for salvation, but there was no response, which didn’t surprise me as I assumed that everyone there was born again.

That was followed by a time of worship during which I personally felt a heavy anointing of the Spirit. I knew He was about to do something good.

My second message was about idols: how anything we put ahead of God is an idol, anything we look to in place of God is an idol, anything that gets in the way of our relationship with God is an idol. The Lord had already told me ahead of time that at the end of the message I was to lead the people in a prayer asking the Holy Spirit to reveal any idols in our lives, and then to give an altar call for repentance – and that I was to be the first person on that altar call.

So I delivered the message, led the prayer, announced the altar call and told the people what I was doing, then went and knelt in front of the congregation.

I expected to hear others coming out to join me. Nothing. I waited some minutes. Nothing. Not a sound. I thought, “This was a total failure.” But when I stood up, I realized that every person in the room was bowed forward in their seat, obviously in prayer, and there was a tangible spirit of repentance across the room. There was a holy silence, and the manifest presence of God was so heavy that I hardly dared to breathe, lest I disturb it. I moved quickly and quietly to my seat and continued to pray.

I don’t know why people didn’t come to  the front. Maybe they didn’t understand what I was asking. Or maybe that presence of God that made me not want to breathe made them not want to move, or not able to. Regardless, the Holy Spirit was doing His thing, and I believe that lives were being changed.

One of the great cries of my heart to the Lord since the start of this  trip, and even before, has been that His tangible presence would be manifest in my meetings. This morning I saw the beginning of the answer to that prayer.

All I can say is, Wow!

I realized yesterday that I made an error in my last post. Bishop Edward was not at Kisumu, but at Muhoroni, which is about 60kms from Kisumu. Our affiliated pastor at Kisumu was Pastor Geoffrey, also one of our first affiliates, who is now in Canada. I think the confusion came about because I first met the pastor I was ministering with this week, Pastor Henry, at one of Bishop Edward’s conferences.

I have had a few very easy days. Thursday was a rest day, for which I was grateful after two days of heavy ministry and long drives. I received a lovely blessing in the middle of the day – Apostle John Lamb, my dear friend and prayer partner from back home, video called me on WhatsApp so that I could briefly join in the Heart Focus outdoor prayer meeting. (Australia is 8 hours ahead of us here in Kenya.) It was so nice to see some familiar faces and hear Aussie accents! God is moving in revival power in John’s church, and I wish there was some way I could be here and there at the same time. That call made it possible, just for a few minutes.

Yesterday I had only a 4pm cell group meeting, so again it was a quiet day. I took advantage of it to sort out some of my ongoing connections. On Tuesday I will be going on to Uganda, but that is easy. I already have my visa, and Adams will drive me over the border to meet with Pastor David on the Uganda side. I will be in Uganda for a month, and then go on to Burundi. Again that is fairly easy – the visa can be obtained at the border (something that is becoming increasingly rare, with more and more countries opting of online applications) and I have already booked my flight. After that, it gets messy. My next stop after Burundi is the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R. Congo) which has incredibly complex visa requirements, plus the web site is in French. Fortunately our pastor there, Bishop Kyaba, is sorting through all that for me. The second challenge with D .R. Congo is how to get from there to my next destination, Benin. Bishop Kyaba is in the east of the country, and the main international airport is in Kinshasa, right over in the west – around 2,200kms away. There is a local airline, but they have very limited services and their web site doesn’t even list any flights at the beginning of March, when I will be making the trip, so it was impossible for me to even see if there could be a connection. I have been periodically tearing my hair out over this for weeks, and yesterday I just gave up and found a different option. This involves travelling back to Bujumbura (in Burundi) and flying from there to Kigali (Rwanda) and then on to Benin. Even this was not simple – there was a flight direct from Bujumbura to Kigali, about 40 minutes, but the connection was too tight, so I had to book one that goes via Nairobi, around 7 hours including the time at Nairobi airport. Can’t wait till “Philip’s Taxi Service” (Acts 8:39-40) kicks in and I don’t have to worry about flight connections!

Today was another rest day, so apart from seeking the Lord for the message for tomorrow, I have been getting creative with graphics. At home our monthly healing meeting at Yinnar is coming up next Saturday, so I created a button to share on Facebook and a leaflet to be printed and distributed to promote that. Then I decided to create a new Facebook header, something which I have been meaning to do for months because the old one had some outdated information (Churchill post office, where our PO Box is, moved last October. Their new location has fewer boxes, and as a result our box number was changed. Rather annoying, given that the reason I have a PO Box is so that I won’t have to change my address if I move.) So I spent quite some time playing with it to produce something that I think looks reasonable.