Attempted break in.

Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble, when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. Have no fear of sudden disaster..for the Lord will be your confidence... Proverbs 3 v 25-26.

There was an attempted break in at Compound B last night. Praise the Lord, He protected the guards and the guards protected us. This particular break in could have had very tragic results. Thank the Lord the guards were vigilant and after hearing a sound one of the guards shone his light into a tree that overhangs the fence. There he saw three men one of whom had a large rock (about 10Kgs) and a rope was tied to one of the branches. It is clear that the intention was to attack the guard with the rock. Had they done so the guard would have been very badly injured or killed. The two guards did exactly the correct thing, one made a lot of noise while the other looked in other areas to make sure it was not a diversion. The noise woke three of the men on the compound, (including Daniel) who came out and the would be thieves ran away.

Tonight we have three guards on duty and have made sure we all have a weapon to hand.

This happened following on from Monday night when the guard on the adjacent compound was killed by intruders.

It is unsettling to know that this happened just outside our bedroom window, but still we have to trust God and not let the devil steal our peace. Well that's what I am going to work on now!!! Please pray for our safety if you read this and for the safety of our guards.

However:

As the Bible says, when you have wisdom to know that all things are in the hand of God:

Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble; when you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.

Proverbs 3 Verse 23 and 24.

Busy busy (again)

Sorry for the lack of blogs recently. We have been enjoying the slow pace of life in Africa (not).

On Saturday we had the wedding of one of our engineers. I was on piano/choir accompaniment duties, so have been out rehearsing quite a few nights. It all went OK (except for, in the usual Tanzanian style of great planning) arriving at 2.00pm to set up for a 2.30 pm wedding, to be told that there was another wedding due at 3.00pm...and another one at 4.00pm. The bride didn't arrive until 2.50 in the end. Of course, no one really minded - but even after two years here I can't really get used to it. I mean this is a wedding, for goodness sake!!

We have also had the MAF International 'Pastoral carer' (Tony Horsfall) out here for a few days. So we have been having intensive spiritual feeding for the past few days (i.e. bible studies morning and evening). This is great, and a nice change, but quite exhausting as well. This is my first evening in since Saturday. Interestingly, of all the MAF programmes, he said that he thinks Dodoma is the hardest place spiritually - because all of the others are based in 'real' capital cities - and there all have a big choice of 'good' International churches. Dodoma is a bit lacking in this regard!

Anyway, we now need to try and get all our preparations done for our Home Assignment. Our printer is out of cartridges (and you can't get the right ones in Tanzania). Unfortunately our Programme Manager (who has just returned from the UK) brought the wrong ones back :( So we are going to have to borrow his printer to print everything else we need to print. I also have a whole bunch of raw footage that needs to be turned into something watchable. All good fun, but all takes time. We then have to start thinking about all the things we have forgotten to do :) And then packing. And then mentally preparing ourselves for the journey (drive to Dar, fly Dar to Nairobi - wait in Nairobi, fly to Zurich, change in Zurich, fly Zurich to Dar....arriving in the UK stupid o'clock in the morning). We would value you prayers for this, because we are not feeling much like we have the energy at the moment.

We had some other excitement on Sunday afternoon (which I had forgotten about 'til Libby just reminded me). All the blokes were called out to the hangar mid afternoon for a bush fire which was raging on the airfield. It only got within about 10 meters of our fuel store :) It was actually quite fun fighting it, and reminded me of our time in Zimbabwe when we did the same kind of thing (except with wet grain sacks if I recall). There were actually two airport fire engines that turned up eventually - when it was mostly out.

The only other thing going on at the moment is Libby's 'street kids' project. She came home the other day and casually mentioned that she has agreed to feed all the street kids in Dodoma! She has hooked up with a group of Tanzanian's who have a heart to help the street kids, and has agreed to fund them one meal a day. She went 'down the railway tracks' to visit one of their haunts. This is going to cost about Tsh1m per month (around £400). The long term plan is to set up a farm (along with our neighbour who is a farmer by birth and calling) which the boys can work on to feed themselves and/or to earn a living. Anyway, I will leave Libby to give you more details.

Anyway, that's us. And why you haven't heard anything for a while. Hopefully we will post again before we leave for the UK, but if we don't manage it - see you soon!