Fire, bees and prayer

Yesterday morning we noticed a lot of smoke in the distance, which is common here during the dry season when many people set grass fires to clear bush.  They can get dangerously out of control, however, especially on windy days.

As the day went on and the smoke came nearer our Timothy Centre property, we checked to see if any of our new school buildings were in danger.  Fortunately the fire was staying in the wetland area (which was not very wet, obviously!) and moving slowly.

It came steadily in our direction all day, and we could hear the crackling flames as they consumed large areas of vegetation in the wetland.

By nightfall we could see that it was still advancing and was showing no signs of dying out.  It was like a fireworks display on the horizon and we kept an eye on it from our houses.

 

  Around 8:00 p.m. were started to get concerned about the apiary on site here, as the hives are in the lower wetland section of the property.  We had just organized a week of beekeeping training for the community (first week of July) and had invested a lot of work to get this project off the ground. 

The first comb of honey was collected during the training sessions and other hives were also very promising. 

It was time to pray and call others to pray with us! If the bees smelled the smoke, they would abscond and we would have to begin again from scratch.  If the hives burned, we would have that loss as well. We asked God to protect the project and the crops and houses of the local neighbours around us.  As the fire spread onto our property we prayed and waited.  After burning out of control for 10 hours, it waned and began to sputter, flared up a couple of times, and slowly burned out within 100 metres of our housing around 10:00 p.m.  When Karl checked the bees this morning and all was well!

We are grateful to God for answering prayer.  It is our lifeline, and we are grateful for the prayers of many of you  who care about the work God is doing here.

And speaking of prayer..it is always encouraging to see the students in our school in Kibaale also learn to depend on God through prayer.  Their childlike trust is refreshing to see, and inspires us to trust as well.