Almost Time to Travel

First Birthday (almost)

Western and Elizabeth work for us, but many times they end up being more work for us and so we remind ourselves continuously that they are a ministry for JM2Z. We pour into them and we pray that they see Jesus' love clearly. So even though Baby Western isn't our baby, he has sure added to our workload. That said, he has crawled his way right into our hearts and we sure do love this little guy. We will be leaving Zimbabwe just before Baby Western's first birthday. We can't believe it's been almost a year since he was born! We made a few cupcakes to celebrate, which was his first taste of cake (I think Western and Elizabeth enjoyed the cupcakes as much as the baby!). We also got him a couple toys for him to open. We were sure to take pictures of Elizabeth with him and also Western with him, so that they could have individual pictures with Baby Western.

He is crawling now and can pull himself up to stand in his camp-cot. Yolanda is sad we will miss his first steps, but by the time we return next January, he will be running around and getting into everything. We certainly do not have a childproof house, so we will probably need to be putting breakables out of reach pretty soon :-) 

Shortage

To say that the cash shortage (which has gone on for the past 2 years) is crippling the economy, is an understatement. Even in the "good" times, gas stations may not always have gas. Sometimes they do, sometimes not. It goes back and forth. Sometimes diesel is hard to find and other times regular is hard to find. We are blessed, having two vehicles; one that takes diesel and one that takes regular. We keep the tanks as full as possible, so we have never been desperate. If gas stations don't have any then they'll have it a few days later. A couple months ago, it was diesel that was running short, but currently it's regular. There are 6 or 7 gas stations in Chinhoyi and for the past 3 weeks, only two will have regular gas at any given time. Most people can only afford to put a few dollars in at a time, which means they need to fill up pretty regularly. This leads to large lines as you can see.

Watch the 1 minute video below from downtown Chinhoyi (there are 35 cars in this line!). Like I said, we've never been desperate for gas before, but we just pray that it stays available.

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Electi0n

Please be in prayer for the country, as the electi0n is just less than 2 weeks away (July 30). There are p0litical ads on billboards all over the place and posters everywhere. The presldent was just in Chinhoyi today, speaking at a rally. We watched his helicopters fly right by our house as he came into town. There were truckloads of people who came to attend with big speakers on top of the vehicles with messages about the campai9n.

Please pray for a fair electi0n, safety for all, and a positive trajectory in the coming months and years. Zimbabwe is a very safe country (possibly one of the safest in Africa; where else do you have a miIitary c0up without anyone getting hurt?), but during an electi0n cycle violence is not uncommon, so please pray (Grammatical errors are intentional).

Coming to the U.S.!

We are flying out of Harare on Thursday (just 35 hours from now!). We have been crazy busy setting up the next 6 months here so that ministry can keep going while we are gone. We are confident that Janeece will do a wonderful job keeping the women's groups going strongly and have everything running smoothly at the house.

We will arrive in London on Friday morning to visit with Yolanda's mother. Since our last vacation time was 2 years ago, the board approved some time for us to rest, relax, and recoup before beginning our speaking engagements and catching up with so many of you in person. We will be traveling 10,000+ miles within the US while we are stateside, so we figured the perfect time to regroup physically, emotionally, and spiritually would be at this point.

Our next blog will update you all on our itinerary while stateside. We have been planning the last several months and reaching out to new churches as well. Our need is great, but our God is even greater - we are excited to see how the Lord decides to meet the needs of JM2Z so we can continue to faithfully serve the women and children here in Zimbabwe.

We would appreciate prayer for safety in travel as we have long flights, layovers, etc. Please pray for positive visits and updates when we meet with churches and friends, sharing all that God has been doing in Zimbabwe in the past 2+ years. We are excited to see as many of you as possible and are eager to catch up in person soon!