After Chuck left on his flight back to South Carolina, I went back to Lohutok to spend more time with Paul. If you get our prayer calendars you can see the picture I put on the April calendar that came out a few days ago. Front and center is Issaye, Paul’s wife, who is noticeably pregnant. That’s a big deal.
Paul and Issaye struggled for nine years of being marriage with infertility. They had gone through so many things with village healers and other traditional ideas about why they couldn’t conceive. By year seven, Paul had met Chuck and heard the gospel, and decided to repent and believe in Jesus. As part of that, Paul, who was overwhelmed with the stress and shame that comes with infertility and living in the village (rumors, gossip, traditional pressure) decided to publicly repent of his trust in human and demonic powers to control his family, publicly renouncing all of those things and profess his trust in Jesus to provide him with a family (or not, if He so chooses). Paul and Issaye were scheduled to go to a doctor in Kenya (arranged by Chuck) for possible treatment for endometriosis, but a week before that flight, we all found out that Issaye was pregnant with their first son, Joseph.
That was such a joy, but Joseph is five years old and after many more years of trying and failing to conceive a second child, Paul was again sad but was determined to trust the Lord to provide when the time is right. He has sat in my office many times in tears begging God for another child, and now they’re going to have one! Issaye is always kind of a joker, but is also from a culture where one doesn’t get too happy or excited until the baby has come. We do the same thing in our own way, saying things like “I don’t want to jinx it but…”
While visiting with Paul and Issaye, I started a joke with her that always made her blush (I don’t know if blush is the right word with people whose skin tone is so dark that it never changes!). When we meet I greet her, and then I reach out to greet the “new person” as well, and she laughs and slaps my hand away. We did a Bible study on Psalm 139 that Paul was eager to do with his wife. We talked about how God had written all of our days in his book before one of them had even passed. I told Paul that the first day of life doesn’t start at birth, it starts at conception, and that this new life is one for which God has already provided, planned and blessed. Praise God with us that He provides the miracle of life, even when the process of waiting feels hopeless!
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