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 October 28, 2008 Newsletter #70 from the Moores.
see also previous newsletters
Dear Family and Friends,
“Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.” Elizabeth Elliot
Greetings from Guinea! This letter is a testimony to the faithfulness of God and it will show you how important your prayers are!
First an update on Had. Her children are still in Conakry. The family has decided to keep them here for now. Her son (AB) is staying with one of his step-grandmothers. He has been enrolled in a regular school this year. Even though he is almost fifteen he is only in seventh grade because of the two years they put him in a Koranic school. The boy’s uncle brought him to see us. Since he knows where we live now he sometimes sneaks away from the house to come see his “papa and mama” as he calls us. The last time he came he told Tom that he was going to replace his father who was a faithful Christian until he died! (We wrote about his father in our last newsletter.) He wants to become a Christian but doesn’t understand everything yet. We prayed with him and Tom told him that the next time he came he would show him how to pray to Jesus. Please pray for AB that God’s spirit will move in his heart and lead him to an understanding of who Jesus really is. Had’s daughter was taken to live with an aunt. This aunt is the most fanatical Islamic one of them all! We feel that she took the girl (RA) mostly to spite Had! Had was trying to make arrangement to go give her sympathies to the sisters of AOS (the kid’s father). But she only got to talk to the oldest sister by phone. She had not called but someone passed the phone to the lady. This sister proceeded to tell Had that her children would NEVER be like her! This paternal aunt is determined to have RA go to an Islamic school and she wants her to start wearing a veil all the time! So far RA has refused but we don’t have contact with her right now so we don’t know what has happened in the past few weeks. The family has not agreed to let Had see her kids yet. (She only got to see them immediately after the funeral of their father. They were so happy to see each other!) Pray that God works a miracle in this situation. The youngest brother of AOS (we’ll call him BAS) said that he would come to read the Bible with Tom. He came one night and as usual Tom read John chapter one with him. “In the beginning was the Word…” Tom used the same Bible he had used with his older brother (AOS) years ago. Then he prayed with BAS. BAS took the New Testament Tom gave him and said he would come back. It pleased him that Tom read to him from the same Bible he had used with his older brother. Please pray for BAS that God will reveal the TRUTH to him!
October 7 th was our 36 th wedding anniversary.We spent the day in an eight hour meeting with the executive committee of the national church. How we thank God for these three men! Pastor Joseph Camara is the president and he has risen to the challenge of leading the national church! Decisions are being made and accountability is being called for! God is purifying His church! Satan is not happy with this either. Last week Pastor Joseph was on his motorcycle waiting at an intersection to make a turn. Another motorcyclist came up behind him at full speed. We don’t know how it happened but the other guy hit the back of Pastor Joseph’s motorcycle hard! Pastor Joseph was thrown to the ground and the motorcycle fell on top of his chest! He so easily could have been killed but God spared his life! The guy who hit him was hurt pretty bad and his bike was ruined. It was in pieces on the road. Pastor Joseph’s bike had a bent handle bar and one light cover in the back was broken. When they went to the hospital for x-rays Pastor Joseph was told that nothing was wrong with him! That is a miracle! Pray for him as he is still having pain in his chest. He was bruised pretty badly.
During the meeting we received a call from Had. She was crying. She said that her older sister had just died that morning! (This is the older sister who tried to hurt her and kill her when she first became a Christian!) If you remember, the sister started going blind after about a year of persecuting Had. She went to a neighboring country for treatment. After a year she came back. Her health kept going downhill. Had felt bad because as she stated; “My sister died with all of her sins! All the bad things she had done to me – she never asked for forgiveness!” The family had taken the body to their home village and Had wanted to go tell the family how sorry she was for the death of her sister. (Her brother-in-law never treated her badly. He said he wasn’t pleased she was a Christian but he didn’t look at her in any different way. So she felt obliged to go tell him how sorry she was her sister had died.) We were worried because all her uncles, who have persecuted her in so many ways, would be in the village. She told us that she was going up early in the morning and would return the same day. She was not going to stay in the village. (But God worked a miracle and she wants us to share it with you. She feels that this is a direct result of your prayers!) Her mother cried and cried when she saw Had. She asked where she had been and why she hadn’t come to see her. She talked a long time with her mother. She explained that it was because of all the things her uncles and the family had done against her, trying to hurt her that she didn’t come around. She shook the hand of every one of her uncles! Some even commented that she looked good and she told them that God was taking care of her! One asked her when she was coming back to Islam and she stated that she would never return to Islam! She told an older sister and one of her uncles that she was praying for them. They were alarmed and told her not to pray for them! They didn’t want the prayers of an infidel! But she was so encouraged that they even talked to her. She told us, “You see, God is starting to work in their hearts!! Keep praying for them please and ask everyone to keep praying for them!”
We are spending quite a bit of time in Kamsar right now . Kamsar is where we can get better materials for the MOVE building project coming up in January. When we stay in Conakry for five day or a week we go back to Kamsar for a week to ten days. Tom has to make trips down to Boffa (the town where the church will be built) several times a week to take supplies to them. Satan is not happy about this building project! And he has been working overtime trying to cause problems! There have been interpersonal problems between people working on the project! On one trip we had a blow out and then the next morning a second tire was flat! There have been numerous mechanical problems with the car that keep happening again and again. (Tom takes very good care of our Land Rover so this is really unusual!) Then just last night we got a call from the young men who live in the mission compound in Conakry. They said that the house had caught fire and it was burning in the kitchen area! Tom left immediately to return to Conakry. It would take him four hours at least to get there! We began to pray and called some others to pray asking God to divinely intervene and not let the house burn down! Fear started welling up inside of me. As we prayed I sensed God speaking to my spirit saying, “Do you trust Me? If you do, leave it to me!” (God has been teaching me so many lessons lately about trusting Him. When there are family situations we are concerned about and things that arise with our aging parents we have to trust and believe because there is nothing we can do about it out here! That means that we have to “let go and let Him” take care of things and TRUST! When we do this peace comes.)
This is what happened with the house . When the regular electricity came on at 6:30PM a wire on the outside of the house got hot. (Who knows why? Electricity can come on strong sometimes and sometimes it is very weak. It varies nightly!) The wire caught on fire and the flames went over the wall into the kitchen where the breaker box is. It started melting the top of the box. When this happened the breaker switch flipped off literally saving the electrical appliances in the house because two wires then touched and sparkes flew out! As Tom was leaving (he had our electrician with him in the car) he had told the guards in the yard to break through the wall in the front of the house (as they didn’t have a key with them) and make a hole so someone could go inside to put the fire out. All the glass windows were closed except the living room window which we leave about six inches open so the cat can go in and out. Since this window was open the smoke started going outside and this is what caught the attention of the guys in the yard! They worked hard to break through the wall and finally had a space big enough for a person to go through. As soon as they broke through the wall thick black smoke began billowing out through the hole! An electrician who lives in our neighborhood (a genuine electrician who works for the electric company) was called and he cut the wires on the outside of the house but the flames kept shooting out in the kitchen. Several of the guys in the yard got sand and held their breath as they went through the smoke into the kitchen. They tried throwing sand on the flames to quench them. Within an hour after they called us the fire was out! Praise God! Here is the miracle that happened. The breaker box was in the left corner of the kitchen. Just under the box and slightly to the right was afour tier plastic vegetable cart. It melted completely! (When Tom got there he said you would never know the cart had even existed!) Not even eight inches to the right of the cart are our pressed wood kitchen cabinets. They never caught fire! Just to the left of the cart was a small wooden table next to a small gas stove. Under the wooden table was a big gas bottle and two little ones! If the fire had reached them they would have exploded – but they didn’t! The table got some burn marks on it but that was all. There are so many “ifs”! We had closed all the glass windows as usual when we leave the house. If they had been open the wind could have caused the fire to burn quicker and it could have mounted to the ceiling. If that had happened it would have swiftly gone through the whole house! But God didn’t allow that to happen either! So we thank God for His divine intervention in saving the house! It will take a while for the smoke smell to leave the house and to clean everything but no one was hurt and the house was saved! Thank you for your prayers! As you pray for us and the work of the Lord here you never know how God will intervene and resolve problems. What satan had intended for bad God, who is greater, turned around for good! He is faithful!
Tom contacted a mason as he was driving to Conakry and this morning the mason repaired the hole in the wall. The electrician started working on the house, replacing wires, at 7:30 AM. By mid-afternoon he had finished but Tom stayed in Conakry again tonight so when the regular electricity comes on at midnight he will see if everything is okay. (He did try the generator for a while and everything worked with it.) If everything goes well he will return to Kamsar tomorrow.
We apologize for the length of this letter but there was so much to share with you! God still works miracles today! It is a miracle that the mission house is still standing!! The cost of repairs to the house will be slightly under $500! We give all praise and glory to God!
Once again we extend our thanks to you for your faithfulness in praying for and giving to God’s work in Guinea! We pray that God will bless you and keep you and use you greatly in the mission field where He has placed you! May you experience miracles in our life and may you learn to trust Him with what you can’t do anything about!
If you wish to be a financial partner with us in ministry just e-mail us and we’ll let you know how and where to send the funds. If funds are not designated correctly we do not receive them for the work in Guinea.
In His Service,
Tom and Sherry Moore
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