Tonight, Abba brought us another awesome teaching. He was talking about the difference between the soul, body, and spirit; and the differences between the sin that is attached to each. If you want the whole teaching, you can email and ask Abba for it, because like most of his stuff, it was pretty long. Probably worth reading though. I would recommend it.
Anyway, unfortunately I was out of it for a lot of the teaching, because I was feeling a little sick. We don't know if it is from working out too hard at the altitude, or if I am really getting sick. I guess we will have to wait till morning to find out. If you all wouldn't mind praying that it isn't me getting sick and just having pushed myself a little far I would appreciate. I don't have enough time here to be sick for some of it.
Anyway, not much more to report from today. However, if I could restate the beginning, I would recommend Abba's teaching to anyone who hasn't heard him talk about it yet. It was really good. Bye for now, and I hope to be feeling excellent in the morning.

Faith and Poverty

Today was totally awesome. We didn't get to visit yesterday, so we ended up going this morning, and we decided to interview the people we visited. They all lived in pretty small houses, and being in them once again reminded me just how much we have in America. They were all having a little trouble with their businesses, so I was impressed with all their attitudes towards life. None of them blamed God, and they were all happy.
The last person we visited was a lady named Seline. Her house was two rooms instead of one, so I thought that she was probably a little better off than most of the other people we had visited, and I didn't expect to get quite as much out of the visit as I did out of the others. I couldn't have been more off in my thinking.
The first thing she said that hit me was that she made about 150 shillings on a good day, just under two dollars. That is a good day. Then she started telling a story about her two year old son. She had left him sleeping on a bed for about an hour, and when she came back he was dead. She said he had been fine and playing with his friends before he had gone to sleep, so she had no reason to expect him to die then.
Instead of that incident making her mad at God, she let it build her faith. She said that God must have had a reason for taking him, and that the experience helped her realize that our days are numbered and we don't know when our time is, so live for God now. You might not get another chance. I was totally blown away. Hearing her talk, and seeing her smile, and seeing the her faith made me reevaluate how I look at things and handle problems. It also made me suddenly grateful for everything that I have, and gave me a very positive outlook on life. I have been given so much, and God has a plan and reason for everything. So why not go all out? Live life to the fullest!
We need to remind ourselves that everything happens for a reason. So what if things seem to be going wrong? God has a plan for everything and it is always for the good of those who love Him and are called According to his purposes. I know that I love Him, and I'm in Africa on a mission trip, so I also believe that I am called according to His purpose, so that means God is reaching down from heaven and planning my life for my good, even if it doesn't look like things are good.
Anyway, I hope that encourages you all as much as it encouraged me. I don't know if it can, because seeing these things always has more of an impact that hearing them, but maybe it will give you all some inspiration to live a little more freely and let God handle your life. He can take care of us, and He will.

I thought I would take a moment to tell you all about one of my favorite things about George. Not my favorite thing, but one of my favorite things. That is his laugh. I can't describe it, but it is totally hilarious. You would have to hear it to understand. Anyway, I thought I would put that up here, because he really has an awesome laugh. Every time I hear it it gets me laughing.
Another thing I thought I'd mention is my whole name thing. When we started traveling, we figured out that I needed a nick name due to having the same name as Abba. However, finding a name that works has been a bit of a work.
The first one I got was Joel, due to him being the last guy to come to Africa. However, we wanted to find one for me that was mine. I suggested Pavio, which is the name Poncho gave me. We tried that, and it worked for Joy, but not really so well for George and Amma, so we continued the search. Also, George was trying to give me an African name. I'm still not quite sure why, but he wanted to give me one.
Anyway, after many tries, we finally found a few that worked. So as far as I know here are my names while I'm in Africa: Joel, Noah, Pavio, Robert, Kamau, and Bob Miller. George gave me the last three and the first three are for Amy, Joy, Amma and Abba.

So anyway, probably have a good post for tomorrow. We didn't get to visit today, so we are going to visit tomorrow, and we are going to have a meeting in the evening. It will be a good day. So signing off for now. Take luck and have a great day.

Yesterday we had a miracle occur. George cooked dinner for us. From what I understand, he has been promising to cook ever since they came the last time, so I wasn't really expecting him to come through. But he did and dinner was awesome. He cooked chicken, and it was some of the best chicken I've ever had. So a special thanks to George, good job.

Today though, we had a pretty good Kingdom Hikers meeting. It was scheduled for two, but being in Africa it didn't kick off till 3:35. Once we started though, they seemed to be pretty open to everything that Abba was saying. They have the same problem that our youth do in that they don't really like to talk during meetings and their faces don't show much as they listen. However, once Abba told them what he was looking for from them and gave them the option of waiting or jumping on board now, they were all on board. I think that they will do very well and I'm looking forward to seeing where all this goes. However, they are going to need prayer, just like our youth does so please pray for them. I think God has some big plans.

Tonight's meeting went quite well I thought. We didn't arrive till about half an hour after we were supposed to, but this is Africa so it didn't matter. There weren't that many people there due to the time. Things here close down at dinner time, and this was right about that time so there was only about four people there. We started with praying, which was very different from our prayer. When they pray, they all pray out loud at once. It is actually kind of neat, but it is also a little hard for me to get used to.

Then Abba talked out of Psalms, talking about evil people, God, and us. It was all good, but the part that stood out to me was when he was reading one of the verses and it said basically that the evil man lays around thinking about how he can do more evil. That got me thinking. If the evil man lays around thinking about how to spread more evil, we should probably be doing the opposite.

I know that I don't spend too much time thinking about how I can do good, but maybe I would be a better man if I did. I realized that I tend to take living a good life different than everything else. If I want to get good at an instrument, sport, or anything like that I'll spend a lot of time thinking about it and practicing. There is really no other way to get better. But for some reason I expect being loving is different, and that if I really want to be that way then I will just end up being the kind of man I want to be. I don't know why I think it is different, but hearing Abba talk I realized that it would probably be a good idea to plan to do good, and think up ideas of how I could practice, and watch all the time for opportunities to be a good Christian. I've been told that before, but it was one of those things that went in one ear and out the other. Now I guess I get it.

So as a parting thought. Try spending some time thinking about how you can do good. It isn't a sin to plan to help others and be loving.

Well, the experience Africa has already begun to change us, inside and out. Amy went to Nellie's shop yesterday and got her hair done in lots of little braids. Here are a couple of pictures.

We went out today and met a lady named Tereasa (I don't know her last name) and she was great. We all liked her a lot, and are looking at getting her out the the village when she comes back to the states in November. She has been here for almost two years and has a few different ministries she is working in to help the native people. She was awesome and I'm looking forward to seeing more of her.

We also went to a restaurant today where I got a t-bone steak, fries and veggies for a little under seven dollars. It was worth every penny. I must say I am enjoying the pricing over here. Everything is so cheap, except for appliances. Those are overpriced.

We have a meeting tonight, so I'll probably post something about that later tonight. Until then, I miss you all and have a great day.

Today was a pretty interesting day. It started by going to the gym, where I found out just how much I need to work out. However, the highlight was a meeting that we went to this evening.

About an hour or so before we were going to leave for the meeting the sky opened up. By the time we were going to leave it was so wet we didn't know if we would make it to the meeting and we were debating if we should even go at all. We decided to try to go, and headed out into the pouring rain.

There were rivers over the already bad roads, and we stalled twice due to water getting into the engine. The second time we didn't think that we would be able to get the van back up and running, and George was suggesting that we walk the last mile or so through the water. That wouldn't have been so bad, except the water was nowhere near to clean. Walking through it has the potential to make you very sick, so we didn't like the idea. However we did finally manage to get everything running and made it to the meeting.

The meeting itself was great. We started by singing (which was all in Swahili so I don't know exactly what they said) and then we all told a little about ourselves and Abba talked about looking for the church, finding it, and what God promised. However, my favorite part was the tea at the end. When we were done talking, they brought some tea and bread in and we had tea. We didn't actually talk about anything super spiritual or anything, but as I sat there I realized that for all intents and purposes I was taking communion with the Africans. Of course, it wasn't official, but somehow I felt honored to be sitting with all these people, who loved God and had struggled and lived a much harder life than me, and to be eating and drinking with them. I considered them to be my brothers and sisters and they considered me to be a part of their family. It was an awesome feeling, and I think it is what God promised us. I was with people that had a different culture, different skin color, a different language, and a different homeland and yet we were family. It was a great feeling.

So here I am one more at the end with no idea of how to end this, so the end. Love you all.