RHM News Update, September 2018

Posted by Dion Todd September 23rd, 2018 2,876 Views 0 Comments

RHM News Update, September 2018 from Refreshing Hope Ministries on Vimeo.

RHM News: Since we have not had a RHM Live service for the last couple of weeks because of Hurricane Florence and other matters, we thought we would catch you up this week. Lord willing, we plan to carry on with the Bible Study next week.

Dental:

Here is some news that is happening at Refreshing Hope. Recently I had a dental checkup and the dentist was concerned about two wisdom teeth. He had wanted to pull them 10 years ago but I couldn’t see the point and they didn’t explain it well enough.

This time he told me that we either pull them or lose the teeth beside them because they were beginning to cause gum disease in that area. We decided to remove them and I can say, well that was fun. Apparently the roots of wisdom teeth keep growing as you age and the root on the bottom on was twice as long as the tooth and curved underneath the jawbone. They wrestled and tugged for an hour and a half, finally taking a drill and drilling all the way around the root before it came out. The dentist said that he would have sent me out to a surgeon if he had known what it would take.

When they were out, they stitched up the sockets and put me on antibiotics for a while. My jaw turned black and blue and swelled up like I was holding a tennis ball in my mouth and I couldn’t talk for a while. Sylvia waited on me hand and foot bringing me warm blankets and meds on a schedule. The first three days were the worst, since then it has been steadily improving and I have no pain now.

Hurricane Florence:

(for readability, we just have one of the hurricane photos in this post. To see all of them, please play the video)

Well, hurricane Florence has come by and dropped an insane amount of rain on us here. The eye of the storm came over Myrtle Beach and just sat here for like a day and a half, then slowly moved off. The wind was not that bad, but the flooding that it left behind is still rising. They are predicting that the Waccamaw River near our house will crest Monday.

The national guard is here sand bagging Hwy 501 to keep at least one road out of here open as the water is still rising. The traffic is crazy. People sit in their car two to three hours for a drive that would normally be twenty minutes. One church was out there handing out bottles of water and snacks to the people stuck in traffic.

Sylvia and I are good condition here on a high sandy hill about a mile from the river, and pretty stocked up on food. Before this we bought a ten-pound bag of rice and a ten-pound bag of dried pinto beans, so we can eat for a while. That said, we are cut off from almost everywhere. The highway that we live on is flooded at both ends, and the road that we would take to the beach is flooded as well. Getting around here is difficult at best.

We have a lot to be thankful for. God has protected us and the storm did very little damage here. Thank you all for your prayers! The aftermath was far worse than the hurricane. As it was leaving, water spouts were coming ashore and turning into tornadoes once they hit land. There were at least 6 tornado warnings, some passing right through our community here.

There was a terrible lightning storm that was shaking the house, and you could hear trees being hit like explosions. Lightning hit the network here and destroyed one of our main switches, so we had to improvise and patch it up till it could be replaced. The aftermath, tornados, lightning storms, and flooding were far worse than the hurricane.

New CD Coming Out:

Refreshing Hope Music is about to release our first CD. We have put it all together, made up some artwork, the inner cover and such, and submitted them for inspection. They said that it could take up to 10 business days before we can get a proof. After that, it should be available on Amazon as a CD or as MP3 downloads. The CD will probably cost around $15 because print on demand always cost more. The MP3s hopefully will cost around .99 cent each.

Habakkuk 3:17-18 (NKJV)

While preparing this message, the Lord brought to mind this verse, which I believe is relevant for this time:

Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.