Congo Hope Blog

Days in Congo - Missing Cash Last August when we left Nkara after 4 monthss to return to America, I had set aside $250 to give to Kiniaanga, who is in charge of our feeding program for the dorm students at Laban Bible Institute for the fall term. I tucked it away in my bedside table. The day came for our the departure, and we locked up our house and boarded the MAF plane on the airstrip near the mission. Then it hit me. The money was still tucked away. Nuts! The cash would have enabled him to get a little head start in purchasing supplies. It was only August, and the fall term didn't begin until October. Guess it will be there when we return next year, I thought. Return we did this April, and soon after arriving at Nkara, I opened the bedside table drawer to retrieve the money. It was no where to be found. So I searched my desk and chest of drawers. It was not to be found. I reassured myself that it had to be there, and that I was not suffering from dementia! So when it didn't show up anywhere in our bedroom, I asked the Lord to show me where in the world it could be. It was my firm belief that it was there. Cash just doesn't walk away, and there were no signs of forced entry into our upstairs bedroom. One day within that first week of our return, I sat in the big chair in the room to read, but a horrid odor was so strong in he vicinity of the chair I called Jim and told him I was sure there was a dead mouse underneath. We called Kinianga up and they lifted the big heavy chair only to find nothing but this year's acrue of sand and a few dead bugs. However, in lifting the chair, we all saw the hole in the flimsy covering on the bottom of the chgair. Kinianga reached his hand in to retrieve what he thought would be a dead mouse. Brave move on his part. . . Only to pull out a $100 bill!!! The money I left! The next time he pulled out the dead mouse. Ugh! Deciding we should thoroughly cleanse the chair, the men took it downstairs and outside in the sunshine. Before they applied soap and water and ironed it with the old coal iron we use to press our clothes, they kept searching for more money as I told them there was over $200 missing. To our amazement, the pulled out 3 more $50 bills! The money was found. Thank you Lord. Now, how do you suppose that money got from the table to the chair which was across the room on the opposite side of our bed???? It turns out that a family of little creatures resembling chipmunks made their home in our attic. I kept finding stripped palm nuts on the floors of our room and what used to be our boys' room when I began cleaning and realized they had left a trail, but I had no idea they took that money to use to make their nest. Money isn't like cotton or soft cloth. It isn't very pliable, so after leaving their marks on it and realizing it would not do, they left it in different parts of that chair. Incredible! Now I hate the smell of a dead anything, let alone a mouse. But if that terrible odor ad not come ffrom the chair on a day that I "happenned" to be sitting in it (of all the days we were gone) that money would in all likelihood never have been found. Your timing and ways continue to amaze me Lord!