THE COFFEE POT

April 2002

January saw us travelling to Cyprus for a conference. In the week we were there we saw some good times of worship together and a growing spirit of unity and cooperation between the staff workers for this area. As a follow up from our time there, Donita travelled to Jordan to meet with some of the other workers in the area. Donny will be writing a follow-up series to be used in the Middle East area.

We were pretty excited to have Donny's Mom come and stay with us for three weeks in January and February. It was great to be able to share first hand some of what life is like here and play tourist guide for a while. Visitors are always welcome!

You may remember a youth team who came out from Holland last April. We were so excited to have another team come out recently to spend time with us. With some of our key leaders in Impact, we went to the house of prayer and had an afternoon of worship and prayer. It was a time that Glen and Donita had been praying for, where the young people could have an experience of worship with no distractions, such as playing instruments.

The Protestant Church in Oman (PCO) has recently acquired an interim senior pastor through the Reformed Church of America (RCA). Willis Jones (good surname), his wife Pat, his daughter Amy, and their dog, Caedfile, arrived in February and will be with us for a year. With a larger than life personality and a liberal way with words, Willis seems to have his head screwed on. It might be of interest to point out that the dog, Caedfile, arrived in Oman with Willis and a week and a half before Pat and Amy. He also rides in the front seat of the car, and has been sighted at the office. We think that's pretty funny.

We were also privileged to have David Huggett come to Oman. David is probably more commonly known as the husband of Joyce Huggett (author from the UK). He came and led some retreats and also spoke to our youth group about different ways in which we spend time with God. Being a 'mature' person, we were not sure how the kids would relate to Him. However, he had them on the edge of their seats for over an hour! Donny was able to (actually, more forcibly extracted to) stop work for a couple of days and go on a retreat with three other members of the congregation. She said it was a great time of refreshing, and gave her space to seek the Lord, and spend some time in worship.

The most exciting, time-consuming, and faith testing event for us has been a Project Serve Team we were taking to Beirut, Lebanon on the 27^th March - 5^th April. It began towards the end of last year when one of our young people was asking about short-term trips that he could go on. As word got around it turned out that quite a few of the young people also had a heart to serve. Project Serve is a yfc initiative. Teams have been sent to Lebanon on a number of occasions before. Our team was going to serve in a girl's orphanage called Cedar Homes (for more info see www.cedarhome.optusnet.com.au/about_us.html). They are in the process of finishing off their new home. Our team, consisting of 6 boys, 8 girls and 4 leaders, would have been helping with manual labour during the day and spending time with the girls in the evening, leading small groups, dramas, and just getting to know them. The age of the girls ranges from 3-18. As part of the trip, we were to meet up with another youth group for an Easter camp.

You may have noticed by now that it has been a case of "going to..." and "would have...". We found out the day before we were due to leave, after weeks of ringing the Lebanese Embassy, that our application had a couple of small discrepancies. It had been sitting in the immigration department in Beirut for a month with no notification of its status. So we frantically sent off the correct information via friends in Lebanon, and prayed very hard. However, it seems that the Lord chose to answer our prayers in a different way than we expected.

Our visas did not come through in time for a re-scheduled departure, so we had to postpone our trip as three days in Lebanon was too short. To give you an idea of the desire in our kids hearts, more than one day was spent in fasting and prayer asking Him to release the visa's for us to go. We thought it might be a glory story of how He brought it through just in time. It was quite a disappointment to them and us, when we realised that we wouldn't be able to go.

A situation like this raises all sorts of issues in our minds. Why couldn't we go? Did God not hear my prayers? Had we mis-heard Him and all along he'd been saying it wasn't right? We were so willing to serve, why didn't He just use us?

If you asked us why we thought God didn't send us, we couldn't give you a straight answer. It's just not that simple. Yes, it could be because of the Arab Summit in Beirut, or the uprising between Israel and Palestine (which has now escalated to bombing in the south of Lebanon). Surely He could have kept us safe from all that! Maybe there's another time that He wants us to go there, or maybe He just wanted us to be here for something else, or maybe... maybe... Maybe, we just don't know, and perhaps won't ever know.

But there is one thing we can say; He has brought us as a team to a place where we had to completely rely on Him. We had some great times of worship and prayer. You could not manufacture a situation like this to teach someone about faith. That is life, and that is the hand of the Lord working in the hearts of His people. Maybe this is what it's really all about. It doesn't matter what we are doing for the Lord, so much as who we are in Him and our desire to see Him glorified. One of our young people who was really struggling with it all came to us with this verse: 2 Chronicles 5:13b-14 "Then the temple of the Lord was filled with a cloud, and the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of God."

As part of the fund raising for the Project Serve Team, we released a CD of songs and poems written by members of Impact. Having sold over 200 copies, it has been a big hit and was a significant part of the fund raising. We also had a car wash, talent show, and three bake sales to help us along the way.

Recently, Glen had a trip to Dubai to get another visit visa. While he was there we received news from the Religious Affairs Department that our application for a visa as an office manager in the PCO had been denied with the additional note that he can never get a visa through the church. So, you could say that door has been shut. We are now sending out Glen's CV to the schools in Muscat, to see what the possibilities are for tutoring music. We know the Lord has something in mind, it's just a matter of pushing on doors to see which one will open. Please continue to pray through this with us. It has been quite unsettling for Glen, particularly coming from the Australian cultural background that says you are defined by your job, and that you find your security in your job. In one sense it's like being unemployed, but constantly busy with lots of things to do.

To see some recent photos follow this link: www.oocities.org/glendonny/photos.html