Greetings from Lubango!

Greetings from Lubango! The children, Jackie and I drove in on Friday to be
here for SIM's monthly team prayer meeting as well as to celebrate Peter
Ritchie's 50th birthday (Peter and his wife, Areni, work with SIM in
literacy.

Stirling and Firmino and the herdmens arrived on in Lubango on Saturday at
4PM. He said that on Thursday at 3 PM when he talked with me on the radio
they had hit a real low in morale and despaired of getting the truck out of
the mud - just after that I sent you the update. The truck was a double
articulated semi and with the load of animals everything weighed about 45
tons - all stuck in the mud since 1 AM - 16 men worked all day to get the
truck unstuck! The truck -i.e. the tractor without the trailers came
unstuck at around 5 PM, then the first trailer out at 6 PM and the second
trailer at 7 PM - they were trucking toward Cavango by 8 PM. THANKS for
your prayers! We believe it gave them the stamina to go on - you must
understand that they had been on the road since Tuesday at 10 AM and had
spent a good bit of Wednesday stuck in sand. They arrived at 11:40 PM at
Cavango, had a quick supper and by 2 AM had the cattle unloaded - though
stiff and sore from the trip they all arrived alive!

On Friday at 7 AM Stirling was awoken by the church leaders to preach!
People in that area are keen for teaching and preaching since they were so
isolated during the war. The rest of Friday was spend looking to the cattle
and getting rested for Saturday's return trip.

We are in Lubango today and will head back to Tchincombe tomorrow - that is
the current plan!

Thanks so much for your prayers!!
Donna for all of us!