Greetings from Africa

Louise and I want to express to the entire St. Luke family are VERY GREAT appreciation for your warm welcome for Louise, which was expressed in so many ways. We especially appreciated the wedding-like reception and cake (see picture). The paper jacaranda on the ceiling in winter was also WONDERFUL! (Thank you Judy!) We enjoyed the opportunity to present the Spiritual Bride seminar twice, and hope those of you who attended - or who see the video that was make - are truly blessed. We also are truly appreciative for the hospitality of our Kansas City hosts (made your reward in heaven be great, Fred and Barb!).

Our trip to America was extremely wonderful, and accomplished a lot that needed to be done. For example, Louise got to meet my children - her step-children, on two different occasions. We drove to Philadelphia from Kansas City and had an absolutely marvelous time (see enclosed picture of Louise enjoying the trip) with daughter Lisa and SO Scott, and son Dale and SO Sharon (see photo). We then went to Iowa and met LOTS of family members, including my brother Neil, who now owns the family farm outside Cedar Rapids (see photo). Daughter Tammy and husband Shawn truly honored us by driving many hours to come see us for an evening (picture next time).

Our return trip to South Africa was tiring, of course, and did not get off to the best start. As we stood there in the airport in Kansas City I discovered that British Air had changed our bookings, as requested, and issued Louise the associated new tickets, but had failed to do so for me. It was almost impossible to get them to do this on the day, and they would only do so for CONSIDERABLY more money than the previously promised and agreed price. But what can one do as you stand there and are faced with the option of simply not being able to go home?! Argh! Then when we finally get to Johannesburg, they lost one of our suitcases - again - just as they did last year. Again, ARGH! We fully intend to do our best to avoid flying BA ever again.

After we got home we were very delighted by the entrance into our little congregation of several new families! We are now -- on a full-attendance day, anyway -- at the point where meeting in a home will no longer suffice. So, we are looking for alternatives, but it turns out so are many other congregations. For a few weeks we thought there might be an option to move to a house with a garage suitable for the congregation, but in the end that did not pan out. So for now we TERRIBLY miss people when they are away on vacation, or whatever, but also are more able to find room for everyone. Please pray for the PERFECT venue for Philadelphia to be made available, soon.

One of the pitfalls of Africa is unreliable billing. Phone bills, water and electric bills, etc., may reflect reality or may include charges for large institutions on the other side of the city. Sort of like gambling with all your money every month -- and the house always wins. So, we have gone over to pre-paid telephone service, and are in the process of going over to pre-paid water and electric service. We are already seeing a savings on our telephone expenses, and look forward to something like rationality with water and electric. Currently their policy is to lose all record of most of the payments made to them, but to demand payment (or repayment, or re-repayment) on a monthly basis. They know they lost payments, but nevertheless the absence of a record of payment is grounds for suspending service. Louise’s parents regularly get bills that are 10 or more times larger than they should be, and there is no good way to straighten anything out. Ah! Africa!!