Day 1: The destroyer and the 40 stones

On the early morning of 22/7, after I returned from the icecap I filled the little plastic bath with hot water and tried to ensure that my muscles get their best chance at avoiding being stiff for a week. In the still bright day light I slept for a few hours and woke up feeling fresher than expected.

When I woke up I started noticing a strange hissing sound in the little room where the central heating and the water tank is kept. More activity than usual on the water pump made me uneasy, but looking as I might, I could not see anything wrong.

Around 10 am a quiet and resereved couple knocked at the door. Iidu had told the wife that she should come and speak to me, and since she doesn’t speak English, she brought her husband to translate. I offered them tea, as I did baffledly with all the baffled guests that had come during the week. They accepted and when we sat down the husband explained that his wife had lost 3 babies in advanced stages of her pregnancy and she was pregnant again now. She wanted to know from me if the baby would live or not.

Throughout what became a typical councelling session (involving some repentance, deliverance and prayer for healing and restoration) I was wondering what this was saying about the Highway? The opening of the Highway is declared and within less than 10 hours I’m facing something that destroys new life before it can take its first breath. We ended the time of prayer by her giving the baby to the Lord like Hannah, Samuel’s mother. She commited to come and speak to Tukkumeq, when she is back next week, and to seek Jesus as her saviour. Please pray for them, and the baby, that the Lord would turn this situation for the glory of their name.

When they left I went to the tourist info office where I spent 2,5 hours updating the blog, but not actually managing to write about the Highway at all. On returning to the house the hissing sound was louder. I had a brief nap before I heard Iidu coming up the steps to get the food for the dogs. In my fuzzy state I went to ask her about the hissing. We moved the shelves and boxes in the room where the sound was, and then I saw what I could have seen in the morning had I looked there: the water pipe was cracled and a tiny hole was giving escape to a steady little stream of water… The result of much phoning and fussing, was that the water was turned off and I was left with a bucket of water to make do with for the night. This was OK, because I did not need more, but I was upset about the pipe bursting. In one way my little fantacy of being a blessing wherever I go was scathed. Why does the pipe burst when I take a bath after opening the Highway?

Just as Iidu was in the middle of the telephonic negotiations about the pipe another lady arrived to see me. I had met her at the airport in Upernavik on my way up to Qaanaaq. She is also part of the Qaanaaq house group, but she had moved there a year ago from another town. She had been a believer for longer and my heart recognised her as a mature sister in the Lord. I felt the Lord had sent her for us to pray about the 40 stones. When Iidu went home I explained the whole story to this lady and she was happy to be the witness. As we went out of the house to look for a place where we could burry them under the house I had them wraped in a piece of cloth. Just as we came around the house I saw that the puppy had gotten itself in trouble with the rope its mother was tied up with. It was somehow wound around his body, and in her usual mad yanks at the roap she was slowly squeesing the life out of him. With stones in hand I ran down to them just as Iidu was coming back up the hill from where she stays. I held the mother while Iidu freed the baby. Iido then showed me and the other lady how to get into the enclosed space under the house between the ground and the wooden floor. The now bouncing puppy followed us in as we picked our way beteen the dog-do down there and found a place between the floor above and a beam to put the stones. As could be anticipated we did not feel very spiritual when we prayed in the midst of this whole muddle. But, praise the Lord, the stones were ‘burried’, not only the foundation of the Highway but olso of the church in Qaanaaq.