Sabbath day, April 4
I have to write this while it is still fresh on my mind. It is Sabbath night and I am safe under my mosquito net reflecting on the day! Today was surely a blessed Sabbath day!
My sermon today was Daniel 6. All that I prayed for I received: !!!!
First of all I contracted a nasty cold. (This is incredible)! Strangely, just before sunset Friday evening as I was studying on my sermon, SUDDENLY my head got totally stuffed up and my nose began to really pour!! That is very unusual for me. In fact I do not remember doing that before. Here there is no paper to blow, nor is that a custom of the people. I prayed that God would please stop the pouring so that I could preach! My head was entirely stopped up and nose pouring all night and Sabbath morning! However: The entire time, that I was preaching, my nose was dry, my head clear!!! My prayer for no distractions, a larger audience, and clearness of thought with a strong appeal that only the Holy Spirit could give, was also given to me!!! I was praising the Lord after church!
Let me add, just as suddenly as that “cold” in my head started, it stopped Sabbath afternoon! I know the devil is doing this because I remember when I fell that time a while ago, not really hurting my wrist, but by Friday evening what pain in my wrist! Excruciating! It went away as I prayed about it just before my sermon!!! Isn’t it marvelous how much the Saviour loves us and takes care of us and beats down the devil!
A patient came in shorty after church with a mouthful of rotten teeth. One in particular was a problem. It was half eaten out with a cavity from underneath the tooth. I don’t know how he could bare the pain, it was terrible, so he wanted me to pull it out. It was the lower 2nd molar which is the hardest position to numb up and to pull. I also knew that I could never pull that tooth out with the roots in tact because there was so little of the tooth actually attached to the root. I prayed as always with the patient and started in. Sure enough it broke off immediately and I went after the roots. God helped me get every bit of rotten roots out. I also pulled the front tooth out. It was loose and very painful. The man was so grateful and happy when he left with full instruction as to how to care for his poor filthy teeth.
A little while later, I did “surgery” on BletJaw’s hand. You see ever since January 9, when we were in the rain and using the winch, he had gotten a splinter of metal from the cable in his right palm. I had tried unsuccessfully to get it out a long time ago, and now it was paining him whenever he had to press on it. Especially when driving the motorbike. You know how it is when something has gone through all 3 layers of skin. It is like looking for a needle in a haystack! I have seen the ER doctors unable to locate the foreign body many times and just give up. I needed a magnet because I thought it would attract the metal, but I of course had none. I prayed with BletJhaw earnestly for help to get this out. After numbing the place and digging with a fine syringe needle and splinter forcepts, I got it out!! How thrilling that God has already answered so many of my prayers all day long!
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Snake in the bedroom!
Next BletJhaw goes into his room to spread the mat out on his floor, lay down and take a nap. It is hot here now in the daytime and he feels cooler lying on a mat on the floor. Two mats were rolled up together standing up in the corner. He went to grab them in the center so that he could unroll it, but an unseen hand stopped him from grabbing it. Just in the nick of time he saw it! A big fat green snake – lying, with the fat part of his body right over the green part of the center of the mat!!
BletJhaw called to me to get my camera and went outside to get a fat stick. This snake is very poisonous of course and was right in his bedroom. It must have come in through the open window sometime in the night. After the horrid creature lay dead, we measured it – 57 inches long! Quite a big deadly snake. We must be careful how we go to bed and shake and check everything first! We will take precautions, but we will not fear because God has protected us from innumerable dangerous things in the past and we know nothing can touch us without His permission.
Let me add here that a man in the village here in BYT was behind our house one day last week and said that he saw 2 large cobras very close to our house! Don’t worry, because whether we see them or not they are there! Probably there have been many many more that we never knew about.
Isn’t it just beautiful that we have the gift of prayer? What a comfort to take everything to Jesus, pour out our hearts to Him, we can fully trust His answers and His care!