We’ve been hunkered down in our hammocks under leaky tarps for the past few days. It seems like despite my positive attitude that the rains will stop any day now, they just keep rolling in.
We’ve been together as JDS for only about 10 days, and on our actual school ground for only about four days - all of which have been fairly wet.
I had such wonderfully perfect plans - I sarcastically think to myself. In my mind we would have been given access to our school ground back in April, we’d have spent the spring and summer building structures, and when the students roll in were ready to go, and I’m sure the weather would be perfect too. But my perfect plans didn’t turn out that way.
Instead we had to find a new place where we could make a temporary start. One day when I was venting in frustration that our original land wasn’t ready for us, a friend said, “maybe God is watching to see if you’re actually willing to start this thing with nothing but hammocks and tarps.” In my mind I thought “ya, sure we are. But we’ll have some buildings built so won’t need to.”
But here we are, rainy season bellowing with laughter at my perfect plans. The students - and me - are running out of clothes because nothing will dry. It’s tough to cook because all the wood is soaked through, so the fire just smoulders.
And yet…
I love the Psalms where the author pens a tragic scene, lamenting to God, but many of them turn a corner by the end, “and yet, my God does not forsake me.”
So, for JDS, it’s not the location we hoped for. All our supplies were delayed a week, so we had nothing, not even a pen and paper for the students. The ground is just jungle, one of the students described it as “a mosquito village”.
And yet, after only four days on our school ground, our classroom is finished and Steve will conduct the first class in it this evening. Our water system is functional and we have enough water for bathing. We have one working toilet, and lots of jungle to use as a toilet. We managed to work out a food delivery system so we can get a weekly food drop at the end of the road and then the students carry it in. Our supplies arrived on Sunday afternoon, 83 rice sacks of supplies. The students have been carrying loads all day today, even as the drizzle persisted.
Word has gotten out already about us and today a villager came to sell us some beef from a cow he killed. We feasted tonight. A local farmer came today and invited us to share his farm land with him. The battalion commander is an old friend and his number two, who runs the day to day, turns out to be someone I trained years ago. The leader of the IDP camp were next too speaks near perfect English and has been so friendly and welcoming. JDS will pay $200/month in diesel to run a water pump that will pump water to our school but also to nearly 600 IDPs. The IDP camp leader was amazed we would support them like that.
I had an unofficial rule that we wouldn’t accept any girls unless we could get five or more. When we showed up on the first day there was only one girl. She was a bit shy and not super happy being the only girl. I had been trying for months to recruit more girl students, but in day one, only had one. We told her to just give us a few days, we would all pray together for more girl students. So that’s what we did. The next day, two more girls showed up wanting to join. The day after that, three girls showed up wanting to join. And then the next morning two more! JaLa and I laughed about it, he looked up to the heavens and said to God, “ok ok, enough enough! Thank you God.” He jokes that we have “too much blessing.” And as I sway in my hammock, mosquitos whining, slow fat drops of rain bombing my tarp, I can’t help but think how blessed we really are. (And two more girls are coming to meet us tomorrow because they want to join!) when it rains, it pours.
I actually lost count of how many students we have. And there are seven more who are trying to come but are delayed because of massive flooding in Karenni state. We were invited to share the gospel with a boarding house last weekend and that evening four more boys asked to join us. We had to say no because we’re full.
And I just can’t really believe it, that we’re here, that we’re full of students, and that this is actually happening. It’s been a long and very hard and heart wrenching journey to get here. But campus is buzzing. Holy Spirit is hovering. Jesus is lounging on a bamboo bench with a smile on his face as he watches the students play kickball.
As the rain soaks everything, I can’t help but think it’s a precursor for the Holy Spirit’s soaking that is going to occur here.
Some of our current needs:
- with a full house of students, it is quite expensive to keep them all fed. Roughly $5000/month. We’ll eat meat once a week if we can get it. The rest of the week is vegetables, dry fish, and one of the student groups goes foraging in the jungle each morning. Lots of Raman noodles and even some fish paste.
- we have some higher expenses with building materials; cooking pots, ropes, wires to lash bamboo, solar, tarps, toilets, machetes and other tools.
- we also are hoping some of our team can go and run a small medical/security/evangelism training for the local community. This will cost about $2500 in supplies.
- we’re having some issues with the guy who helps us run our Starlink account and have been given one month to find a new set up for our account so we can continue to get access to Starlink while we’re in here. Starlink costs around $200/month. Zadok is going to climb a tree and mount the Starlink in the tree so we can get better signal.
Please consider giving to these costs and/or praying that we can fund them. We are - like from the beginning - stepping out in faith.
Please also pray for our student’s hearts. Pray that they would really get serious about knowing Jesus. Pray for Holy Spirit to rest over our camp like a heavy fog. Pray for us to stay healthy and safe, and for our last students to arrive this week.
Thanks for being with us.
Ds
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