The Holy spirit has been at work in Kikongo to show the ways to victory amidst suffering.

During the same week, God called our colleague Glen Chapman to show "The Power of One" (about combating Apartheid in South Africa) and both Lynn and Virgil to have speaking opportunities to address the RESPONSES available to Christians to persecution and other kinds of suffering.

Both of us worked like mules to translate and present effectively in Kituba some insights given to us by God through His word, reading and prayer.

Thursday it was Lynn's group's turn to direct the weekly Women's Prayer meeting and the preaching fell to Lynn. Job 2: 9 & 10 was our center of study as Lynn encouraged dialogue about the causes of suffering. Using recent examples from our village life, we addressed the all too frequent habit of interpreting every bad thing as "persecution," thereby blaming others for accidents or illnesses and deaths. We turned to Job's example, during his severe crises, of teaching others of God rather than blaming God or others.

7am Tuesday morning, it was Virgil's turn to preach for the morning worship for the Mission, and 12 hours later we hosted the IPK Staff Prayer meeting. The morning message focused on Rizpah's grief over the unjust death of her two sons and five nephews, and how her courage and actions of protest changed a King's mind and heart ( 2 Samuel 21). That evening we offered role-plays that were based on information gleaned from Dan Buttry (IM Global missionary on Peace and Justice), about the cultural context of Jesus' sayings in Mathew 5: 38-42 concerning not returning evil for evil. The role-plays were entered into enthusiastically and we were all freshly surprised by the creativity of Jesus' advice, by which the "victim" put the person persecuting him into a dilemma of continuing and publicly showing his act of oppression, or of recognizing the "'victim" as a worthy human being.

We thank you, our partners, for praying for our French and Kituba language skills. Those prayers are being answered and we find that we can more fluently and clearly speak with the local people of the universal message of God's love and Justice...