Books for Africa Library Project, Inc.Establishing libraries in rural areas of West Africa |
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Greetings friends, Hilda and I have seen many of you in our months in Ohio, but even if not seen we feel you are a part of our mission. In fact, the missionary is sent out from a community and you on this mailing small mailing list represent the community that sends us. Hilda and I may do the footwork but the community that sends us is our root. Very often in the past when the missionary has gone astray and been more of an embarassment than an envoy of peace and love, then the fault lay in a tenuous relationship with the home community. Now, it is leaving day. A ride comes for us at 2pm and we are on our way. Our bags are packed and we're ready to go, so the song goes. A month ago we filled a forty foot container full of 33,000 books, some medical supplies, some rosaries, and about 40 folding chairs that Hilda got cheap and earmarked for use at our annual in-service. God is good. That is often my testimony in the e-mails. Here is another story. This past Monday I was at a local bank doing last minute business. A donor in California had sent a donation for the work of some friends in Accra, the capital city, who are trying to establish a half-way house for alcoholics. I gave the money to the officer and the bank and she was finding it impossible to have the money wired to our friends bank in Accra. I knew it could be done because last week on the first try I wired him some money. After twenty minutes and the eleventh try, it occured to me to pray. This might be something that can only be yielded to by prayer. I began praying, and then I began asking God to unblock any spiritual forces hindering the transmission. I continued to pray silently while the bank officer sat in front of me and again typed the form on the computer. All at once the transmission went through. It was sudden and so close to my prayers that I thought there must be a connection. "That was strange", the bank officer exclaimed. I told her I had been praying and that I thanked God for the help. She didn't seem to recognize the connection but I believe it was there. There has been a lot to get done in preparation for the trip and it would have been a hardship to return to the bank the next day to try again. Immediately after this transaction the teller standing next to us came over with fifteen one hundred dollar bills. That also was more than coincidence. Hilda and I carry a good bit of cash on our person because the best rate of exchange from dollars to cedis is through foreign exchange bureaus and not the banks. However, these bureaus are fussy and they give the best rates only for hundreds and fifty dollar bills, and they have to be very clean or they won't accept them. Well, in addition to sending the wire transmission to Ghana the bank officer also had tried to get me $2300 in new hundred bills. We tried every teller's drawer and came up 13 short of clean hundred dollar bills. That is until the wire went through and the teller next to us had a new customer who made a deposit of $1500 in clean hundred dollar bills. I look on these incidents of help as unmerited favor from God, and can say again, "God is so good."
We thank God for the mission of Books For Africa and we thank you for your support and prayers. Hilda and Kirt
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