How God Healed a PNG Sewing Machine

While the men were building the sink cabinet, pantry, bookshelf, and bedframe for the new mission house and doing everything from welding to plumbing to shopping for materials they could not find and making do with what they could find

or asking their wives for help--

such as what do you do for knee pads for tiling work when you can't find knee pads anywhere?

That's what wives are along for!

I suggested several ideas, from flip-flops to foam sheets that I had along for Sunday School teachers.

Sunday School foam sheets won Jonathan's heart, and that is what he taped over his jeans with lots of electrical tape!

It worked!

Meanwhile, we ladies were shopping for fabric for making curtains for the new house's windows.

Sharonna is not hard to please and did not take a lot of time to decide.

She chose the lovely green fabric with hibiscus flowers all over it.

Then, I had to pat my own back that I discovered a purple fabric that matched the same pattern of flowers, after Sharonna said she wanted purple for the bedroom. 

Yeah for us wondrous ladies!

My, what would Sharonna have done without a couple extra ladies along to make it all come out right?

:)   :)

She calls this Big Lots store her Walmart.

Here is the counter full of huge spools of thread.

This is how we went shopping--or at least I. 

I couldn't bear the sun beating down on me, so I took an umbrella.

At home, we started cutting out fabric.

We ladies determined that we were going to sew curtains for dear Sharonna even if we had to do it by hand--

and that is exactly what we started to do because the sewing machine had refused to work both times that either Randy or I tried to use it.

(Randy is the one who operates sewing machines in their home!)

Sis. Linda started hemming one curtain by hand while I was cutting.

Saturday evening Randy and Bro. Wilmer and I had all three worked and worked with the sewing machine Randy had gotten off the 6-year-old container, shipped from America.

I was afraid someone had a sewing machine that didn't work, so they sent it to the missionaries, sort of like the people who sent their used tea bags, you know.

First there had been something not wired right in the sewing machine pedal, so Randy and Wilmer hot wired it and it ran like a house afire when we tried to sew.

So the men got whatever was needed and fixed the pedal Monday night.

But that didn't fix the way the thread kept bunching up under the seam.

Randy and I had worked till we were blue in the face and gave up.

But this morning when we were sewing curtains by hand, I decided to try one more time, because who knows how long it was going to take us to hand sew all these curtains.

And then Louise, who didn't know how to sew, knew how to pray. 

She laid her hand on that sewing machine and unashamedly called out to the Lord to heal this machine!

And God did!!!!!!

I kid you not, within minutes, that sewing machine started behaving itself! Little by little, the stitching evened out and the thread quit bunching up underneath. After a while the stitching was perfect!

Isn't God amazing?

Later I figured out that the machine works fine when the bobbin isn't too full, But if the bobbin is rather full, that seems to affect the tension and it doesn't work right. 

Apparently when we had used up enough thread from experimenting, it started working right. 

Still, God gets the glory, because it was only after we prayed that it started working and I was able to figure out how to get it to work. 

In that picture up there, the precious young man named Kevin, whom Randy wants to send to Bible College, is at our house after having escorted Sharonna and Louise to go shopping.

Randy doesn't like the ladies going alone, and Kevin is wise to the ways of what is going on around, noticing that a couple men were following the ladies that day. It was good he was along.

He has a wonderful spirit, and our church had taken offerings to cover his Bible College expenses for a year.

Pray for Kevin!

He asked Louise for a bush knife while they were shopping, and she ended up buying him two, and after we returned to the States, Sharonna wrote that he had used his bush knife to cut down trees or bushes to construct a shelter for the Sunday outreach!

The man Kevin lives with allows the Dimmetts to use his land for the Sunday meeting, but the man sometimes is either drunk or on drugs and comes home and beats Kevin, and Kevin has to stay away till he calms down.

Kevin is homeless sometimes, going at night to a mechanics shop he knows of to find a vehicle unlocked where he might be able to crawl in to sleep for the night.

Sometimes he has no food for days at a time. He has come to Dimmetts saying he needs help, and when they ask him what he needs, he admits, "Well, I am hungry." And they find he hasn't eaten in a couple of days.
I felt so terribly sorry for this precious young man. He has always been honest as he works for Aunty Rosa or the Dimmetts.

Sharonna is packing Sunday School and craft materials we ladies had brought over for the orphans or Sunday School children.

Monday I spent about 6 1/2 hours cutting out and sewing curtains while Linda helped pin and iron, and Louise also ironed and helped so much with the cooking, shopping, and other work so we others could do the curtains, etc.