Answers to Prayer

Well, today was a little more exciting than we had expected. We began our day with bible study as usual. Roy gave the last exam to the diploma students. As the students finished their exam, we called a meeting with all the students in order to address the issue of cheating. Rev. Samson spoke strongly to them about a call to holiness, and Dad shared as well. We ended with chance to come forward for prayer and many of them did. Please pray for them as they seek to change over from something that is accepted in their culture to a life style that goes against the norm. It cannot be easy.
As I have shared with you before, this is dry season, and this is the time of year that people burn off the bush in order to make their farms. Someone had lit a fire on the far side of one of the hills on the other side of the road from the Bible School. As the wind picked up this afternoon, the fire began to come down the hill... and initially was just something of interest...until the smoke began to block out the sun... and burning ashes were falling into the grass 200 yards away. Then, the fire jumped the road and began to burn towards some of the dorms. Many of the men were able to go and control it, but we lost many banana plants, pineapple plants and a small store of potatoes that a student had. Additionally, one of the students lost over half of his garden.
We thought that we had things under control...but remember I told you that the fire had been on the far side of the hill. Well another part of the same fire came around the edge of the hill, crossed the road on another side of the bible school and began to burn away from us...and then the wind changed. That fire began to burn straight towards the Bible School... and specifically the orchard and our house. The students all worked together and were fantastic!!! Women and children were running back and forth from the well with buckets while the rest of us attempted to fight the fire by beating it with branches and clearing a break. Unfortunately, the wind was coming towards us so strongly, that we couldn't even get to the base of the flames because the flames were coming towards us at a 45 degree angle. It kept driving us back no matter what we did. Obviously, I had been praying the whole time, but at that point I stopped and just said...out loud..."Lord please help us...we can't do it".
Just then, the wind changed.
We were able to get the water to the base of the flames... AND... the water had an effect. The flames began to die down, and we were able to walk through the burned area, dousing any areas of continuing flame. PRAISE GOD!
We were definitely protected by God.
1. We had planned on being gone today. If we had, we would have never known in time to do anything about the fire.
2. Snakes come out of a burning area. In fact, as the first fire burned down, two Gabon Vipers came out of the brush at an area that I was checking on. We were able to kill them both. However, in the second fire, we were walking through the grass toward the fire, putting our hands into it to pull it up and create a break. No snakes came toward us...which was a definite possibility.
3. Not one of the Bible School students was injured in any way in fighting the fire. WOW!

All the same...
A little less excitement tomorrow will be just fine with me!