Mills writes on August 16th in the p.m.........

Hey Mom,

It's 4:15 here, I just wanted to get out a last email to you. We plan to leave at 7 in the morning and won't be able to connect to the server that early. Dad commented on the fact you have been rising early in the morning, as have I. I (when feeling well) have been getting up at 5:45, I don't know how early you rise, but man 5:45 doesn't feel so early out here. Workers come for their different jobs around 6:30 here. It puts things into perspective.

I appreciate your encouragement while being sick. It helps to have a nice kiss once and a while. Mom it really was a blessing to hear In Christ Alone. I don't think I will be able to sing it again without remembering this time and knowing how fully my hope, light, strength and song are His Alone. You are right, God is Sovereign. I think sometimes God will bring you to Africa and give you Malaria to show you that.

I am going to ask Gabe to run and email this before we loose our window, but it will be the last for a while. It is possible that Friday or Saturday I will connect to the internet in town. I will try and email you from my Hotmail, and read some emails on there.

Please be praying for the time as we travel. The thing about Malaria is that you can't get comfortable, even laying in bed. The bumpy ride on dirt roads won't be pleasant. "My Comforter, my All in All, Here in the love of Christ I will Stand" (more like lay right about now)

Shannon Turbeville emailed me, it was nice to hear from her. Oh I am going to bring back some seeds to try and plant coffee in Columbia. Coffee likes humid weather and well we got it. It may not work because it gets so hot, but it is worth a try. Theo gave me a sealed packet of seeds so I should be alright through customs. I am sending a bag of things I don't need, as well as Gabe, with him to SA so we can travel lightly.

Love you Mom. A tight hug.
Mills

Gabriel writes on August 16th in the early a.m..........

Hello Cindy

Mills asked me to email you this morning to tell you that he is sick in bed with Malaria. He started to feel sick yesterday but managed to eat supper but he had a very bad night last night getting sick and all. He seems to be a bit better this morning but has a fever ever now and then. He did take treatment last night and Theo and Mignonne just gave him some more. So we are hoping that he will be back on his feet tomorrow.

Thank you
From Gabriel

Mills writes on August 15th......

Hey Dad,

Gabe is feeling much better now and is just trying to lay low and slowly recover. Tomorrow (Thursday) will be my last day to email for about a week since we will be going to Malawi. Gabe and I will stay in Lichinga till Monday so it is possible that we go onto the internet in town, but i'm not sure or too worried about it. I don't really crave getting on. I don't even know exactly what I would do on it. Haha.

I start my days early here, up at 5:45 and eating breakfast after a shower. I go to bed usually before 9 though so it makes the early hours easy. I'm using my laptop as an alarm. I'm loking forward to being back home and getting to use it a little more towards it's full potential. Here it's not connected to the internet and there are no other Apple's around so it is limited.

I gotta run, Love you
Mills

If you'd be praying I am talking tomorrow at our Bengwa's meeting. Bengwas are the guys from all the villages that help out with the radio. They take up announcements and the money for them, and also get listener feedback from their village. They are all Muslims and well I'm working on what to talk about. And I will share my testimony which should be interesting. I'd love the prayers. God give me strength.

Mills writes on August 14th.......

Hey Momma,

Gabe has come down with Malaria, he felt it Monday morning and has been laying in bed since. As of this morning he is much better though.

Yesterday I was playing hide and seek with some local boys and I saw Louis drive up with all of his workers and their bikes on top of his Land Cruiser. I went and asked why he brought them all into town and saw that in the back of his car he had 2 cows. One had just died and the other was lame and hadn't been able to stand for a few weeks. He gifted the lame one to the church to be slaughtered and took the other away. Aubi looked at me and said, "Aye you must slaughter this cow". I started laughing and then realized he had never killed a cow before, and neither had I. Long story short, I took that new knife I ordered and while some of the locals held down the cow I cut it's throat. We then cleaned the cow and butchered it. The funny thing is that the only thing that goes to waste is the actual waste in side the cow, the things that were in line to get sent out of it's body. Everything else is used. I asked Aubi (ignorantly) if we would just bury the head in the field and he laughed and said no they would eat it. He said they even eat the ears! For my part in cleaning it I asked for the hide, instead of meat. I want to maybe make a drum or something. We will see. I just laughed though, these locals were very afraid to kill the cow, and then once it was dead they jumped on in and helped skin and divide the meat. Sorry I didn't take any pictures.....

Yao is the local language of this part of Mozambique and Southern Malawi. It's not the national language of Malawi though, that is Chicewa(spelling?). It is very African, no Latin influence like Portuguese. Which makes it very very hard to learn. I asked Aubi when eating at his house last night how many languages he speaks. It was 8. Very humbling, most of the languages are African languages that take people many years to learn. Yao is extremely difficult for outsiders to learn and take many many
years.

I gotta run send this before we lose our window to connect to the server in SA.

I love you and look forward to the email that is probably waiting on me there from you. haha

Mills

Mills writes August 13th...........

Hey Momma,

I'm making this very short. I just read your email and really enjoyed what you had to say. I wanted to reply and then reconnect quickly. Gabe isn't feeling well and is in bed this morning, so you can be praying for him. He is having stomach problems along the same lines as mine. You and dad will probably get your emails along the same time, it's funny I typed his last night, and yours this morning. Funny how God will use the time difference. Man God has really been using just Praising Him in my life here. I was reading Ecclesiastes and I think it is chapter 5, but I am not sure. But it is about standing in Awe of God. Wow mom, right now find that verse, it's like 2 verses on letting our words be few. I will email a longer message and send it this afternoon so I can check the verse.
Love,
Mills

Mills' notes from his sermon August 12th......

I love you Momma, more than you know. Really it's more than words. It's a love that is only a shadow of the Love of our God, but it is still so immense.

Here is the Sermon notes I give Aubi to help translate. It is nice because it gives you time to think about what you are going to say next as he is translating.

Mills

Teaching for 8-12-2007 "The Burden of Sin"-Mills Snell
-Giving Thanks for opportunity to teach and reference to responsibility of teaching. Gabe's preaching on James 3.
-Prayer before diving into God's Word. (Aubi, next time I preach, if you let me again, I want to follow up with this verse.) "See what this Godly sorrow has produced in you: What earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter. -Gabriel taught last week on two kinds of Wisdom. Heavenly and Earthly Wisdom. We are going to look at
two kinds of sorrow. Sorrow is -- "A feeling of deep distress caused by loss, disappointment or other misfortune."

--2 Corinthians 7:11 "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. "

-This sorrow we are talking about is in relation to the sin in our lives. What is the difference between Godly and worldly sorrow? (I may repeat this a few times). The Answer.... Are we sad because we were caught in sin or are we sad because our sins have hurt our God? Worldly sorrow is when we are sad because we were caught in the act of living a sinful life. Godly sorrow is when you are so broken by the fact that your sins hurt God that you turn to Him. Our sins hurt God because it forces Him
to turn His face from us. (I'll do a demonstration with 2 chairs) Habakkuk 1:13 says " The eyes of the Lord are too pure to look on evil" We must understand the evilness and weight of our sin; if we do not, we cannot understand how it hurts God.

- "Godly sorrow brings repentance" When we are broken by the fact that our sins hurt God, and are filled with Godly sorrow, we repent. Repentance is a complete turn in the opposite direction. We were walking in our sin..... And then turn completely around! Completely!

- "That leads to salvation" Here God tells us that repentance leads to salvation. Salvation does not come before repentance. We must repent, and only then can we be saved. Salvation can only be attained when we realize that there is nothing that we can do to win God's favor. We must be covered by Jesus' blood in order to gain salvation. No amount of good deeds can win over salvation. (I'll give some examples)
- "and leaves no regret" The focus of this teaching is this. So many people have achieved salvation, not by their own strength, but because of Christ, and they still regret. The problem is that we think some of our sins are in a way "too big for God". This is not in the bible. Jesus' death covers all sins. As Christians we don't fully live out this verse, because we still live with the guilt of our sins. This should not be! If we lay our sins at the foot of the cross, which is repentance (turning
away from our sin), then we must lay them all down. Don't be so prideful as to think that one thing you may have done can be kept from the Lord. No sin is big enough to outweigh the sacrifice of our Jesus.

- "Worldly sorrow brings death" . In Paul's letter to the church in Rome he says, "The wages of sin is death". Worldly sorrow will not end in salvation. If you are simply sorry that you got caught in your sin, and not that your sin hurts God, then your fate will be death. Paul talks about it twice here, Worldly sorrow is a sin, and the wages of sin is death. Worldly sorrow will leave you regretting every sin you ever made. Satan will use this as a foot hold in moving you away from God. Don't
let the guilt of past sins keep you from repentance and salvation. We have freedom in the cross. We are literally free from the burden of sin.

These two types of sorrow were fresh in Paul's mind. Look at what just happened. Peter sinned, he denied Christ 3 times, and lied about being one of Jesus' followers. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss, for 30 pieces of silver. Peter felt sorry that his sins hurt God. He repented, was accepted back in the body of believers and moved on. Judas though, was "seized by remorse" Matthew 27 tells us. He was sorry that Jesus was condemned, and then he gave back the money and hung himself. What is the difference
in Judas and Peter? Judas was not sorry that his sins hurt God, he was sad that he got caught, that Jesus got hurt. He didn't think about the consequences of his sin. Think about the consequences of your sins.

(I'll summarize the verse a little bit).

What is your attitude towards the sin in your life? Are you sorry that your sins hurt God, or are you sorry you got caught in them?

I'll close in prayer.

Mills writes on August 11th........

Gabe and I returned from our journeys today (Saturday) around 1:30. Much earlier than we had kinda expected. Everything went well as Theo took the truck to Pemba. Gabe and I are planning going there and then starting our way down Mozam. It is a funny place, people poop on the beach and the tide takes it away. They say it really startles you, I will be able to say in a couple months. But since we got back in enough time, I am going to preach tomorrow, which God really used to humble me. At first I was kinda hoping that I would have to wait till another week, and then I got to thinking on the long drive and realized.... What the heck, this is a privilege. With responsibilities of course. But I am really getting more and more passionate about it. I will tac my notes on.

Gosh I was thinking about the winding down summer today. As I get more and more emails from friends I have started to realize that I sacrificed the summer after my SR. year. Gladly of course, but my friends are telling me about all these awesome things that are happening! Ha Praise the Lord.