Although it’s an ironic time, it is so good and exciting for me to have my first visitor to Nampula here! Pastor Irving Steggles pastors Birchleigh Baptist Church in Kempton Park, and he has known and supported me personally in my missionary ambitions since the days when the church had just gotten started and I was regularly playing the piano for them. Poor Pastor Irving only got in at 22h00 last night, after his flight got delayed by 3 hours – luckily he was able to sit in the Executive Lounge at Maputo airport and was fairly comfortable. Shame, and then I waltzed in this morning and asked him almost immediately whether he felt like going to the orphanage! I just really had a desire to see Victor and Christina, wanted Pastor Irving to meet them, and had a lot of stuff to take there, so I decided to kill a few birds with the same stone and borrow Kris’s car, pick up some stuff from Shoprite and also be able to drive the two of us around in the luxury of air conditioning and power steering – I was very grateful for this! It was so nice to see Victor and Christina and so cool for Pastor Irving, who hadn’t ever gotten a sense of how big the orphanage is from the little I told, and who had just been praying for Victor’s recovery, to get to talk to them. I think we tired poor Victor out, he told the whole story of how the orphanage came about, and how he and Christina met, and that takes a while! I just loved seeing Christina again and suddenly the whole month that passed because I was too busy with work to see them just seemed like such a shame and I was really sad about leaving her… She then showed Pastor Irving around the orphanage while I got the chance to visit a little bit with some of the girls I used to see regularly.
Pastor irving Steggles chatting to a convalescing Victor Carlos in their living room
Afterwards we went to lunch, quite fun for me as I don’t usually get to go “out” to lunch, and spent several hours talking, not in all respects agreeing about my situation, but let’s leave it at that, I know the Lord will work things out. I hadn’t planned on being away all day, but after showing him the bookshop and a little bit of the town, as well as my apartment, it was quite late when we got back. Yet now I know we have talked, tomorrow the containers might arrive and he has plans with our friends the Seilers anyway, so I think it worked out well.
