I want to write some personal stuff here, but there´s a lot to write and I still don´t have my journal with me, from which I wish to take a few things.
But let me say that I have for some time felt a storm coming, mostly in the way of spiritual things, but I do not in anyway disconnect that from real life experience. And I will venture to suggest that I believe that storm is upon me. I am not in the thick of it and I am not suffering, but great challenges are before me and I am on the outskirts going in. I don´t know how I can communicate this appropriately with details. I don´t really know it better than a feeling. But I find myself more and more reliant on prayer, reliant on God really, just to be in a good state of mind. If I do not find time and opportunity to kneel and pray fervently before him, I find myself gloomy and irritable. Then when I do so, I find that I can face the day with goodness, humility and peace. There is also a lot of spiritual activity around here - bad stuff, really. John, the head of Kadesh here in Beira, says there is a strong sexual spirit here, and that if you´re not strong and wary then people often succumb to it. He gave examples of people who have visited here who have had or who have been problems. There is also a lot of witchcraft and voodoo in the neighborhood. I don´t feel this all the time, and really I don´t feel it in terms of having the gift of discernment between spirits, which I have never claimed to have. But I do feel that being here is very very challenging, more so than the past month in Swaziland.
Otherwise, I am doing well. I finished David Copperfield, a brilliant Dickens novel, which is his most autobiographical work. It was a very long book, but well worth it. Dickens has a wit and a storytelling ability that are marvelous to behold. But now I´m stuck without very good reading material. I brought one other book with me, which looked promising at first, being about the high seas and cool adventures in the 16th century, but it turned out to be rather trashy, overly sexual and unnecessarily blatant and perverse, so I put it down and I do not plan to pick it up again. So I´ll have to rely on the Bible and my own writing, which I believe will be fine for the next few weeks. But I´ll definitely need more material on the trip home.
Going back to the challenges before me, I should point out that I am not intimidated or daunted, because I feel God has been preparing me for what is ahead, and that my reliance on him and my attentiveness to his Spirit has been amplified for this purpose. I feel a stronger sense of trust than I have had in years, a trust I believe I had lost or which had waned in the last four years that I will call the interrim period of my life. What is to come, I cannot guess, but I will not worry, or I plan not to. My greatest fear that this waxing trust will once again wane with the changing of the seasons of my life, but even that I believe is only a slight fear and I entrust it to God to keep from disrupting his plans for me.
Anyway, I am, and we are all, in great need of prayer here in Mozambique. Thanks to everyone who has been paying attention and who has cared to give and to pray and to wish us well.
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