Funeral

About two years ago I met a man at one of our Bible studies named Joseph Monde. He was about 68 years old and he was very inquisitive about what I believed about God. He became faithful to that Bible study and a few weeks later he announced that he was ready to trust fully in Jesus Christ and be saved. I baptized Mr Monde and he immediately wanted to start helping me in my ministry because he could speak English pretty well and saw I was struggling with my Bemba. We started going together to a new village and he was instrumental in planting a church there. He was always willing to go with me wherever I went. He would go camping with me and sometimes we would be working together 3-4 days out of a week. I never paid Mr. Monde anything for his work. When we would finish teaching a study he would ask "where are we going tomorrow" and I would insist that he rest because he was older man. He would then explain to me that he doesn't have many years left and would rather spend them working for the Lord.

Mr. Monde became severely anemic about 2 months ago. The local clinic could not determine the cause but we encouraged him to eat healthier and bought some vitamin B12 for him. He got a little better and started walking around again. I took him to one last Bible study about 3 weeks ago and he was so week he could hardly talk, and when he did speak his words did not make sense. After that he just stayed at home slowly lost more of his strength. This past Tuesday night after I received a message from his daughter and I took him to the local clinic again. Mr. Monde passed away on Wednesday morning.

Yesterday we had a funeral for Mr. Monde and I was able to preach a message of Hope and Victory from the life of Mr. Monde through the work of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Most people in this culture knew him a BaShikulu Bwaliya (the grandfather of Bwaliya). Please pray that God will work through this event and praise God for His victory in the life of BaShikulu Bwaliya.

Joseph Monde (BaShikulu Bwaliya) 1941-2010

Heating Up!

Well with temperatures rising to 104.5 outside and 90 degrees inside we are trying to find ways to beat the heat. I was out on the river and saw these boys fishing naked. They begged me to take a picture and gave me their best karate pose.

Despite the high temps Hutch has mastered potty training. You can see he just polished off some chocolate after another successful trip to the toilet.