For prayer

Today they did a bronchoscopy in Madrid and found that the bronchial tube is down to 6 mm which is half of it’s normal width but more than Dr. Starnes in Cincy expected at this point. The Doc here said that the dilations (widening of my bronchial tube every three months) will not do any good and he recommends either just living with the 6 mm bronchial tube (which he says will hold at that width) or having another invasive surgery to fix the stenosis (pinching of the bronchial tube like a bent garden hose). I am waiting to hear what Dr. Starnes in Cincy thinks of this. She is supposed to be calling the doc in Spain today to talk about his findings. Then she is supposed to call me and tell me her opinion.

I’ll let you know when I hear from her. I am not sure if this is good news, bad news, or no news at all. We’re drawing no assumptions yet, just waiting on and trusting in our great God of heaven.

Meanwhile I have a wonderful wife back in North Africa who has just learned to drive stick shift and is venturing out all alone with the car for the first time. The roads and traffic in North Africa are nothing like Europe or America. She is doing great. She actually got rear-ended today by a girl about 20 years old. In the traditional Muslim style of handling things the girl went hysterical for about 20 minutes saying it was my wife’s fault. Right. It’s usually the fault of the person in front of you who isn’t moving, right? So a police officer arrived and this girl continued to yell at the police officer. My wife left the scene since minimal damage was done to hear car while the two (along with a considerable crowd) continued to yell. Pretty proud of her. She’s a tough lady (and beautiful). I’ve only been gone 36 hours and look at me falling apart.

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Come see the Christian!

We started the Ancient Prophet’s study this week and it’s already drawing fire, so I guess it working!

Suffian went on Thursday afternoon with a portable DVD player, the Prophet’s DVD, and his Bible to the house of two friends. Here tribes are very important. The connection one has with his tribe or those from his village is life long and close to being as strong as an immediate family. So Suffian is from a village of 200 people. Few people stay in Suffian’s village (or villages like it) since there is no work there. Once a boy grows up he moves out to find work. The families in these villages often have 10 kids or more. As a result, these mountain villages are like population factories for the cities. Many of them never learn to read well or read at all. Suffian is the exception. So, Suffian held the Bible study with two young men living in our city from his village. They called a couple other and by the end of it, he had shared the story of Adam and the protoevangelium (first promise of the Messiah) with eight.
This caused no small stir in our city. One of the young men at the Bible study works with Suffian on a construction crew of more than 30 men. Yesterday, Saturday, the word had spread like wild fire that Suffian was a Christian and was trying to convert people. They laughed and said, “Come see the Christian!”. All day they blasted Suffian with questions. “Why do you worship the cross? Why do you think Jesus was God’s Son? Why don’t you believe in the prophet Mohammed? etc) Suffian boss advised him to shutup before some killed him. Suffian informed him that he couldn’t be scared shut by threats of death. So, seems like the prophets study is working.
Morad found an open audience with two young men from the south of our country named Abd Allah (They both have the same name). At least once a week we go out and witness to people in parks. This is how Morad explains to me the normal conversation between him and person x:
M- Pretty day.
X- Yep.
(Other pleasantries exchanged)
M- So are you a Muslim?
X- Of course! Aren’t you?
M- No, I’m a Christian.
X- So you aren’t North African?
M- Yes I am.
X- That’s impossible. We don’t have any Christians here.
M- Sure you do. There’s a bunch of us.
X- So your mom and dad were Christians?
M- No. They were Muslims.
X- Why did you become a Christian?
M- I’d love to tell you why…
From there Morad shares the gospel starting with Adam. He has started a few Ancient Prophets Bible studies that way. This is a big prayer request. So many North Africans don’t even know there are Christian in their country and neither have the ever heard the gospel. We have much work to do.
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Pray for The Ancient Prophets Outreach

We are starting this week an outreach using a Bible study called “The Ancient Prophets”. It is a series of six lessons about the prophets and how they all pointed to Christ. They are in order: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah. We take the “God’s Story” film recorded in the North African dialect of Arabic which shows the stories of all these prophets. Many people we know are curious about Christianity but not ready to believe. Instead of shooting the whole gospel at them at once and then having nothing else to talk about, we are going to try to do it in six sessions in order to get the seeker more into the Bible.

To teach each lesson will take about one hour. The video part each time is about 15 minutes and then the rest is question and answer and a conclusion with an explanation of the prophecies and how it meets our need for forgiveness of sin. I taught the first lesson on Tuesday to four guys and this week we are all going to teach this same lesson to an unbelieving seeker. Suffian is sharing it with two guys from his village tomorrow. I and Munir will be meeting with two different guys on Sunday to do this lesson.
One cool thing we are doing with the money that was donated for the mp3 players since we had more given than we needed is that we are buying two portable dvd players. These allow us to take the DVD anywhere and teach this lesson. Please pray. I’ll report more.
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