Christmas in July!!??

It felt a little like Christmas when the police called and asked us to come pick up our belongings at the station. However when we arrived they said the supervisor had decided that the things needed to be kept for evidence. It's been such a roller-coaster ride with this ordeal. Larry has been spending entire days at a time trying to find the criminals involved with the break-in. The money still has not been found, but most of our things were. The police finally agreed to let us have our laptops and some of our small electronics today. So it was especially nice to get our main laptop which has all of our files that we've been needed to continue work. Of course, we have learned a valuable lesson on backing up our files.

One day in the village, Larry was explaining what had happened to us and one of the youth boys said to Larry in English, "I want to encourage you with a verse. Exodus 14:14." It had been a verse that we asked the kids to memorize a few years ago when we were teaching them. Now it has returned to us with power. We were encouraged and have prayed that verse many days after that. The verse says, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." We have testimony after testimony that He has done that.

The Break-In

The 4th of July has a new rememberance for us....and sadly not a good one. In fact, it was a disasterous day that holds the most devastating event since our arrival in Malawi 5 1/2 years ago.

It started out being a day of anticipated new beginnings as we went to the village that day excited to open our new orphan feeding program on the following morning. Monday (the 5th) was the first day of the program and it was supposed to begin at 5 a.m. We wanted to be the first ones up to make sure everything ran according to schedule. The first day, only 12 kids came, but we were encouraged because we were told that villagers are apprehensive of people coming in to promise things and not carry through. So we were able to keep our promise and each day the attendance increased. By the end of the week, about 20 kids were coming to the before-school breakfast program. The kids receive a nutritious porridge before school. Their height and weight is measured and monitored.

The porridge is a special mixture and it is provided to us by Feed the Children and Participatory Rural Development Organization. We are so excited about these partnerships and are praying for this successful venture.

Now, to explain the disaster. We returned home after the children had gone off to school and the cooks had finished the clean up late morning. Our dog met us at the front gate along with one of our workers. Everything seemed fine until I (Mandy) went in our bedroom and found things scattered all over the room. I immediately thought, "I didn't leave this room this messy." Then I went in the hallway to the office and found the doors open. (We always lock all the inside doors when we leave.) Then I saw the wall had been torn up and the door handles and locks were taken apart and damaged. There was cement and plaster all over the floor. Our office was a mess and there were papers all over the desk. Under the piles of papers scattered all over the desk we discovered the laptops were missing. Money was missing as well.

Back in the bedroom, we found the small lock box on the bed that had contained over $6000 in US bills. Larry eventually discovered all of his cargo pants and shorts and 3 pairs of shoes missing.

The police came right away and took our one worker who has been found innocent. They are working on many other leads, but each day our chances of recovering our stolen property diminishes. Money is immediately exchanged on the black market and computers are sold pretty fast as well. Of course, it will be difficult for them to pass off a laptop that has no charger and the battery is dead. The thieves had disconnected the two laptops and left the charger/adaptors on the desk.

We searched all over to discover how they got into the house and found that they had sawed through the burgler bars on our kitchen window and entered there. One of our new workers had stolen a key and gotten in the compound, but didn't have a key to the house. The dog knew him so he was able to hold her back so his "helpers" could get in.

Even though it was the worse day we've had here, God is blessing us. Some friends immediately loaned us a desk top computer and another friend loaned us a hard drive for it. Within a few days we were back up and running with our communications, etc.

We are working to get the proper security. One company who is insured internationally and will replace anything that is stolen while they are on duty did an assessment and listed many security risks with our property (that we are renting). We told them that we couldn't address some of the issues because it's not our property. They turned us down and won't take us as a client.

Bottom line....the security system that we need will cost $1400 to install and $125 per month to monitor. We will hire a guard from another company for night-time security and that will be another $160 per month.

We do take comfort knowing that when God is about to do something great, Satan is ready to destroy those who are involved in it. There have been many depressing days, but we have realized the tremendous spiritual battle in which we are involved and how even more important is the mighty working of prayer. The Lord is using this event to draw us closer to Him and to strengthen our faith which is more important to Him than anything we have lost.