While the internet was down for a day and a half, things did not stay quiet at Shiloh.  In fact we had more excitement than we like to have.  Well, at least not THIS kind of excitement.

Wednesday is Joseph's night off work.  It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that we don't have a night guard on Wednesday night.  Anyone wishing to scope us out can quickly uncover this fact.  And so it was that last Wednesday, May 4th, sometime in the middle of the night someone climbed over our twelve foot wall.  They went into our carport and found a wooden ladder that we never use any more.  It ended up at the front corner of the house, driveway side, laying against a large flowerpot.  They also walked the length of our long kitchen back porch, took out their pocket knife, and sliced through the hoses connecting two bottles of gas to two three legged wrought iron burners.  

While our thief would have preferred to help himself to the two gas bottles, he only got away with the two burners.  We've had them for ten years.  Back in the early days of Shiloh, we didn't have a stove.  We did all of our cooking and our baking on these two burners.  They are not expensive and are readily available here in Cameroon.  We have large aluminum pots that we used to use to do all of our cooking in.  We used to put a layer of sand in the bottom of one of the pots, set an oven thermometer on top of the sand, and cover the pot.  When the air inside warmed up to temperature, we took the thermometer out and carefully lowered the cake or casserole down on top of the sand.  That was our oven.  After cooking like this for four years, we were finally able to buy a real stove with a real oven.  Eventually God blessed us with two stoves, which are in constant use.  We moved our three legged burners out to the kitchen porch.  They are still used when we do canning, or when we are feeding a large group of people.  

We are forever grateful that Jim Tucker is one of us.  On the day we moved the burners outside, he drilled two holes through the wall, right into a kitchen cabinet.  Then he ran the hoses from the burners, through the holes, to the gas bottles.  And that is the only reason we still have those bottles!

Our thief also found some hand held American garden tools out back of the house.  We're not sure exactly what he was trying to do with them, but we are awfully grateful that he dropped them.  

While we really don't know the order of events, we do know that the last thing he attempted to do was come in the front door of the house.  And that is when he bumped into our low tech security system.  How thankful we are for Guy who taught us this trick after our very first robbery.  Guy had us buy some tin cups and put them on all our inside door handles each evening.  That way when anyone tries to get into the house, as they turn the handle, the cup slips off the inside handle and crash bangs loudly onto our marble floors.  Wednesday night (or was it the wee hours of the morning on Thursday?) our thief took off running when he heard the noise.  Our lives and all the rest of our "stuff" were spared.  We are thanking God for His protection.

And yes, we've made some changes.  Each theft is different.  Each theft points out holes in our security system.  

This time around we immediately put the ladder in a locked storage room.  We're probably going to dismantle it since we have two nice metal ladders which are in constant use.  They live in a secure place.  

We're not sure just who, but we do know that SOMEONE will be our new Wednesday night guard.  We have two possibilities who are under consideration at this moment.  

There have been other improvements, too.  We remain confident that God is our real guard, nighttime, daytime, all the time.  We rest secure in Him.