smoak signals 2

Another cool email from Pamela Smoak, missionary to Tanzania:

Manufactured in Europe, it immigrated at an early age to East Africa.  One day as it was sitting under the bright lights of a shop in Nairobi, Kenya, a missionary wife named Shirley Droke strolled by checking out the buttons, cycles, dimensions and advantages of each machine.  One thing she checked was the price because Shirley had in her purse money from the Ladies’ Division of the UPCI to buy a dryer and Shirley was a good steward of what she had received.

Happy in Shirley’s home on a hill under sprawling shade trees, the dryer was saddened when it was disconnected a few years later and put in storage.  Shirley and her husband Walter Droke were returning to their home in Tennessee.

But one day, the storeroom door opened and Karen Crumpacker, a missionary wife who had just transferred back to Kenya from Malawi, dusted off the dryer and took it home with her.  A couple of happy years of cycles passed before the dryer broke a part that the repairman said was not available.  Back in storage it went.

After a few months another repairman looked at the dryer and said, “I can fix this if you want.”  Karen agreed; the dryer was repaired; but it sat near the new dryer watching it get all the attention, gathering dust.

Late one afternoon, Karen’s husband Jim uncovered the dryer and loaded it into the back of his Sheaves for Christ vehicle.  Not knowing where it was going, the dryer bumped, jostled and tilted its way across Kenya and south into Tanzania.  Arriving at the home of missionaries Richard and Pamela Smoak, the dryer was met with excitement and rejoicing.  For a minute, it thought it was going to get a kiss from Pamela who had been drying everything on a clothes line through rain, dust storms clouds of mosquitoes.

Its adopted life in Tanzania was happy and fulfilled until the Smoaks’ new dryer was installed a year later.  Back in storage!  Feeling neglected and forgotten in the dark container, the dryer looked out the doors to sunlight when the container would be opened occasionally, longing for the life of heat and spinning for which it was created.

Missionary wife Martha Johnson, thrilled with the long awaited resident’s permit to the unevangelized country of Rwanda, was offered the dryer if she wanted it.  “Of course,” was the reply.  So tomorrow, Louis Johnson and Richard Smoak will load the dryer in the back of Louis’s SFC vehicle and export it to Rwanda where it will continue “working for the Lord”.

At last, new life, new country, grateful veteran missionary wife, more tossing and drying as intended by the Ladies’ Division and the thousands of sacrificial donors in North America.  Three countries, four missionary wives and life is not over, yet!

Pamela

© 2009-2012 by Melani Brady Shock

smoak signals...

Richard and Pam Smoak are missionaries to Tanzania. Their son, Gordon, goes to college about an hour away from where we live and is an all-around great kid.  We have known the Smoaks for a long time and they are doing a wonderful work in Africa.

From time to time, Pam sends out emails to several people. She doesn't have a blog and these emails have a way of reaching into your mind and painting pictures.  She gave me permission to copy some of them here from time to time.  I'm sure you will enjoy them just as much as I do.

The traffic leaving downtown Nairobi was at a standstill.  Noisy, fuming busses and trucks idled on either side of us; their rumbling diesel motors vibrated our Cruiser.  We were running late leaving town.  A morning appointment had been delayed.  Last minute purchases and traffic, always traffic in Nairobi, ate up time.

At last, just past Nyayo Stadium, the traffic thinned; we were moving.  Not for long.  A stalled 18 wheeler blocked half the road.  The other lane and both shoulders were crammed with taxis, mini-bus transports, cars and delivery vans trying to go around the big truck.  We were at a standstill, again.

Since leaving the Sarit Centre mall, I had felt an uneasiness.  I was more nervous than usual, which is normally a lot, in Nairobi traffic and just felt a warning in my spirit.  Inching by the lorry, Richard and I both began talking at the same time.  We both expressed a doubt about continuing on our trip home to Moshi so late in the day.  Unanimously, we voted to turn around even before we got to the airport on the edge of town.  We returned to our hotel and left early the next morning.

After crossing the Kenya/Tanzania border the next morning, we started seeing signs of recent flooding. At one point the road was washed away and we had to divert upriver to cross.  Just before the city of Arusha, the road was clogged with lorries, tour vehicles, private cars and motorcycles.  In the torrential rain of the afternoon before, another river had flooded over a bridge sweeping away pedestrians, bicyclists and animals and depositing 2-3 feet of mud.  Vehicles had been stranded there all night and through the second day.  If we had continued the day before, leaving Nairobi late, we would have been stranded or worse, swept away downstream. 

Looking back on that trip, I must ask myself, “Did an angel stall that truck in Nairobi?”  Richard and I both had been ignoring the nudging of the Spirit not to travel.  It was the stalled lorry and that last delay that made us postpone our journey to Moshi.  We would have been traveling through those raging rivers during the hardest part of the rain.

Did an angel tinker with that truck's engine?  Was it angelic intervention and protection?  Maybe.

Pamela

© 2009-2012 by Melani Brady Shock