~ Murphy Crowson ~ Crowson's Blog

We had an incredible worship last Sunday with the Sedome church cluster (which included the newest church in their area). It was a small taste of heaven as we sang songs of joy to our Creator and King! Since the church began others from a nearby village have also requested that the Batoe Christians come and teach them about Jesus too. It's exciting to see the Kingdom grow. We are praying fervently that the Lord will light that area up with the power of His Spirit and bring hundreds to their knees in allegence to His Son.

We're having a great time with Larry and Rhonda who are visiting us for a few weeks from Alaska. Rhonda is my cousin from my mother's side of the family. She is also related (by marriage) to Amy Shaffer. So, her visit is a double blessing. They're enjoying "Africa" as well as seeing all of the amazing things that God is doing among the saints here.

Pray for the village of Batoe (Ba-tway) this week. Ask God to give them strength to get through a difficult trial. I will explain more next week.

Batoe leaders: Daniel, Komlavi and Denni

Sedome/Batoe/Agodeke churches

Serving lunch after cluster worship

Denni teaching a lesson on Sunday

Komlavi and Larry

Lunch after worship

Rhonda with a precious little girl from Batoe

Rhonda with Charolette and her mother

Pray that God would destroy this idol in Sedome

A Casava grinder that was purchased with 100% african funds

~ SPECIAL GUESTSLarry and Rhonda Fisk ~

From Larry:

What an experience! If we were to leave today I could honestly say my cup is full. I am looking forward to the next week and its experiences. In the short time we have been here I have come to really appreciate some of the struggles that our missionary family in Togo are living each day for the cause of giving hope to those without hope thru Life in our Lord and Savior. I am so thankful that Rhonda and I have made this journey and I have finally had the opportunity to meet and get to know Murphy, Christine, Stephen, Matthew and the Koonces family. God is truly reaching many souls thru them and I am humbled by the great work they are doing in a very difficult place. It is also great to spend time with Amy and Emily. They are also to be commended for their work here as teachers in God's service. God bless you all and our Togo brothers and sisters as you spread His light throughout the Land!

From Rhonda:

Like Larry, my cup is over-flowing. I just want to share one little story with you. We were blessed to join a cluster worship in Sedome on Sunday. What a feast! About halfway through I noticed a beautiful little girl at the end of our bench just looking at us so I motioned for her to come to me. She sat on my lap the rest of the worship time and became my little buddy. Her name is Charlette and she is 4 1/2 years old. The next day we got to go to her village in Batoe for a ladies meeting and I had some earrings to share with the ladies there. Somehow in the passing out of the earrings, Charlette got passed by and began to cry so Christine and I took her out to the car and I was able to give her a little dolly. God has blessed her with parents that love and serve our Lord. If any of you reading this are like me and think, someday I want to meet and worship with my brothers and sisters in Africa, do everything you can to come. You will be blessed beyond measure, not only by your African family but by the missionaries working here. Thank you for praying for the work here, God is listening and doing a mighty work here.

~ Emily Dunnagan ~

We has such an adventure going to church at Batoe last Sunday. We finally experienced the 2 Advil road as Murphy calls it. It is dirt/sand/gravel the whole way. It started out about 4 cars wide with normal sized potholes that had Murphy weaving across the fairly smooth gravely parts. Then it narrows to two cars across with deep ruts and larger potholes and no gravel. Then you get to the worest part where it is one car wide with tall grass and reeds on both sides. This road is a sand/dirt combination and the potholes are the road. It had rained earlier in the week so many of the potholes were full of water that went flying. Murphy says the key to not getting stuck is to keeping up enough speed. But unfortunatley that wasn't enough this morning, because the water got up in the air filter and caused the car to stall. We walked the rest of the way to church and hoped that the car would work after services.

They were already singing when we arrrived and had decided to keep singing until the men from another village who wanted to be baptized arrived.Murphy Crowson preached on repentance while Christine translated for us. This church has a tradition of asking visitors to sing a song so we got up and sang "I have Decided to Follow Jesus" in english. Then we began our journey down to the river for baptisms. Just across the river we could see Benin. As we were walking to the river it began to rain! So we stood in the rain singing while 11 people were baptized. It began raining even harder before we began singing our way back to chruch. We sang several songs while the women brought lunch and those who had been baptized changed clothes. We were served Veyi today. This is a Togo staple and it is quite good. It is a pot of beans cooked until they are almost mush served with gali and oil. Gali is shredded and toasted cassava root and the oil is seasond with on ions and spices. Since we are westerners they gave us spoons, but the locals just eat it with their hands.

Thankfully the car started and the rain died down to a sprinkle! But now the road was even worse than before!! We got stuck in the mud once, but luckily Murphy was able to get the car out. We saw some beautiful bright orange bishop birds in the marsh lands on the way back to Tabligbo. The rains did cool the temperature down a lot and knock the power out for about 12 hrs. Sunday night.

We actually made it one whole day with the electricity, water, and phone staying on this week!!

~ Marty Koonce ~

We are always amazed at God's workings among the Watchi. Today we got to worship with the new church in Amengran where around ten were baptized this morning. It was a great event as one of the new members is a carpenter that Marty has been praying for these past six years. In Atitogon we had a three hour discussion of how it all "fits together", you know, evangelism, maturation, training new leaders, etc... In the end I think they left with clarity and it was me who was confused. In Ahepe, Fali, Boyi, and I found ourselves asking lots of questions as to why God has not blessed that church to grow in the past year as they have persevered in evangelism and have lived as better examples. Pray for them that they will move forward as a church. Vogan is enjoying a time of peace but there are murmurings of a new wave of dissention egged on by the same old crew, being led by Honore. Please pray for God to deal wit h this man who sees it as his objective to divide that church. Training continues to go well in Tabligbo, but we have not been able to start anything in Afakomi Kope. Pray for Felicien as he works with Topeglo, that he will be able to encourage them and help that church grow. Continue to pray also for the churches in the Dogbati, Gninoume, and Vo Asso areas for maturation and evangelism. Our vehicle incurred a lot of engine damage this last week, so now that has made the "to do" list, as well as the prayer list for available parts and available funds. Thank you for your love for us and the Watchi. Please persevere with us in prayer.

~ Louise Koonce ~

Sad and baffling news from the rabbit farm; all but one of the baby bunnies have died. More valuable lessons, this time about the fragility of life and the reality of death. Still, we have built a new rabbit "condo" and hope to get some more parents. The objective of this project is to provide good stock rabbits for the village farmers while giving our boys an economic learning experience. Please pray for our friends Nkoli and Lydia and their son, Louis. Nkoli and Lydia both have AIDS, most likely the boy does as well. Lydia has developed skin lesions which is one of the signs of the further stages of the disease. Louie has been hospitalized for a month. Please pray for God's hand of mercy to rest on their family.

~ Amy Shafer ~

Here's a story I forgot to tell the week that it happened, but I thought it was funny enough to include now. Our sink in the school bathroom drains down a pipe which turns along the wall and opens above a drain set in the floor. Our washing machine also drains from another other room through a pipe to the same hole in the floor. It's quite a sight when that corner of the bathroom is full of suds pouring from the washing machine. If Trevor has to wash his hands when this is happening he always runs screaming from the room. But that is not actually the story...I have to get back to the sink pipe for that. So the first week of school we discovered a frog living in that room. He was a small frog, about the size of a fat thumb. After we discovered him I noticed that the boys kept disappearing into the bathroom to "wash their hands." Finally I followed them to see what was really going on. Ha, they had found out that th e poor little frog was making his home in the sink pipe. So they would sneak in and turn the water on really fast to watch him get shot out the end of the pipe by the sudden rush of water. By the next morning the frog had decided that he would no longer make his home in our bathroom.

This week in math with Trevor and Matthew we practiced writing our numbers as small as we could on the chalk board. Somehow the boys started calling them baby numbers. Soon Trevor decided to draw parent numbers. So at the front of his row of nine baby numbers he drew two threes, backward. When the boys draw their numbers facing backward, like threes or fives or twos, we say that the numbers are "misbehaving." Without thinking, I said, "Trevor, your parents are misbehaving!" As he looked from the numbers to me I could tell he was trying to come up with a good reason for writing them that way. Finally he came up with one, "No, they're not misbehaving. They're on the way to worship!" :) The next day they were writing small numbers again and drawing circles around them. When asked to explain the cirlces one of them said, "I'm putting my babies in containers so they don't get killed by the bad guy penguins!"

Probably the most exciting news of the week for Emily and me was that our phone line finally got fixed on Wednesday afternoon. We're enjoying being able to check our e-mail any time instead of hauling our laptops over to the Crowsons in the evenings. :)