Newsletter (October 27, 2011)

Dear all, Timothy’s medication finally turned up two weeks ago. For some unknown reason, the packet took more than three months to arrive, even though it was supposed to come by air. We noticed most mail sent to us in June/July had long delays, so there must be some problems somewhere. Still the postal system here is reliable and we normally get things that are sent to us or to TCCA. So we thank God for keeping the medication safe. Timothy did manage to get some medication here. The pharmacy can now supply an equivalent one produced in Germany which is three times cheaper than the South African one. If the supply is steady, then perhaps in future we will just get them here.

Rain came quite early this year and the first two weeks of October was very cool with some rain and thunder. So we have high hopes that this October will not be too hot. However, all our Zambian friends warned us that, in general, that means we will have a very hot summer. We hope they are wrong but things turn out exactly as they have said. Last week was hot and this week is even hotter. The temperature gets up to 35–36 degrees during the day and it is still very hot at night. The forecast is up to 38–40 degrees later on and there is absolutely no sign of rain around Ndola. If you look at the weather map of Africa in BBC Weather, you will see there is lots of rain just north of Zambia, maybe in northern Zambia, but it is not coming south. Eventually the rain will come and everyone is looking forward to that. Just as we wrote this rain suddenly came and it is such a relief to see it and it has become much cooler.

Pastor has asked Timothy to preach again in November. He was also asked to help and preach in a Christian fellowship in a business school. Please pray that our Lord will give him messages to preach that are relevant to the believers here.

The students in the college just opposite our house staged a brief riot on Tuesday morning. Police came and fired teargas to disperse them. Amazingly we never knew this had happened until we read the newspaper the next day! We thank our Lord for his continuous protection throughout our stay here. With Christian love.