Adventist Missionaries to Africa

[i]

Acts 2:17 

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁷ And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams

This weekend the Fellowship of Adventist Missionaries to Africa (FAMA) held its biennial meeting in Cicero, Indiana. I had been planning to be there for two years now, but my cancer treatments nixed that possibility. I have been leading FAMA for most of the last 4 years but left it in the very capable hands of Charles Schlunt. Imagine my delight when Dr. Russell Staples phoned me Sabbath afternoon and gave me a firsthand report of the meetings.

In 1954 my father, C. Fred Clarke, was called to Solusi Mission, then a 10 grade high school to convert it into a 4 year college for the training of Africans to prepare them to be leaders in the Adventist Church. He overcame almost insurmountable obstacles, and in due course they graduated their first four students. When I was in Tanzania, I had the privilege of working very closely with Thomas Lisso, one of those first four graduates.

Dr. Staples, Professor of World Mission, Emeritus, at Andrews University is a pioneer Adventist missionary both from Africa and to Africa. He started teaching at Solusi with Dad. Then he became the second president of the university and set it on its very successful course. It is one of the major universities in the country of Zimbabwe and was the only university to remain open during the worst of that country’s tragic financial collapse. Solusi has had as many as 5,000 students from many parts of Africa. It is practically at the center of the Southern Africa—Indian Ocean Division of Seventh-day Adventists, apparently the largest division of the Adventist Church.

Dr. Staples reported that of the close to 22 million Adventists in the world, 11 million live in Africa, and of those 3.5 million are in the SAIO Division. This success can be traced back to the far sighted leaders who yielded to the leading of the Spirit to prepare for this vast need and tremendous growth.

Last summer Sylvia and I stopped by the Staples home where we were hosted for several days. I encouraged Dr. Staples to give a presentation at the FAMA meetings. At the time he turned me down, but I was delighted when Charles visited him, and he agreed to do it. He gave an overview of the history of missions in Africa, and his presentation was well received.

If you would like to be placed on the mailing list for the FAMA Newsletter, please contact me by responding to me on this blog.

Lord, thank You for the Outpouring of Your Holy Spirit and for those willing to follow Your leading.

---

[i] http://solusi.ac.zw/event/voluntary-week-of-spiritual-emphasis/

FAMA Newsletter v10 n5 July 2016 -- New Editor

NEW EDITOR Please welcome Lorna Dever as our new FAMA Newsletter editor and communications director. She was elected to this post during our FAMA meetings on the first weekend of June in Fletcher, NC. Lorna has experience running the Tryon SDA Church newsletter, also a newsletter for their Thrift Store, and creating their church bulletin. Lorna was a missionary to Malamulo in Malawi some years ago and is a member of FAMA. Please send all Newsletter items to her at the email address she provides you. Wil Clarke, President of FAMA. EDITOR'S NOTES I feel it an honor to follow Rose in providing a Newsletter for each of you. My e-mail address isserendipitykids@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from as many of you as possible and learning stories of your time in Africa that we can share with each other. I plan to stay with the same sections as Rose had, but would love to add a section on MY STORY as you each share fascinating stories from your time as a missionary in Africa. If you have a section you would like to see included feel free to suggest it. Also, with this issue I have created a mailing service through Mail Chimp in order to send a mass e-mail without having to just do a few e-mail addresses at a time to avoid landing e-mails in spam folders. I have never used this particular service, but it came with good remarks. I will be learning their design formats in the next few weeks! I wish you each God's blessing wherever you are still serving Him. Prayers, Lorna WE HEARD FROM YOU Thank you for another interesting FAMA newsletter.  I am delighted to read about Doctors Tom and Alice Nkungula, retired, but willing to work at Matandani in Malawi.  I have now known them for nearly 50 years since they were students at Avondale College in Australia with us - Bob and Joy Butler.  Tom has some wonderful entertaining stories to tell of his cultural adjustments in Australia at that time. Then my husband Bob and myself worked with them in Harare from 1982-1993.  They have been precious and special friends.  God bless them in this new venture and we will be praying for them.  Can someone please share their email address.  Thank you. Joy Butler, 4th Vice President - World WCTU, Coordinator - Joy Safaris, Facebook - Women of Faith and Excellence FAMA BUSINESS Business meeting of the FAMA get together June 2 to 5 in Fletcher. North Carolina. Between 35 and 40 FAMA members met in the Fetcher SDA Church June 2 to 5 in Fletcher, North Carolina USA. We wish to thank The Fletcher Church and Pastor Ivan Blake for their generous and gracious hosting of our meetings. Decisions voted during the Saturday evening business meeting are the following: ·         Next Meeting: We’ll meet in 2018 somewhere in the central part of the U.S.A. Members suggested Centralia, Missouri or Indianapolis, Indiana. ·         Special thanks to Herb Stickle for Supporting Rose Stickle as the long time editor of the FAMA Newsletter. Thanks also for collecting and forwarding the membership email addresses so we could continuing distributing the Newsletter. ·         Officers for the next biennium o   President: Wil Clarke o   Vice President: Charles Schlunt o   Treasurer: Bruce Harvey o   Communications Director: Lorna Dever There was a discussion about the possibility of sending the Newsletter by U.S. Mail to members who don’t have email. We would really appreciate your contribution to this discussion! In times past there was a member who voluntarily sent copies of the Newsletter to these members and paid for it out of his/her own pocket. The name of this volunteer was not available during the discussion. Postage for the Newsletter may run as high as $1.15 per item. We currently do not have an estimate as to the number of members who would need a paper copy of the Newsletter. Wil Clarke< wil.FAMA2016@gmail.com>

Copyright © 2016, FAMA, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: serendipitykids@gmail.com Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list

FAMA NEWSLETTER v10 n02

    

 FAMA NEWSLETTER

Volume 10    March , 2016   Number 2

A. Fellowship of Adventist Missionaries to Africa Get Together

1.  FAMA Meetings 2016

2.  Things to do now

B. Reports

C. We Remember

1.  Arthur Eugene Anderson

2.  Rose Stickle

3.  Dr. Robson Newbold

D. FAMA NL e-mail address:  wil.FAMA2016@gmail.com

       FAMA NL member’s e-addresses

E.  Registration Form for our Meetings in Fetcher, NC

* * * * *

A.   FAMA Matters.

1.    FAMA meetings, 2016.

      Details about our next FAMA reunion:

What:       Fellowship of Adventist Missionaries to Africa (FAMA) Biannual Reunion

Where:      The fellowship hall of the Fletcher SDA Church in Fletcher, North Carolina.

When:       June 2 – 5, 2016

Housing:

At Fletcher Academy, next to the church, there will be dorm rooms available in the boys’ dormitory. They have beds and mattresses in them but no towels or bedding. The cost is extremely nominal--and possibly free--for the FAMA event.

There are also many hotels/motels available in the nearby town of Henderson, NC. The manager of Mountain Inn and Suites-Airport gives a discount to people who have something to do with FAMA/Fletcher Academy. The cost will be around $80 to $90 per room with this discount. It includes a continental breakfast with waffles, cereal, boiled egg, yogurt, fruit, etc. We need to let the manager know by April how many rooms will be needed.

You can check at http://www.historichendersonville.org/ for other places to stay.

If you wish to camp or park an RV see http://www.historichendersonville.org/campgrounds_rv_parks.htm

Food: The cafeteria at Fletcher Academy serves three meals a day at very reasonable rates. We are planning a potluck lunch for Sabbath. Usually there is enough food left over after the potluck for supper, too.

Meetings and registration: Registration will start on Thursday afternoon about 3 o’clock in the church fellowship hall. There will be a welcome meeting on Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. Several meetings are planned for Friday and Saturday yet leaving time to meet and visit with other missionaries. We will choose new FAMA officers at the Saturday evening meeting. Sunday morning there will be a brief worship and farewell meeting.

2.  Things to do now:

a.   Email us an estimate of your plans for being at our Meetings in Fetcher, NC

It is very urgent that we have an estimate of how many are coming in June. Please email Judy Harvey <brunju.harvey8@gmail.com> as soon as possible, before the beginning of April, and inform her of your plans to join us.

b.   Estimate which nights you will need a room in the dorm and how many beds you will need.

c.   Also estimate how many meals you will wish to eat in the academy cafeteria.

We realize that plans do change, but at least we will have ballpark numbers we can share with the academy. We have a registration form on the last page that you can print and mail.

c.   Invite and encourage other missionaries, former missionaries, and interested people to attend.

d.   If you know of a potential speaker, you or someone you’d like to hear, please contact Wil Clarke at wil.FAMA2016@gmail.com or at 951-231-5402 as soon as possible.( I will not have access to my phone until April 1, 2016.)

e.   Fletcher is situated in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains, so you may want to plan on spending an extra few days for a vacation there. For starters see the Hendersonville webpage (http://www.historichendersonville.org/) for suggestions of attractions and activities in the area.

B.  Reports

Please send any news or reports to wil.FAMA2016@gmail.com

We rely on your input for the FAMA Newsletter.

* * * * *

C.  We Remember

1.  Arthur Eugene Anderson

It is with sadness that I write to tell you of the passing of my father-in-law, Arthur Eugene Anderson.  He was 97 years old and died November 2, 2015.  He served in California, Alberta, Burma, Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Ethiopia (1966 to 73).  He was an incredible man of God whose sole desire was to serve his Lord.  I know he will be really happy when he wakes up and sees Jesus.

If anyone wishes to contact his wife Lois, her address is 6100 Orr Springs Rd., Ukiah, California, 94582.

                                                                        Mary Lane Anderson < marylane@bigplanet.com>

2. Rose Stickle

Sorry, that Rose passed away.  What a legacy!!!   What a harvest for Jesus.  Amen and Amen.

                                                                       Jack Blanco < blanco@southern.edu>

It’s nice to see a newsletter again but sorry to hear about Rose’s death.  I was going to point out that the Carolina camp meeting is scheduled for May 29 to June 4.  My husband and I will be at camp meeting at Lake Junaluska near Waynesville, NC.  Unfortunately we will not be able to attend the full FAMA event because of the conflict with camp meeting.  Our pastor friend from DR Congo will be at campmeeting with us and much of the summer.  If you would like to hear about the Train Them 2 Fish ministry in DR Congo, we could spare time to attend and present what is happening in that country.*  For the past 3 years my husband and I have been involved with setting up this ministry, and it has grown so much.  In Bukavu in the South Kivu area, we became acquainted with Pastor Ongasa, the field president whose heart is in evangelism.  We went on a mission trip to this city after Pastor Ongasa planted some bible workers in 11 areas where there were no churches for worship.  We rented some very humble places for them to meet.  The first year 286 new souls were won to Christ and baptized, the 2^nd year another mission trip was arranged, and about the same number of new believers were baptized, and now the total membership is greater than 1,000 (estimated).  The retention rate of the new believers, because of the bible workers and the Holy Spirit, is in the 90 percentile.  In 2014, we organized another mission trip to Kinshasa where the population is about 12 million, but we have only about 6,000 believers in that city.  Many people were baptized during that campaign.  (In 2015, there was no mission trip to DR Congo because we went to the GC session and had a booth for Train Them 2 Fish)

We left bible workers to continue their ministry in Bukavu, and this year, Pastor Ongasa moved to Kinshasa to be the Train Them 2 Fish administrator there.  There is a great need for that city.  Our ministry includes evangelism as high priority and helping the handicapped and others who are in need of learning a trade to learn to be self- sufficient: sewing, basket weaving, and we’ll be adding agriculture and school of evangelism and health courses and other vocational options as we extend this ministry.  34 acres of land were purchased in January 2016, and now we look forward to seeing buildings to be built.

This year we are planning a mission trip of evangelism to Kinshasa in August and are recruiting people to join us to “preach”.

P.S. we live in Hendersonville, NC. About 10 minutes from Fletcher Academy.

                                                                        Karolyn Leonard <kleon2893@bellsouth.net>

* [Editor: We are working to arrange a time to be able to hear them at Fletcher]

Sir, how I lament the passing of Rose Stickle, but also rejoice in you taking the Newsletter reins again.

However much I would like to attend the FAMA retreat in Fletcher, NC, USA, - it is beyond my reach and means as someone who had heeded the call in 1994 and laid the hand on the plough for Southern-Africa as far as the Congo River in 2004 .

In encouragement I attach a report for your interest or records.

My continued prayers for FAMA and its associated missionaries to Africa.

Yours faithfully, - in prayer and purpose,

                                                                        Abraham J. (Johan)  Meintjes, <esprojects@vodamail.co.za>

                                                                        SDA Magaliessig, Pretoria, NC, SAU, SID

3.  Dr. Robson Newbold.

Dr. Robson Newbold died last month. He was medical director at Ngoma in Rwanda during the 1940s and 1950s. We will try to get more precise info from the family to you. His son is also Robson Newbold.

                                                                       Harry Bennett < pvchurch@aol.com> 3009 E 5^th St.,

                                                                       National City, CA 91950, 619-245-5845

D.    FAMA News Letter e-mail address:  wil.FAMA2016@gmail.com   Wil Clarke

      Thank you for sending to FAMA News Letter any email addresses for current or former missionaries to AFRICA (and their children) who might be interested in receiving this newsletter.  Any news on your present or past activities will help to make this newsletter interesting to others in the FAMA family.  It would be helpful if you include information on where and when you served in Africa. African mission stories would also be appreciated.    If you do not wish to receive the FAMA Newsletter, please let us know.                                    -   Wil Clarke

      FAMA News Letter e-mail Search:

                                                                                                

This time around, we have had a huge group of bounced e-mails.  Please help us find the correct e-mail address for the following names:

Gilberto Araujo

Victor and Tonya Awuor

Francis & Retta Chase

Fred D Brandt

Nick & Gail Brightman

Ian & Roger Bothwell

Arnold & Marilyn Boram

Natanael Bernardo

Dilson & Lea Bezerra

Nell Davies

Ken Flemmer

Llewellyn & Renee Juby

Walter Lacks

Helen & Bill Markin

Len & Klaren McMillian

Thomas & Anita Riederer

Harold Sheffield

Cristine Orillosa

Bob Parsons

Hermie and Daniela Munez

Claude & Farida Sabot

Goodwell Nthani

Francis Slate

James & Carol Sutton

Gerhard & Emilie van Wyk

Sebastian Tirtirau

Robert & Lorilee Thomas

Martha Toews

Gary VerStegg

Meds VerStegg

Jerald Whitehouse

E.  Registration Form for our Meetings in Fetcher, NC

Fellowship of Adventist Missionaries to Africa Retreat, June 2 to 5, 2016

Fletcher SDA Church in Fletcher, North Carolina

In July 2014, we had a wonderful time in our get together in Riverside, California. We enjoyed sharing experiences and fellowshipping together. We are looking forward to having a profitable time together in June 2016 and hope that you will be able to come and join us. We are all ambassadors for Christ and His missions, and there are still great needs in the mission field. Africa is dear to our hearts, and we must continue to keep the needs and victories of Africa before our friends. Let us pray earnestly and work diligently so that the missionary spirit never dies in our churches. Please plan to come and join us at this retreat in June 2016.

 Name_______________________________________________ Number in your party_______

Address_______________________________________________________________________

Home and Cell Phone Number(s)___________________________________________________

Email_________________________________________________________________________

Registration Fee- $10 single, or $15 per family. Registration starts at 3:00 p.m. Thursday, June 2, 2016. The first meeting is at 7:00 p.m. These will be in the fellowship hall of the Fletcher SDA Church in Fletcher, North Carolina.

Housing: At Fletcher Academy, next to the church, there will be dorm rooms available in the boys’ dormitory. They have beds and mattresses in them but no towels, pillows, or bedding. Fletcher Academy will let us use the dorm rooms without charge for the FAMA event. But they need to know early how many to plan for. Please plan to make a donation for the rooms. You may contact Marcella for reservations.

Meals: The cafeteria at Fletcher Academy serves three meals a day at very reasonable rates. We are planning a potluck lunch for Sabbath. Usually there is enough food left over after the potluck for supper, too. Each meal costs about $5 per person. They do not serve Sabbath breakfast.

Please register as early as possible (by April 15) so we can give the academy a reasonable estimate of the number of meals and number of rooms needed for their planning. This is important. 

Checks should be made payable to “Judy Harvey”. Please send your information and check to the FAMA Treasurer:

*Judy Harvey

1242 Ruskin Drive

Medford, OR 97504-5213

If you have further questions, contact Judy at 541-772-0773.   You can leave your number for a call back. Email her at <brunju.harvey8@gmail.com>

Registration Fee	$10 or $15
Room Donation*
Meal Costs
Total Cost Estimate

 

*There are several hotels in nearby Henderson, NC.

Attached:

From Abraham J. (Johan)  Meintjes

Johnny’s Incredible Congo River Journey.pdf

The Dark Triangle of Conflict Minerals in the Eastern DRC.pdf

 Send Wil an e-mail if you wish to see the attachments.

Sojourn to Madagascar - Part 11 - Providence and FAMA

Sojourn to Madagascar Part 11 Providence and FAMA

Moth

On Friday, February 12, 2016, I took a nap to help shake a tummy bug I had picked up. At the end of the nap, as I hovered between sleep and wake, I got this overwhelming impression that we were probably never going to get the email addresses for FAMA. I had an equally irresistible urge to get the next issue out pronto. Let me explain.

In 2014 at the last biannual meeting I was elected president of the Fellowship of Adventist Missionaries to Africa (FAMA). I didn’t want the post, but I got it anyway. Everything has gone along fine. We have made arrangements for our next biannual meeting the first weekend of June in Fletcher, NC.

FAMA publishes the FAMA Newsletter roughly once a month, although in 2014 we had 15 issues. Rose Stickle has been the compiler/editor for as long as I’ve known about FAMA. In fact she may have served as its editor ever since the Fellowship was first founded. She has been fighting breast cancer for many years now, but she has forged ahead as editor in spite of her cancer. Then a week after her November issue came out last year, she worsened and died.

Since then the vice president, Bruce, and I have tried to get a copy of the email addresses. However, we had made no headway. I had been communicating with Bruce, and he sounded discouraged. I tend to let things slide when there is nothing I can do about it. Furthermore, my situation in remote Madagascar does nothing to make it easy to do anything else. The fast approaching date, however, could not be denied.

I decided to reconstruct as much of a mailing list as I could and get the details out of the biannual meeting as best I could. I spent Friday afternoon going through our personal address lists and selecting anybody who has ever had anything to do with Africa. I have copies of the last two year’s Newsletters on my computer, so I pulled every email address that Rose had included in these issues. This took hours, and I did not do it on Sabbath. I need all the rest I can get. I ended up with 183 email addresses.

I also called my brother, Elwood, on Friday evening; that’s early on Friday morning for him. He went over to my house and found a folder with a printout of email addresses dated 2008, if I’m not mistaken. Now in the information age, 2008 exists somewhere back in the dark ages. But it was the best we had. He spent I don’t know how much time scanning everything he could find in that folder including snail mail addresses and emailing them to me.

After surveying what he had sent me and trying several tactics to convert the data he had sent, I found that the most accurate was to take the pdf (printer definition file) version and convert it to text. Then I pasted the addresses into MS Excel. Once in Excel I realized I had a gold mine with 540 addresses. I had to massage the data, pull out spaces, and change special characters like “/” and “~” into something. That was purely guessing, of course. Then I created a short “Do Not Reply” email and sent out batches of 75 emails at a time to these addresses. Imagine my dismay when all, 100%, bounced back as invalid.

After doing several hours of sleuthing, I discovered that in creating the email addresses, something somewhere along the line had added a space to the end of each one of them. So I pulled all of the spaces off the ends and resent the 540 emails. This time 438 of them bounced back as invalid.

I also got a terse rebuke from Google blacklisting me for sending so many emails in one day and having so many returned. They had closed my account for probably 24 hours, they claimed. They suggested that I just might be shooting spam out all over the place.

I went home in a black mood. Besides, I was supposed to go to a Valentine program put on by students as a judge of how well the program was organized. The program was to begin at 6:00 and last until 9:00. When I got there a few minutes before 6:00, it was pouring down rain. In fact it had been raining all afternoon. The organizers were having trouble, and I had to stand out in the rain until almost 6:30. Needless to say, I’m sure my mood did not improve my opinion of the program. Sorry guys!

Valentine’s Program

Monday I teach and had several things to do, including writing the evaluation. Finally I decided about 3:30 to go back to the Faculty Lounge where we can get a rather unstable Internet. That’s when I found out that 438 of the second version of my “Do Not Reply” emails had bounced back as invalid. But a few had gotten through. The Dobiases, who had lived next door to us in the 1960’s at Ikizu in Tanzania, had received one of the emails that did make it. They live right within 2 miles (3km) of where our FAMA meeting will be in North Carolina. They not only had gotten our email but were inviting us to stay with them for the weekend. Wow! They just made my day. I was really excited. Maybe we could get something started! Just maybe.

But the best was yet to come! I had sent the emails out in batches of about 75 at a time. So the replies, valid and invalid, for each batch were all clustered in a single line on my screen. The line lists how many replies it has clustered. I was busy entering these values into my Excel screen. On one of these lines my thumbed bumped the line, and it spontaneously opened to a valid reply

I was very busy with the counting and regarded the interruption as a nuisance. I did, that is, until I saw that it was a reply from Susan Stickle Woods, the daughter of Rose Stickle. Her email stated simply:

Hi Will,

My dad Herb has mom's FAMA list. I just helped him transfer it to his computer when I visited last week. I think he might be willing to do the newsletter if someone asked him. 

Susan Stickle Woods
Sent from my iPhone

I was stunned. I was excited. It dawned on my thick skull that this was no less than the hand of God. He had directed me, impressed me, and gotten me off of my proverbial couch and doing something. Now, out of close to 500 emails on that page, mostly junk, he had gotten me to pick out the one email that had the answer I needed. Not even the email to myself that was in the pack that had reached me. And here one had reached me from the only person that had the answer I desperately needed.

I now have incontrovertible proof in my mind that God does want FAMA to move on and become a source of power for the church. Ellen White once wrote that “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.” (Life Sketches p. 196) One of FAMA’s goals is to try and preserve as much Adventist history in Africa as we possibly can.

God has a really hard time with me. He usually has to hit me up the side of the head with a two by four before He can get me to do something. It took Him three months to actually get me acting on this FAMA challenge. Then in three short days He worked out what Bruce and I had been attempting for three months.  

I phoned Herb Stickle on Monday evening. It took several times to get through. After all, I am using an aggravatingly unstable Internet in Madagascar through to a tiny mobile phone company, Republic Wireless, in the U.S. on a free Wi-Fi line to Canada. He assured me that he was going to spend the day getting the email addresses through to Bruce and me. Herb was not as ready to take up the Newsletter as Susan suggested he might be.

I went to the faculty lounge after class on Tuesday morning, and there were 12 email messages, each with from 60 to 80 email addresses in a separate .vcf file. Stunned, I thought, “Well, I can look at each one, copy the name and email, (3 items) for each file. I hadn’t counted the total number of addresses yet, but in the first email there were 80 .vcf files, and that represented just the names beginning with “A” and “B”!

I asked Google how to convert these into an MS Excel file. In skimming through a couple pages of suggestions, I found two different steps that would do what I wanted. And by the time I went home for lunch, I had an email file with 775 names and email addresses. On Wednesday I taught literally from 8:00 to 5:00 with an hour off for lunch. On Thursday we had a chance to go to Tana (more about that trip later). On Friday I finished the FAMA Newsletter, Sylvia edited it, and I successfully emailed 90 before Google got mad at me and blocked any further emails. Apparently if I try to email more than 50 emails, Google figures it has to be spam and blocks all future emails for twenty-four hours. It also won’t let me send more than 500 per day. Saturday evening I got the total sent out to 450. I had promised our lunch group to try and get them out that week. Well, at least we got the back broken.

Please pray for us in this land of a curious blend of animism and Christianity and the associated devil curses. Pray that God will see us through to getting done what He wants us to do. I wrote the previous sentences several days ago when I was feeling somewhat down from making no headway on the FAMA project. When I got out of bed on Sunday, February 21, and went into the other room to get my electric razor, I suddenly felt an absolute iron grip on my entire upper body. I immediately wondered if I were having a heart attack or a stroke. I felt as if I couldn’t stand up and headed towards the bed in that room. In the process I mentally went through the normal symptoms of heart attack—death, pressure and pain in the chest or arms, nausea, breathlessness. I for the symptoms of stroke—facial distortion, inability to hold arms at shoulder height, occluded vision, slurred speech. I had none of the above and no pain, I was thinking clearly, my heart pulse was strong and normal and regular. The iron grip left as suddenly as it started, but only after I had gone through the checks I mentioned above. I showered, exercised, got dressed, and washed out our drinking water container; everything was normal. Sylvia got up and put breakfast on. I told her about it at breakfast. She said as calmly as if I told her we had just run out of toilet paper, “Oh, it was probably just the devil. He’s quite active around here.” Then she went on to tell me of experiences told in three papers she had received in her writing class and reminded me of the cat experience. Watch for one of her forthcoming “Notes on Madagascar” at this blog site.

In the last Sojourn (10) I mentioned that I had a bit of a tummy upset. It wasn’t bad, just a continuing discomfort and the necessity of dashing to the john once in a while. On Sabbath the 13^th of February we attended the English Sabbath School lesson study. My tummy was a bit obnoxious, but bearable. When we found out that the church service was going to be in English, we definitely decided to stay. But the call of nature became somewhat insistent, so I went out back of the church to the long-drop marked Homme. It was the size of a normal outhouse but had no seat, only a hole in the center of the floor. The previous 200 or so users had missed the hole, and there was a pile of excrement sloping up to a foot (30cm) deep at the back of the outhouse. The sight and the wrenching smell was all I needed. I went back to church and told Sylvia I was going home. I prayed that I could walk the 1 km (0.6miles) home before everything burst forth. My prayer was answered, barely. I cleaned up and went to bed and slept for at least a half hour.

The Crippled Lamb

That Sabbath we hosted a potluck at our home for all of the expatriates at the university. The first to arrive at our home was Sylvia. Pam had left off two dishes that needed to be baked, so we put them in the oven. Shortly afterwards Robert and Prity Bairagee arrived. They come from Bangladesh and live like us, without a car. The Payets came in separately; Edwin comes from the island of Reunion near Mauritius. French is his native language. His wife Alphie is from the Philippines and speaks English, so their two kids, Ann and Aldwin (about 8 and 5), speak French, English, and Malagasy fluently. They are two really bright kids and a real pleasure to have around. We brought Max Lucado’s The Crippled Lamb from the U.S. It is one of several kids’ books he has written. This approaches the birth-in-a-stable Christmas story from the viewpoint of a crippled lamb that had to stay in the stable rather than be out on the hillside with the other sheep and the shepherds “watching their flocks by night.” Aldwin leafed through the book and then said that he had read the book in kindergarten and seen the movie! His parents confirmed this. Ann sat down and read through it rapidly. The Payets met at the Adventist University, AIIAS, also in the Philippines.

Edwin, Alphie, Evelyn, Roger, Sylvia, Pam, Ann, Aldwin

I proposed to the Payets that they take us to Morondaba on a forthcoming weekend. Morondaba is a city on the west coast of Mada and in the center of the baobab country. They were amenable, and we’re planning this for the first weekend of March.

Pam, Robert, Ann, Aldwin, Gideon

Once Roger and Evelyn Pelayo, also from the Philippines, joined us, the table was full of delicious smelling and looking food.  I formally welcomed everyone and said grace. Everyone proceeded to eat with gusto. Some hadn’t had breakfast, so they were especially hungry.

Pam and Gideon Petersen from South Africa were at a district meeting on the far side of Sambaina. They had invited us to go with them, but we declined because we were hosting this meal. My runny tummy made me glad I didn’t accept. The Petersens came in much later, after we had already started on Sylvia’s excellent chocolate cake that she had baked from scratch.

From Scratch Chocolate Cake

The company was excellent and the conversation stimulating. In an isolated mission like UAZ it is easy for misunderstandings to develop and feathers to get ruffled. We enjoyed the excellent camaraderie and some intelligent interchanges. People stayed for various lengths of time. We enjoyed every minute of the time. Everyone had left by about 4:30, and Sylvia and I took a well earned nap. It rained on and off the rest of the afternoon, all that night, and all of Sunday. We got about a total of 1 ¼ inches (30mm).

I mentioned that I spent most of Sunday massaging the FAMA data Elwood had gotten, scanned into the computer, and then emailed me. While I was at the faculty lounge, Mme Hanitra came in to use the Internet. I asked her if she and her husband would like to be on the FAMA mailing list. She was very interested, so I got her to write her name on a piece of paper. Hers is very typical of Malagasy names and a good reason why I don’t remember the names of my 165 students. Her name is RANDRIAMAMONJISOA Hanitriniaina; they always write their surnames in all capitals and list them first.

 I have added the most recent FAMA Newsletter to Blogspot so you can see it if you wish.  

#MADAGASCAR, #UAZ, #MALAGASY, #PREACHING, #ANIMIST, #DIARRHEA, #GOOGLE, #DATA, #EMAIL, #FAMA, #SURNAME, #DEVIL, #DEMON, #PROVIDENCE, #GOD, #CHRISTIANITY