Well, I have some time so I will expand on my last post. I know it was short. This past week has been fun and busy. We spent last weekend in Gambula with other missionaries. It was really really good to get away and spend time with friends. We came back from there and heard that we needed to travel to the capitol Bangui to get our Carte de sejours. This was an unscheduled trip, but it was fun. We had a good trip down listening to music from both my and Marty's cd collections. :) It was a really fun trip. We got to Bangui, on Tuesday evening. We had a nice dinner with Bob. By the way the cook there is my Godfather, so I am always to be with him. He makes the best bread ever!!! In my opinion anyway. ;) We went in early Wednesday morning to get our paperwork done, which went fine. We filled out forms and had our fingers plunged into ink and squished into small spaces on paper. Then.. they didn't let us wash our hands, so our fingers were blue for the next 2 days. We got done with that and we had to travel to the community hospital to get a clean bill of health. Which the doctors told us "Well, you came from the states and we know the doctors there check you out before you come, so we will just sign the paper for you." Which is true, but funny. So we now have our carte de sejours... Well, I guess we have papers that say we have one, the actual card is coming later... sometime. The rest of Wednesday and Thursday Doug spent most of his time trying to fix our power steering line on our car for our trip back. It turned out to be a much bigger job than we wanted or anticipated. We replaced the line, and had someone weld the line. (the line itself costs like $80) We took the piece back and there was a hole in the weld that we had just had done... so it was worse than before... So we had to find another place to weld it. Well God provided and we found one and we got it fixed. It was after dinner that we finally got the car going though. We stopped for gas that night so we didn't have to worry about it in the morning. We left Bangui at 6am on Friday. We had a wonderful trip back. We had two of the cutest little kids in the car with us. Michele and Patrick. They were amazing. Didn't fuss at all the 13 hour trip. They had lots of fun. And we decided that we wanted to get rid of our 3 huge bags of candy on the road. So we started tossing them out the window to kids on the road. That was amazing! Those two things along with our wonderful music selection of Go Fish just made the trip amazing. Also good news from the trip. Doug finally got his drivers license so he was able to drive, which meant I got to ride rather than drive. Which was nice. I spent a good portion of the drive with my head out the window looking at things and enjoying the wind. Plus I tried a couple different times to land a banana peal on the car behind us with Bob inside, but both times I missed.
The past two days have been rest and recouperate for work tomorrow.. Saturday was a great day for me. In the morning we had a meeting with Bob. It went very well. I also fixed up a place for my new garden. Mom sent me seeds so I am planting them so that when she comes out next year they will be ready for her. I had time to do that in the morning. Had lunch and then headed out with a few friends to the river to go swimming. It was... PACKED. There was barely room to walk on the bridge. It was amazingly fun though. Everybody was shocked to see a white guy swimming in their river. It was really fun jumping off the bridge and diving and just playing. We went back from the river played soccer and then I had a nice relaxing evening.
Today... was an adventure. :) We went to the Apostolic church. Which is an amazing church. The people there have such energy. After about 45 min of singing we had introductions of the "white people". I introduced Doug and Marty. They kept asking me if Doug was a pastor. Well... he isn't. I told them like 3 times. They wanted him to preach but I kept telling them that he wasn't a pastor. So finally they asked me to come up and at least translate the message for Doug and Marty. So... me.. John Hocking translated the message into english, which is hard, because a lot of it doesn't translate directly. Marty kept looking at me and winking and smiling at me which also made me lose concentration cuz I would smile back and start chuckling. It was really fun and I did enjoy it, although Doug did say he got sleepy so next time I will be more active in my translations. :) After the service they had us for a drink of Jino, which is a juice drink here, and we talked for a little bit. They want me to come back next week and play my djembe with them. Which I told them I would. So next week I am going to get to play my drum. Makes me excited and happy. :) This afternoon we went to the river again, planed my garden, and played soccer. This evening I had dinner with the Murtoffs and Bob. It was nice, and we watched Loui Giglio, which if you haven't heard his messages, you should go look them up on youtube. They are amazing. Look up the Indescribable tour. God has blessed this man and he is working for our God.

Well, I would like to ask for your prayers for this coming week. With us being gone for a week it will be interesting getting back into a groove with the guys. Also that Bob would have a good week of meetings here. Pray for me that I would have strength in my jobs as well as interacting with the people here. I love these people so much, and I pray that God makes me a light for his kingdom.

Again, I need to ask you all to seek God's council and if you are willing to help me financially. I don't really like asking for money, it seems so.. impersonal. But I want you to be a part of my ministry. I want you to understand that if you are helping by supporting me, you are as much here in the country as I am. Without you I would not have the opportunity to be here. It is through Gods will, and his servants that I have found a doorway here in the Central African Republic. I ask you to seek Gods council in giving. I do not want you to give, just because you can or because you know me. I want you to give with the thoughts and prayers that God will use your gift through me to touch the people here in this country. I thank all of you for everything you have done. You have all had a part in my life. I love all of you very much. I look forward to seeing all of you and telling you my stories of Gods work here in person.

In Christ,

John Hocking