Pray BFF Letter #274

April 19, 2016

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Small Miracles and

a Great God

Dear Prayer Partners,

“Now you shall see what I will do” (Exodus 6:1).

Are small miracles any less of a miracle? They are ‘small’ only because they are not so dramatic in the scale of life events, but when God so works, He still powerfully constrains events to bring praise to His Name.

First, numerous people have asked how this past trip to Kenya has gone. I answer, “It was wonderful. The pastors/leaders in all the seminars were so receptive. God gave me stamina.” But there was much going on behind the scenes that could easily have frustrated the efforts, except God intercepted Satan’s attacks.

Weather
Just up to the time I went, Kenya was experiencing an extreme heat wave. Upon my arrival, God in His graciousness, timed it to be ‘cool’ (high 80s with no fans) when I was there. The cloud cover brought the temperature down more then 10 degrees each day and so the cooler rainy season came. However, rain would largely make it so that I could not record the bilingual messages. So, though the cooler weather came, the rain promptly stopped. Only after the very last message, did the rain come during the closing.We couldn’t hear a thing except the rain on the tin roof. Praise God for His timing! They asked us to pray for rain before leaving the first site as they put off their sowing to attend the seminars. God brought a heavy rain that night for them!

Sickness
Two stories here. As a reader, you know I was pretty sick two weeks before I went. 24 hours before leaving, I finally, by God’s grace and His reminder, was suddenly stronger and better (an allergy that acted as a bad cold). Second, I was extremely busy speaking in Kenya, Monday through Friday–back to back seminars. Fortunately, my stomach problem happened on the weekend when I only needed to preach once. Although full healing didn’t come until late Tuesday, I was beginning to recover and could eat simple foods like bananas so I could gain some strength and not face any inconveniences except missing quite a few meals (which never can hurt me much!).

Tech stuff
Everything was going well until someone spilt a glass of water on my laptop keyboard. Then my computer shutdown. It wouldn’t turn on. After bringing it out into the sun, it dried up some, but the computer would not stay on–which is important if I am going to do any recording! Time came for the meeting. I tried once more with no success. I prayerfully gave the broken computer to the Lord and headed down the path to the church. Would you believe that the computer worked normally from then on–by God’s grace, right?Yes! I largely forgot about this incident until I got home and was going to transfer the last day’s recordings and the work I did on the plane over to my backup storage. I couldn’t. The computer was refusing to function.

After trying many times to retrieve my files, I decided to get my laptop repaired. I was at the Apple store ten minutes early and again turned the computer on. This time it functioned so I could offload my crucial files to my backup drive just before turning my computer over to the shop for an ‘operation’. (It is still in the shop and still don’t know what is wrong.) The point is, the timing. God graciously enabled me to transfer my files before wiping my computer clean.

Without God’s grace I would have been very disorganized, having updated many files when traveling (working on several books) and not having a complete video set for the Luo ‘Raising Godly Children’. This incident reminded me that the use of the laptop since the spill was an ongoing miracle. What timing!

This was extreme grace. More than 40 hours of video/audio recording (without rain on a tin roof). I could actually get one seminar in Swahili, though it did not look like I would be able to get anything in Swahili (because they prefer the Luo language). Some people came from the Kisii tribe and so we had it differently translated. Before that we had two translators up there, making it quite challenging for a long message.

My heart is full of praise to God for working out these ‘small miracles’ which all added up to a huge big witness to God’s powerful ways of working in us broken vessels. I hope from the above report you see how awesome God loves to use your prayers to advance His kingdom causes. Thanks!

Praise!

Although I have not done the final accounting, more money came in and our expenses were lower; God has provided again. Praise Him!
Rev. Matthews took 2 weeks off so that he could help lead these seminars. He did an excellent job, but could you pray about needed funding for 3 orphan centers which recently lost funding and are under his care.
God actually provided stamina for the many hours of teaching.
How nice I could award my new commentary “The Teaching Commentary on Genesis: The Book of Foundations” (415 pp.) to some of the bishops/pastors (see picture).
Thankfully, two Hindi and Burmese translations were finished while I was away.

Follow Paul on Twitter! @PaulJBucknell

Pray!

My computer is sick. I will be doing a lot of teaching soon so pray that it is revived!
A small parenting class should start Wed. April 27th and the following Wed. evenings.
Wisdom as I teach on some more complicated issues regarding the Holy Spirit in upcoming Sundays starting in May.
I now have to focus and edit 30+ hours of new audio/videos.

As always, thanks so much for your prayers!

Paul

Rev. Paul J. Bucknell, President and Instructor

Biblical Foundations for Freedom

Email: pb@foundationsforfreedom.net
Phone/text: (+1) 412-398-4559 (Mobile)
3276 Bainton St, Pittsburgh, PA 15212 USA

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