Lesotho Update

Greetings from Lesotho,

Praise:

• The weekend Bible School opened with seven students last Friday.  We are expecting the total number of students to be around ten once everyone gets their schedules rearranged.  Praise the Lord for young men who want to prepare for the Lord's work!
• We praise God for some good reports from several congregations.  One congregation in particular has gone through some big challenges recently when they lost their pastor to moral failure.  The people are unified and growing spiritually in spite of the problems.  Please pray that they will continue to serve God and grow!

Prayer:

• Please pray for us tomorrow as we hold the funeral of the converted witchdoctor that we wrote about last month.  The immediate family is standing strong in salvation and has chosen to carefully avoid all forms of ancestor worship.  There will almost surely be opposition from extended family and friends since Mr. Mokhele was a witchdoctor.  Pastor Kali went there yesterday to help them.  I will be leaving early Saturday morning to join him.  Pray their faith will stay strong and that more people will be converted as a result of the funeral. 
  
• On Sunday we are having the dedication of the church at Ha Seleso.  Please pray for God's blessing on the service.  The Pastor Molise anticipates quite a few visitors from the community. 
  
• Please pray for Pastor Tsikane Pheko's big family.  He has taken in ten orphans this year!  The youngest girl (I think she's three or four years old) is HIV positive.  Praise the Lord that she is responding well to the anti-retro viral drugs.  She is getting much stronger again and is able to play with the other children and go to preschool. 
  

News:

• Lesotho has been getting lots of rain!  Almost every day it at least sprinkles a little.  Everything is beautiful and green, and the corn that survived the dry spring looks like it will do well.  The down side of the wet weather is that we have had to cancel a tent meeting.  When the soil saturated, the tent stakes pull out very easily whenever the wind blows. 
  

Hearing for the First Time

This past Sunday Pastor Kali went to the new preaching point that we wrote about a couple entries ago. Two girls and a mother came to the service from a village several miles away. They had heard rumors about a church that was starting in the village and some "new Gospel" that was being preached called "salvation." After the service they stayed to pray and ask questions. The mother told Nt. Kali that this was the first time they had ever heard anything about salvation. She then asked what would happen to their relatives who had already died before they heard this Good News. Of course it was a hard question to answer, but they seemed to understand about the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit to show us right and wrong through our conscience.

Please pray for us as we have opportunities like this to reach the totally unreached!

Rain and More Rain!

Hi Everyone,

It's been a cloudy, rainy week in Lesotho! There was a little sunshine
last Sunday, but we didn't see it again until yesterday. Today was partly cloud for a while in the morning, but when we got out of church at 1:00pm people hurried to their homes trying to beat another rain storm. We had about 3 1/2 inches so far since Tuesday night. Our solar electric is pretty much run down, so I won't write much.

Monday I went to the South African High Commission in Maseru to once again try to get visas so we can get a border pass to cross into South Africa without standing in long lines. After waiting for quite sometime I was informed that our applications were good, but they would have to keep our passports at least 10 days because of the backlog of applications. Since we had to go to Ladybrand later in the week, I could not leave them that long. They suggested that I bring them back in a couple weeks because they will have finished the backlog which is
mostly related to students trying to get visas to study in South Africa. (Most universities open the new school year in February sometime.)

Thursday we went to Ladybrand. In the morning we did some errands and took care of business. In the afternoon we visited Miss Carol. Her sister was there so we enjoyed meeting her. We helped them move some of Miss Carol's things to storage in preparation for her to go on furlough next month. From there we went to Uncle Johan and Aunt Hessie's for a
birthday celebration for Kristen Bump and me. We had tacos. Yummy! We came home that evening because I had a lot to do on Friday.

Saturday I went with Nt. Pheko and some young men to Ha Thafeng to get a piece of land ready for a temporary tin church. On the way there, we got a message saying that we shouldn't put the tin church there because the owner of the property was a "dangerous" person. God gave us grace in the eyes of the chief who loaned us a part of his fallow field for the church. While we were there we also went with the chief to the counselor's house to work on getting a site of our own there. It seems like we will probably get one eventually. Both the chief and the counselor seemed favorable. So, instead of doing a hard days work moving rocks in the mud, we had meetings. It was all providential. (Or am I just lazy???) We hope to move the temporary church there in the next couple weeks.

Today we were at Matukeng for church. There were quite a few children and lady from Ha Teko visited for the first time. She stayed after the service for prayer. Some of the regular people weren't there. I'm not sure what kept them away.

Well, that's what's going on in Lesotho

Thanks for your prayers!

Glenn, Stephanie, & Kaitlyn Gault

Planting a New Church

Back in November last year three girls by chance met Rev. Kali in Maseru. One of the girls was going blind as a result of witchcraft. They came up to Pastor Kali and asked him if he knew where they could find a saved pastor to pray for the girl who was going blind. He told them he was a pastor and saved and would be glad to pray for them. The owner of the shop where they met let them into a back room where they could pray. The girl was miraculously healed!

The people of the village where these girls lived started calling Rev. Kali begging him to come and hold a weekend tent meeting for them. Several people got saved, so we've been visiting them every few weeks since then.

During our Christmas conference, a dying witchdoctor came to Pastor Kali's house begging for prayer. He was on the verge of death, but knew he was not ready to die. Once again God worked a miracle. The witchdoctor was not only converted, but God also touched his body. As soon as the conference was over, he made arrangements for pastors to come to his home to help him burn all of his witchcraft paraphernalia. As a result of the burning and the service, his whole family was also converted! The round foundation wall is what was left of a hut that the witchdoctor used in some of his ceremonies. He asked the very boys who had come to these ceremonies to help him tear it down!

Two Sundays ago I visited this village with Rev. Kali. We found that Mr. Mokhele (the converted witchdoctor) still had a clear testimony to salvation even though he was once again very sick and weak. We prayed for another miracle of healing, but a few days later God saw fit to take him home to his eternal home in heaven. He will be sadly missed, but his testimony and remarkable conversion will not be forgotten. The picture is the little flock of believers who gathered the Sunday I was there. As I'm writing this Rev. Kali's assistant pastor from Ha Motheho is in the village with some other young people spending the week holding evangelistic campaigns and visiting door to door witnessing in the surrounding villages. Pray that this new little flock will grow in faith and numbers! God is at work in Lesotho!

The School Picnic

The 31st of January was the annual school picnic in Ladybrand. As you can see from the pictures, everyone seemed to have a good time!


Both students and parents enjoyed playing water balloon volley ball!

After they got the hang of it, these two boys loved the three-legged race!