The Tide®

It has been a while since we have had access to the internet, so I have been keeping a journal on the laptop. Here is what I would have been posting to the blog; Let me give a quick update before we leave for our next venue. We had a really great day yesterday. It was our final day of the seminar and everyone really seemed to enjoy all the things that were presented. They gave words of appreciation and told us we needed to come back again. We are leaving now for Maone where Don will be preaching this morning. Maone is the BIC church center for Malawi. From there we will be going to Mangochi and that is where we will spend the next few days. I am not sure if we will have internet access or not, but if we do I will up date you on all the things happening. We arrived at Maone and the children were out having Sunday school class. They were singing when we arrived and I think they were singing the song, We are Marching in the Light of God.” We were then taken into the room wh...

Well we finally made it to Blantyre after a long journey. When we arrived at the airport no one was there to pick us up. Don called the person who was to pick us up and they said they were 15 minutes from the airport. They then took us to a fast foods place for supper and the food was very good. After that we were taken to EBCOM, Evangelical Bible College of Malawi. We all had a good nights rest which we all needed. Today has been a full day of seminar sessions. Don, Ken Hepner and Orville Hade have been doing the teaching and the Pastor's have seemed to really enjoy the teaching. We just got back from supper which was, beef, rice, cabbage, nsima, and the intestines. Don really enjoyed having the intestines and Orville at least tried them. The rest of us decided not to give them a try. Tomorrow is another day of seminar sessions and tomorrow evening will be a free evening for the team. I will try and blog again tomorrow.

We were up early Tuesday morning and left at 4:00 AM. On our way to the airport we had a blowout on a back tire of the van. Fortunately Matt Heck was able to get us back on the road and to the airport in time to check in and make our flight. We praise God for watching over us! The time at JFK went fairly quickly and even though our flight took off later than scheduled the flight across to Jo-burg, South Africa went very quickly. South African airlines gave us a meal and hotel vouchers for our overnight stay. It is now 3:20AM. Why am I blogging at this hour of the morning you ask? We were rudely awakened with these words blaring through the intercom repeatedly, “this is not a drill, please evacuate the building immediately.” After 20 minutes in the hotel lobby with a host of other bleary eyed guests they told us it was a false alarm. Again we praise God it was a false alarm and not a real fire.

Well, it's 3:30 AM and we are waiting for the team to arrive. Matt Heck is driving the team to Washington. Thanks Matt for being willing to give of your time and do this wonderful act of service.

Praise the Lord!!! We now have our passports and visas in hand and are ready to leave tomorrow morning at 4:00AM. Don had to make a trip to Washington, DC this morning and is now safely back at the office. Thank you to everyone for your prayers.

Our passports were at the Mozambique embassy and were to be sent to us overnight by UPS and as of now they still have not been sent. Please pray that we get our passports on time and that our trip is not delayed in any way.

The work is done and the notebooks are ready. Now we need to pray for our passports to get back to us in time for our flight on Tuesday. Our passports are at the Mozambique Embassy waiting for the visas. Some how Becky's passport photo's got lost and we had to e-mail new photos to them. Don talked to the Embassy and was told the visas would be issued today. Praise God for that. Right now there is rioting in Malawi so please pray for the safety of all the pastor's traveling to the workshop. Also, please keep the team in your prayers as we travel and arrive in Malawi during this time. Don has all his lessons prepared, but now he needs to fine tune everything. Hopefully he will find time on the plane to get that done. We will try and keep everyone updated as we go. We will probably have at least one more post before leaving on Tuesday morning.

On August 16th a team from The Tide will be traveling to Malawi and Mozambique for a Leader to Leader training. The team will consist of Ken & Raina Hepner, Orville Hade and Don & Becky Shenk. We will try to keep you updated as we go. Please remember us in your prayers as we travel and as we minister among our brothers and sisters in Malawi and Mozambique.