By Thunder!

Last night I went to bed early (10pm) so that I could feel good getting up for a bike-ride with Paul this morning.  I was really looking forward to it since I had to cancel Thursday morning's ride because I had to too much work to be done (and I had spent most of my afternoon putting new tires from Canada onto the wheels).  Anyways, the going to bed early didn't end up doing me much good, 'cause I woke up with a start at about 2:30am. 

 

The thunder was so loud that my ears were ringing.  I don't know where the lightning hit, but it was close enough to shake our entire cement-block building.  For a minute, I thought the roof was falling in, but my second thought was... MY COMPUTER!  It was still plugged into the wall and it was very likely fried.  I looked over and the light was still on, so jumped out of bed to unplug it incase there were anymore shocks coming.   It took a while to calm my heart-beats back to a normal BPM, and I finally got back to sleep.

 

I figured that with all the rain, our ride would probably be called off so I stayed in bed.  However, it stopped around 6:30 and Paul came by at 7:00.  I went out to greet him and on the way grabbed my bike.  Disaster!!  The front tire was flat.  I'm sure it wasn't flat yesterday.  I was sad to see Paul ride off on his own, and I discouragedly (I love the English language) sat down to patch my tube.  Eventually, I went off on my own and had a great ride, up a highway that I have never been on before. 

 

I went about 40km out, to the President's village (Zinaire) and then hurried back for lunch.  It felt really good just to be on open road.  I installed a special water-bottle holder that holds a 1.5litre bottle, so that was very handy, but it won't be sufficient.  I am thinking of maybe buying a thermos to keep 2 or 3 litres in, and attaching it to my rack, so that I can go a whole day without needing to get water, just in case I end up stuck in the desert in Niger somewhere.

 

This afternoon I helped Francois send some money to his brother in Cameroon.  Earlier this week, he had got word that his 4 year old son is deathly ill.  We have been praying with him, and trying to find ways to get some money to his wife.  We were finally able to use Western Union (who took a tidy 20%!) to his brother who will take the money to the village for his wife to be able to buy medicine from the dispensary there.

 

The other thing we have been praying for is that there have been a number of viruses circulating here lately with lots of casualties.  Computer casualties.  The IT dept has been working overtime, so I decided it is not enough just to pray for health for the teachers and participants, but for our computers too.  Sounds silly, but they are essential to our work.  Between the viruses and the thunder, we need protection!