Dear Friends, 

I want to report on our current situation and bring you all up to date. Being in the United States was great for several months. We praise the Lord for successful surgeries in my left hip replacement in December and my left eye cataract surgery in January. We remained in the states an extra three weeks allowing us to celebrate our daughter Stephanie’s fiftieth birthday on March 4. How time flies!

We finally departed the States on March 17 and arrived in Kinshasa on Wednesday evening, March 18, only two days before all the international passenger flights into and out of the Congo were suspending indefinitely due to the virus! We immediately put ourselves into a 14-day voluntary quarantine at the Methodist Presbyterian Hostel which we completed on April 2.

We had scheduled a mission flight with MAF to take us to Lodja with our luggage, but the Congo Government stopped all traffic: air, boat, and trucking into or out of Kinshasa except cargo. Paul has contact four different leaders about getting us authorized to go on to Lodja, but thus far we have been turned down and are to remain in Kinshasa for the forseeable future!

Our churches are no longer meeting, nor our children’s ministry, pretty much like in the States. One of the big differences is that there is no online possibility for our churches to meet virtually. There are some advantages to your kind of technology. 

On Wednesday, we received a package from Lodja that contained Paul’s Otetela Bible. He has scanned all of the book of Matthew. He is wanting to make a revision on some of the New Testament books in the Otetela Bible while being confined here at MPH. Daily we read both the 91st and 121st Psalms. They are especially comforting during these days of quarantine.

Starting tomorrow, April 6, portions of Kinshasa with approximately 11 million souls will be on a 14-day shut down. We don’t see how that is possible with so many and with so few in the way of police and military to enforce it. It could become unpleasant.

As of today we are aware of 180 cases of the virus in a city of 14 million in the DR Congo. There are many ugly rumors as to how it has arrived with much of the blame going to Europe and the United States. We would appreciate your prayers for this country, for the continent of Africa, and for us.