Amazing things concerning His church and the opportunity to spread His word and serve Malagasy have been happening here in Madagascar over the past year.  It was almost a year ago, when World Christian Broadcasting managed to get an audience with President Ravalomanana, president of Madagascar, while he was on a week long visit in the States encouraging American businesses to consider coming to Madagascar to work.  It’s an exciting experience to have the ear of the president of an entire developing country. 
          World Christian Broadcasting is in the process of planning and constructing a radio broadcasting station on the northwest coast of the island in order to send Christian broadcasting across the Middle Eastern Muslim based countries, but at the same time, they plan to serve the Malagasy with local Christian broadcasting.  World Christian Broadcasting introduced several other large Christian organizations, Abilene Christian University, Healing Hands, and World Wide Youth Camps to name a few of them, to President Ravalomanana, effectively strengthening the influence of the church in Madagascar right from the top government levels.  Abilene Christian representatives flew out of Madagascar on August 1st, with 22 Malagasy students from all over the country who will attend Abilene for four years on full scholarship.  Along with church influence came media coverage, Malagasy government involvement, and lots of fanfare. 
          We agree that the potential of using a relationship with the president of a country opens a way to yet un-thought of possibilities, but we also admit to a sudden feeling of insecurity, wondering if the foundation of the church that has been laid over the past seven years will be drastically altered or even buried under the ostentation.  We must remind ourselves that the motivation of the church and missionaries cannot possibly be the same as the motivation of the president of a country, and we have to ask ourselves how much of the church may be lost in this conflict of motivation. 
          As the only expatriate family living in Madagascar as missionaries of His church, we have been particularly affected.  We have struggled for seven years to get this country to issue and renew visas for our family to live here.  We have struggled to get legal registration for the church in this country.  We have struggled with an attitude of the official council of churches in Madagascar which refuses to recognize His church.  We have struggled getting enough funds into the country (through the Malagasy banking system) to keep our family solvent as well as to support orphans.  We have struggled to get visas for volunteers.  And, while we have mastered a juggling act over the past seven years to keep this work going, it has been very difficult watching these large organizations from the States come in so easily on a rolled out red carpet. 
          We’ve begun to question our own motivations for being in Madagascar and calculating how much of our time can be easily swallowed up in tending to physical things instead of spiritual, or if perhaps our motivations have taken a turn from our initial reason for working in Madagascar.  We’ve begun to ask ourselves if we are on the right track here, doing it all the hard way, when obviously the large organizations can accomplish so much so easily.  We’ve wondered if we are accomplishing much at all.  BUT. Questioning is not a bad thing.  On the contrary, I think we would be in worse shape if we weren’t questioning and constantly checking on our goals for the work here.  This last month in our home there has been a continual conversing, praying, and soul searching involving all four Rosie's, and we’ve come to the same conclusion as Paul . . . 

          Our motivation is still the same.  We are still grass roots missionaries whose greatest joy comes from teaching His Word to individuals and watching individuals transformed through His Word.  Our Father has reminded us clearly this month that he does indeed listen even if we don’t walk on the red carpet, have the easy way to go, or get the fanfare, even if the work is long, hard and the results sometimes slow in coming.  It’s the harvest like we’ve had this last month that vividly reminds us that what we are doing is worth all the struggle.  Take a look for yourself.

Jean de Dieu (above) has been an English and Bible student of ours for more than two years.  The two year struggle to teach all but disappeared in our joy at seeing him, as well as others, obey the Savior. 

 So . . . the Rosie family goes forward this month with the following verse firmly in mind and heart.

Milk for Malagasy Children
We’ve given away thousands of cups of milk to some of the neediest children you can imagine, and in Madagascar, even those who are not needy children definitely need milk.  No Malagasy gets enough calcium.  We are thankful for those who want to see Malagasy children properly nourished.  I am starting to get a clientele.  Kids, in different pockets of town that I frequent, know me and run with big smiles on their faces if the traffic forces me to stop.  I keep the milk right behind the driver's seat in the car and can always reach back and pull out a few.  I have little milk clients in the parking lots of three different stores in town (our wholesalers where we buy supplies for the orphanage, and two different grocery stores).  I have milk clients in the dirt lot just below the center.  They are the cutest, dirtiest little things you ever laid eyes on and that milk goes a long way toward supplementing their diet.  I would love to get those dirt lot kids into the orphanage, but they have folks who do try to take care of them even if they do live in little wooden shacks with dirt floors and only have an inner city dirt lot to play in.  Those equally dirty and rattered tattered parents of those kids stand by and say thanks every time their child gets a carton of milk.  The children themselves do come to the orphanage for Bible classes.  I have milk regulars on several intersections in town and in several different gas stations.  My favorite milk regulars though, are the children at church.  They were faithful to Bible class and worship before we started this milk project and they are still faithful and enjoy a cup of milk along with a Bible lesson.  We have over fifty little ones at worship these days and every last one of them needs milk. 

Twenty Five Years
July 29, 2004, marks twenty five years of married life for Barry and I, and this year we actually had time to celebrate.  We worked as usual all day, but come evening, we enjoyed a lovely candle lit dinner for two at the Ville Vanille in Antananarivo.  It was a lovely celebration.

• Please pray for our three new family members here in Madagascar.  They need your continued prayers that they remain faithful and continue to grow in our Lord and Savior.
• Please pray for us as we continue to serve the Lord in Madagascar.  Pray that we can continue to be effective teachers of His word and stay centered on the cross and the message of the cross that we need to be sharing with the Malagasy people.
• Pray for us as we continue to prepare for the departure of Kit and Havilah as they will be leaving for Kenya to enter Rift Valley Academy at the end of this month.  Pray for safety as I (Barry) travel with them to Kenya this first time around.