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JIM AND JUDY BANGSUND'S
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2006 PRAYER REQUESTS

Please include as much as possible in church newsletters
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August 13 , 2006

Dear friends,

We are now back in Tanzania, after a series of wonderful July visits to family, friends and supporting congregations in California. We give thanks for all of you! What wonderful fellowship and encouragement.

At the same time, our hearts are heavy with the loss of close friends as we write. Some of you will remember our prayer some time ago for Lechion Kimilike, an Old Testament doctoral student with a great teaching future here at Makumira. He was shot in South Africa while going to the library -- but later fully recovered. Now he and his family are here on campus, he has finished his dissertation, and he has all but graduated. He has already been scheduled to begin teaching. Then last week his wife was struck by a bus and killed while crossing the highway at the south edge of the campus. This is the same road some of you heard us mention with regard to a little girl coming to Sunday School who was struck and died in the same way a year or so ago. Our hearts are heavy.

And, even as I write, we are losing two more sister missionaries. Recently we went through the final days of struggle with Meredith Murnyak. Her husband Dennis has now returned to Tanzania with their two sons. But Meredith was not the only woman missionary in her 50s to be struck by cancer in Arusha a couple of years ago. Now the other two appear to be nearing the end on the same weekend a half a world apart. Esther Kinsey is in Nairobi Hospital, and Linda Dybsetter is in Minneapolis. Husbands Erwin Kinsey and Doug Dybsetter and their families are with them. By the time you read this, both Esther and Linda may be gone -- though certainly God is able to heal even in the last moments. For the latest on them, visit the "Prayer Concerns" page of the Arusha Community Church website: http://www.acc.habari.co.tz. We are receiving cell phone text messages from the group at Nairobi Hospital and posting them on the website as they come in. And Linda's daughter has written a moving and inspiring note concerning her mother which is also on that web page. (There were days a year or so ago when all three occasionally met in the same doctor's office waiting room in St. Paul. I referred to them as "The Arusha Sisterhood of St. Paul.")

In the midst of all of this, we yet find ourselves able to give thanks -- for the possibility of healing, for the hope of the resurrection, and for the support of Christian friends during tough times. And we also give thanks and pray for other things, as well:

1. WE GIVE THANKS for the months of safe travel this past summer, for good health, for the support of friends and family.

2. WE GIVE THANKS for how well all three of our children (and spouses) are doing. Again, it is Sharon that has occupied our attention the most recently with her new job (Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota). She has now moved into a small (small!!) apartment in Lauderdale, a small community on the St Paul/Minneapolis border just north of the missionary apartments where we stay when there.

3. WE PRAY FOR students heading toward Makumira to begin a new year. At this point it should be no surprise that we pray for their safety as they travel. Such things are not taken for granted here. Terrorists are not merely found threatening the safety of air travel. Some of them seem to be driving the buses of Tanzania!

4. WE PRAY FOR the successful beginning of a new/old program at Makumira. The Diploma Course, which had been sent off to regional "junior" seminaries has now come back to Makumira, and we are re-designing new classes and scrambling to have enough faculty. Jim found, upon arrival, that he is scheduled to teach a "Survey of the Old Testament" course to the first year students -- which will be a wonderful opportunity but will mean some scrambling in the next week.

5. WE CONTINUE TO PRAY concerning matters of leadership and direction at Makumira as the campus continues to grow.

6. WE PRAY FOR Randy and Carol Stubbs and their three children, volunteer missionaries who have just arrived (last night, as I write) to teach in the new music program. They are really neat people, and sold their home and car to come as volunteers. That's commitment!

7. WE PRAY FOR matters north of us and east of many of you -- the critical situation in the Middle East. I need say no more -- you know how to pray -- but the situation is a grievous one for all concerned, and we pray for all who struggle to live in that area -- for peace, for safety and security, for freedom from fear, for justice, for children to be raised whole and without hatred.

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

And we thank you, good friends, for your encouragement and prayer on our behalf!

Jim and Judy Bangsund
ELCA Missionaries to Tanzania
james_bangsundmakumira.ac.tz
judith_bangsundmakumira.ac.tz
http://www.bangsund.co.tz