written from Lubumbashi.

Today I heard that Jonathan had arrived home safely after his 7hr wait in nairobi for the connection to UK. That was good news although we are going to miss him. Mind you in his last week at Katoka he fitted in quite a lot of things and seemed to enjoy himself ! He also managed to see the traditional Mukishi or spirit dancer before he left Katoka.

He and Michael also went to a bush fire hunt which was interesting.

Back from Kasaji ladies dry season conference

Thank you for those of you who prayed for us while we were at the women’s conference at Kasaji. Paul Angela Jonathan and I arrived at Kasaji mid afternoon of Wed 5th August to be given a tumultuous welcome singing and dancing women and even some of the men too had waited for us at the corner at the entrance to the mission! They surrounded the car and escorted us to the house where we were to be staying and then the elders came to welcome us. We had a very good time and they were all very very kind to us all. They gave us among other things a sheep 2 chickens eggs oil salt and sugar .They brought fresh bread rolls and drinking water everyday…such generosity is humbling. I had 11 teaching sessions over the 4days and I translated for Angela on the Tuesday evening session and for Paul at the breaking of bread so it was quite busy as you can imagine. I had 3 sheets of Bible searching questions for the girls and Jonathan kindly did the marking of those for me for which I was very grateful otherwise I would have had some very late nights. We taught the women the words (in Chokwe ) of the beautiful hymn “In Christ Alone my Hope is found, He is my Light my Strength my Song” I am always amazed at how quickly they pick up a new melody and by the time we got to the last session it sounded really lovely. Paul meanwhile was busy putting in a suspended ceiling in one of the mission houses so he too was kept busy.

Getting back to Katoka it was good to see that there was progress in the building of the secondary school administrative building which was very encouraging. Hopfully the ring beam will be poured next week and then we will have the big job of the roofing of this large building.

Jonathan flies to UK via Kenya on the 26th August and another short term worker Bethany Smith also from Tyneside arrives in on the 22nd so the next item on our agenda is the trip to Lubumbashi by road. Dr Kayombo has kindly agreed to give Jonathan and me a lift as there are no internal flights in our direction at present. 2 days journey but the first is the bumpiest part and takes most of the daylight hours of day 1.......

3 days after we leave Katoka, Paul Angela and Sandy also leave, heading for Zambia it has been so good to have them all with us and we are grateful for all their help and fellowship. Well the generator is going off now so I will leave this for today and hopefully catch up again from Lubumbashi.