In Instanbul

-----Original Message-----
From: fthgermany@aol.com
Sent: Sat 4/4/2009 1:52 PM
Subject: Update

Hi FTH Staff,

Thanks for praying. We are in Istanbul at the moment. I decided yesterday to take one day off. Two days full driving and two nights with only a little bit of sleep is enough reason for a break. We got a nice hotel at the airport for a good rate. We spend almost two hours at the Turkish border. On the Greek side the custom office called an inspector and gave order to examine the vehicle. The female officer that came to the car, thought we transferred an ambulance into a camper. But when Marcel opened the back door and when she looked at the orange stretcher and the medical equipment, she became very nice and she gave us all the stamps we needed. On the Turkish side it was difficult to find somebody who felt responsible to work on our papers. They all were not very friendly. Several times the thought came up in my mind, if they want to become a member of the EU, they need to change their attitudes towards foreigners, and should start to study at least a little bit of English. Not talking about German. Every officer refused to stamp our custom papers. I hope that this will not give us any difficulties to get the tax back when we return to Germany.

From there we went straight towards Istanbul. People were walking all along the highway. Can you imagine, driving 150 Kilometers an hour, and there is a donkey on the right hand lane. Well this is this part of this world here. At one point there was a big hole in the surface and I really was worried that this maybe did something to the ambulance. But praise God, nothing happened. Pastor Peter in Zurich had the vision, that our vehicle has a kind of protection wall or skin around it, like an army tank. I really believe that. We are in the army of the LORD and in a mission to bring the gospel, health and delivery to the hurting people of Pakistan. Sunday morning we will leave very early. I have the goal, to get as close as possible to the Iran Border. So we will spend the night from Sunday to Monday again somewhere in Turkey. Tuesday morning we will cross the border into Iran. And I believe we could be at our final destination on good Friday. It would be nice to park the Ambulance on Easter Sunday in front of the church. That would be great, but I will not put myself under any kind of pressure. This could become “unhealthy”, driving tired……Thanks for praying. I believe GOD for seeing you all in South Bend this summer. Any way to drive there…….
Jp, Marcel and Philipp

Turkish Delight!

-----Original Message-----
From: fthgermany@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 2009 2:15 PM
Subject: Update

Short update on the trip. Please pass it on to everybody else. Drove four hours. Just three hours away from the Turkish border now. The officer this morning, when we came off the ship in Greece did not charge us for the road tax, because of the thing we do-- driving an ambulance to Pakistan, she said. Maybe it was my smile.....

thanks for praying, jp

Making Progress towards Pakistan

-----Original Message-----

From: fthgermany@aol.com
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 3:32 PM
Subject: Update

Hi everybody, greetings from Italy. If you think we run around with T-Shirt and Sun lotion, wrong. It is cold and rainy. Yesterday evening we had so much rain, that the window wiper hat not enough speed to wipe the rain off the windshield! But anyway we made it, late into here.

Sunday morning we had a great and wonderful service with Pastor Peter in his church, the ZOE GOSPEL CENTER. The church prayed for us and the vehicle. Wonderful people and a great church. Today we had a short meeting with a sponsor here in Venice. We took a few hours to walk through the city. For me it was a strange feeling being here again. During the many weeks and months I spent in Croatia and Bosnia during the war, I drove over here on the weekend sometimes to get out of all the mess over in Bosnia. To be here with this memory and being here today with my two sons was special. Right then they were not even born. Spoke with Pakistan today, everything is on time on their end. They still working on the papers to get the Ambulance tax free into Pakistan.

I got a nice and lovely email today. Someone driving their car obviously saw our email address on the ambulance when passing by us. He got online and seny us an email and said that he wishes all the best for our journey. We are aware of the attack in Lahore, Pakistan. I will keep an eye on that. In about two hours we will enter the ferry to Greece.

JP, Marcel and Philipp

Update from JP... Pakistan here we come!

-----Original Message-----
From: fthgermany@aol.com
Sent: Sat 3/28/2009 2:31 AM
Subject: Greetings from Switzerland

Hi Everybody,
Short report from the first two days on the trip. The TV Crew spent almost four
hours with us. Hopefully they don’t cut too much. Right after they left, we
also took off. In south Germany, around an hour from the Swiss border, our GPS
quit its job. Marcel in the back of the ambulance took the laptop and studied
the manual. It was stored on the laptop. After a reset it was working again for
maybe another ten minutes. So no way to go any further. I drove off the highway
to look for a good store. We found one very quick and we got a new one. The
other one we take back from where we got it, it is a case of warranty. In maybe
one hours time we were back on track. When we came to the border, they had
already closed. With our special documents we cannot just go through. I need a
stamp that I left Germany in order to get the tax back that we paid. So we
parked in a long line of trucks, which were asking about the same thing. A female
custom officer (Swiss) jumped on a truck driver so bad, that I was thinking that
we don’t get her. But guess what, we got her. She still looked very mean, but
when we explained our mission to her, she became very nice and helpful. The
pressed her stamp on our papers and even came out of her little office. She
told the officer at the gate, what our mission was and ask him to let us trough
right away. So we passed by on about 50 trucks towards the gate. At the gate
the offices stopped us again. I thought he will check the papers and passports.
But he did not. He wished us all the best, good luck and travel mercies. That
was really nice. We arrived in Zurich late that night. On Friday we went to
Peter Hasler's church (FTH Director Switzerland). We all had a great and nice time with
Pastor Peter in his beautiful church. Pastor Peter was with Dr. Sumrall in
Jerusalem, when Dr. Sumrall received the vision from the LORD for Feed The Hungry. So
Peter is a man who's been with FTH from the first hour. I ask him to come to South Bend to our next
meeting. On Sunday we will share the project in the church service and right after the
service we will leave for the spaghetti Mecca of Italy, to catch the ferry.

JP, Marcel
and Philipp

Jean Pierre on the road to Pakistan

Jeanne Pierre (affectionately known as "JP") is the Director of Feed The Hungry Germany and he's on his way to Lahore, Pakistan with his two boys in tow. The interesting thing is that JP will be driving to Lahore... from Germany... in an ambulance! On a journey of approximately 4,000 miles let's hope the boys don't start with the "Dad, are we there yet?" routine until they hit the border of Iran at least.

JP will be bringing the ambulance to our partner ministry in Lahore, the Evangelical Fellowship of Pakistan. Our plan is to send a shipping container of medical supplies from LeSEA Global Feed The Hungry to keep the ambulance stocked and ready to go for years to come.

It’s a long trip through eastern Europe, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan (driving all day every day for 18 days) and things were kind of unstable in Pakistan a few weeks back, but have gotten better since then. Please keep JP and his boys in mind whenever you're on the road or shuttling your kids about.

---

From: FTHGERMANY@aol.com
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 4:56 AM
To: Stefan Radelich
Subject: Update on Ambulance Trip

Good Morning Everybody,

Greetings from a nice and sunny morning in Germany. Spring seems to come. For sure our departure day is coming. Our website says since Monday, that the countdown is running. Every day one day less.

Little update: The ambulance is back from the shop since two weeks. The owner of the shop told me, that it is in an excellent condition. They checked everything. They made an oil change, checked the motor and the transmission. They replace the two front tires and that’s also the only thing they charged us for. Praise the LORD. I had a very good press meeting last week. They did a great article in the paper on last Thursday. The paper probably sold well that day. The day before, on Wednesday we had that school shooting you may heart of. Big tragedy. Germany is the number two on list of school shooting in the world. Shows me how much my country need to hear about JESUS.

I worked a lot on the webpage. We started to type a blog. It is of course in German, but I give you the link, if you want to at least see it. I put a lot of photos in there from the preparing process. Last night we started to pack.

I am in constantly contact with Pastor Salik. He informed me Monday, that the situation in Pakistan, also in Lahore calmed down. I would not say that we can talk about a peaceful country. This area will be an unrest region for a long time. Challenge to us, to be a witness for JESUS in this time of history.

The Turkish government does not allow us to cross their country with a “transfer car license”. No idea what the English term will be. So we have to go with the normal license plate. But that means, I have to take the entire car documents all the way back to Germany, cancel the registration and send the papers back by Fedex. Stupid rules. We could drive around Turkey with a transfer number I would like to use, or sell a car in country, but we can just go through. Well, wasting time to think about it. I spoke with Salik about it, that what we will do. At the border in Pakistan we have to get insurance. My insurance is only good up to the border Iran/Pakistan. A company gave us a satellite phone. Ben will send me text messages in case something emergency goes on in Pakistan. We may have no access to news for a number of days. So this way, I know what is going on. He will send text message trough the Iridium website. This is easy and for free.

I think that’s it for the moment. Find a photo that we took on Saturday. These are the “driving doctors”

jp

Peace Returns to Yei

It looks like peace has returned to Yei and the LRA rebels have been scattered. Let's hope they are gone for good.

-----Original Message-----
From: stanley lonathan
Sent: Sat 3/14/2009 2:46 AM
Subject: Greetings

Dear Stefan and friends,

Thanks for standing with us in prayer regarding the security situation in Yei. The situation is now calm and many families are going back to their homes in the villages. The LRA's have been pursued all the way out and a remenant of them entered again to Congo. Some of them were captured and could possibly be handed over to Uganda.

The Dreamland children are back in school and we thank God that all the kids are well. Are you still planning on sending us another container? We have 400 students this year in our school and we have a total of 250 students at the Dreamland including our 38 orphaned kids. We will update you again.

God bless,
Stanley

Trouble in Yei, Sudan

Please pray for a situation that has recently come about in Yei, South Sudan. Pray specifically for Pastor Stanley LoNathan, his family, the children and staff at New Generation Dreamland and New Generation School, the entire congregation of New Generation Church, and for the family of faith and people of Yei, Sudan in general. Please pray for another missionary we know well in Yei also, Michele Perry and the staff and orphans at Iris Ministries Sudan.

Below is a message that I received today from Pastor Stanley; a contingent of LRA rebels (Lord's Resistance Army) have made their way from the Congo to Yei, Sudan. The LRA are an evil, wicked, merciless group of soldiers that have terrorized northern Uganda for close to 20 years. If you've ever heard the story of the Invisible Children, the thousands of children that had to move at night from village to village throughout north Uganda to avoid being abducted... the LRA was the group behind that crisis. About two years ago Joseph Cony and his troops fled Uganda and went into hiding in the Congo; recently a coalition force of Congolese, SPLA, and UDF troops have sought to rout them out of the jungle so they've been on the move and causing trouble along the way.

According to this BBC report, the trouble in Yei started this past Tuesday: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7926173.stm

Here's a BBC report that provides an insider's look at the marks a raid like this leaves behind: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7852086.stm

Based on Stanley's news below, it looks like the trouble is increasing. Pray for divine protection for both people and property in Yei, and pray that the SPLA find and arrest/capture the LRA soldiers.

Thank you for taking this to heart and for enlisting the prayer support of others.

-----Original Message-----
From: Stanley LoNathan
Sent: Sat 3/7/2009 2:46 AM
To: Onochie "Uche" Izuora; Stefan Radelich
Subject: It Well,

Dear Freinds,
Last night we experiences a security challenge in Yei specifically around the New Generation Dreamland. Some elements of the Ugandan LRA rebels who were scattered in Congo appeared around the villages close to the Dreamland. Four people were killed and much food looted. Most of the people around the Dreamland moved to the Freedom Square in town and spent the night there. Soldiers were deployed immediately to the area and for the safety of the children the soldiers asked us to move the kids to another place for just that night just incase anything happens. All the children spent the night at Jimmy's home, one of our workers. As I am writing you now there is so much confusion and fear gripping the town. We are assessing the situation and will touch base with you again. Please pray for the safety of the kids,and pray that the culprits will be captured as they are being pursued by the army.
God bless,
Stanley

Here's a photo of Stanley LoNathan and his two children