God's Timing

“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord”… what a comforting verse! We have seen this promise so vividly played out from the Lord this past week in making our plans to go to Congo…. Or should I say “changing” our plans to go to Congo.

As most of you know, John and I were supposed to leave for Congo this past Friday with Billy and Joanna Coppedge. In the beginning stages of planning this trip, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for a survey trip to a new part of Congo where we know two pastors who would like to possibly be trained by us. But as the days went on, it became apparent that this was not God’s timing for this trip.

First, on Monday, we found out that the more experienced missionaries who were supposed to be traveling with us were unable to come due to their insurance on their vehicle not allowing them to take their car out of the country. Soon after that, we heard from one of our pastor contacts that the guest house we were supposed to stay in was booked. At that point, we decided as a team that it would be best if Billy & John went without us girls for this trip. Then, late Thursday evening, we found out that the plane we had scheduled with Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) for Billy & John could take them to Congo, but did not have a flight back for them! So needless to say, it was at this point that we sensed God was closing the door, and none of us traveled to Congo this week!

God has confirmed that this change in plans is totally of Him in so many ways. For example, one of the pastors we were planning to meet in Congo found out last minute that he had to go to Kenya right away to deal with some family matters and would not be able to have even seen us for one day in Congo. For us, we were quite tired from hosting visitors and traveling to Kampala. It would have been difficult for John to give 100% in preaching, as they had requested him to. Furthermore, we have some new friends here in Arua who happened to need our friendship more that day than ever. Their little boy, who is not even two, fell from his high-chair onto a concrete floor and got a concussion. (He is okay now.) They have had it kind of hard since moving here to Uganda, and because we didn’t end up leaving for Congo on Friday, we were able to have them over for the day and stay the night with us and just love on them and give them the R&R that they needed. Not to mention that I (Erica) had a little chest infection from the dust on our safari, so these past few days have given me time to rest and heal as well.

God is so good, and His plans are always better than ours. We are so thankful that His hand was so evident in where He was leading us this week. We couldn’t ask for a better Counselor, Father, Leader, or Friend than sweet Jesus! He is so faithful! And THANK YOU ALL so much for your prayers! Although we didn’t go to Congo, Jesus definitely answered your prayers by leading us into His plans, rather than ours. We would love it if you would continue to pray for His leading as to when to re-schedule this trip!

SAFARI VIDEO!

We had the amazing blessing of taking our two friends that visited us from NJ last week, Kristen & Jenna, on a Safari in Murchison Park, just a couple hours from our home! We made a short video of some footage of lions, elephants, & giraffe for you! If you’d like to see it, just click on the “Ugandan Safari” link to the right, under videos! (My favorite is the lion walking straight towards us! It was kind of scary as I was on the roof of the car, but of course it was incredible at the same time!)