Author: josh Page 2 of 9

Visit from Nana

On February 6, 2020

Breakfast at the Radisson Blu, a special treat!

Nana (my mom) and her friend Brooke visited us the week after Christmas and we are so thankful for their visit. The travel in country was a bit sketchy and a cause for some stress, but their laid-back attitude mitigated the stress. We had planned to fly our family (using the in-country airline, Tchadia) from Abeche to the capital, spend a few days at a nice hotel with our guests, and then fly back to Abeche. Since Tchadia now cancels more flights than they actually fly, we ended up driving to the capital (14 hours, several times push starting the car from some overheating problems). “That’s OK” we thought, “because we’ll all fly back to Abeche together.” Except that the day before the flight they couldn’t tell us if the flight would actually go or not. So we punted again and just drove back. Now Nana, we feared, might not be up for a long drive with no A/C (part of the overheating problem) and no Starbucks. But we were wrong. She did amazing, as did Brooke, and we had a great drive. We saw lots of camels, which they were thrilled about, and even saw a camel caravan loaded down and moving to their next camp.

We made it in under 12 hours this time, which was amazing. Tired, but happy, the next day we had the huge party we had planned to celebrate Nana’s visit. This is expected in Chad, especially for someone who traveled such a long way. So that morning I headed off to the animal market with Abdoulaye and Brooke to pick a couple of sheep that looked like good eatin’. Meanwhile Kimberly managed an army of ladies who had come around 7:30AM to begin the process of cutting, peeling, slicing, pounding, etc. to make the sauce and all the sides to go with the meat.

It was a great party, and we had lots of people there to celebrate with us. Nana met all of our friends and neighbors, as well as some people we had never seen before. Nana and Brooke dressed up in their finest Chadian clothes, which Kimberly had bought for the occasion. We ate around 1:30PM, which is the normal lunchtime here in Chad, especially for parties like this. The food was wonderful, and Nana didn’t have to eat anything too exotic (that was one of her conditions for coming on the trip). Great day.

Thursday was a day to rest, as well as the last day for Nana and Brooke in Abeche. Our Chadian friends couldn’t imagine coming all this way just for a few days, since their visits usually last weeks or months, but we explained that Brooke had to get back to work. We passed Thursday at the house playing games, talking, and just resting.

Friday it was back to N’Djamena with Mission Aviation Services (MAF). This is a wonderful organization that works in hard to reach places to help missionaries get around. If you’re looking for a worthwhile organzation to support financially, consider these folks. The flight was on-time and uneventful, and we were back in N’Djamena by mid-afternoon. They flew out in the middle of the night.

We are thankful for a wonderful and encouraging visit!

Our Village Home

By josh

On January 5, 2020

In Chad, Family

A lot of progress has been made in the month or so since the last post. Work began on our huts after the last trip, and we now have two large huts and a ligdabe (I can’t figure out what to call this in English. It’s basically a standalone structure to provide shade made from wood and grass mats.) We have a pit toilet dug. Abdoulaye left today to go and put up one more ligdabe and a grass fence around the plot to give us a little privacy. Oh, and doors for our huts. I’m in N’Djamena right now after dropping my Mom and her friend off at the airport, but I return tomorrow to Abeche and we hope to be in the village by the end of the week for a week-long stay. Kimberly has been to the market to buy the household items we need to set up there. We bought a few more mats and blankets (it’s COLD at night right now).

A Big Step Forward

By josh

On December 7, 2019

In Chad, Family, Ministry

Thanks to all those who prayed for my trip this past week. It was very encouraging. We left on Tuesday morning around 7AM, two Land Cruisers loaded down with wood for the construction of two huts. The village elders have previously agreed to give us a plot of land for building on, though it has been a little unclear up until now exactly where. So, one of the purposes of this visit was to determine where our concession will be, to deliver supplies, and to arrange for the work to begin.

The trip from our current home to the village is about 90km (56mi), which on a good day takes about 3 hours. We arrived in the village around 10:30am to find it almost completely empty. All of the people were out in their fields gathering in the millet and peanut harvest. Some camel herders had brought their camels near the village and allowed them to graze in the fields of the villagers. This angered the villagers, but the camel herders are from a well-connected tribe, and the last time the villagers chased the camels away the herders returned with military backup. This conflict between sedentary farmers and nomadic animal herders is not new, but every year there are flare-ups of violence that see dozens of people killed. In fact, our region is current in a “state of emergency” because of violence between the Maba people and the Chadian Arabs. Anyway, these villagers were now highly motivated to gather their crops ASAP, so they were sleeping and eating out in the fields in order to get it done quickly.

After resting for a few minutes we headed out into the fields to greet people. We ate lunch out in the field, prepared by Abdoulaye’s aunt.

After visiting some of the older women we went to look at the village well. One other purpose of our visit was to look at the pump, which has been broken for several years, and determine the specifications for a new system. One of our colleagues here has funding for a project to replace broken well pumps with solar powered pumps and water tanks that will allow access to clean water and will last longer before requiring maintenance. We’ve partnered with him to outfit wells in two Maba villages with these systems, one of the villages being this one.

From the well we went down to the nearby wadi and ate some guavas fresh from the trees. The wadi is a beautiful place full of large mango, guava, and palm trees where monkeys and kids play side by side. The water is almost gone from the surface at this point in the year, but it’s still relatively close to the surface so people come and dig holes to get their daily water supply.

We returned from the wadi, and throughout the evening men trickled in to greet and left again to sleep out in their fields. We were able to hold a brief meeting with the chief and elders to explain our plan for the well as well as for building huts. They were happy with both plans, which was encouraging for us.

We slept outside under a blanket of stars and under literal blankets. This time of year brings cold nights, especially outside of Abeche. Wednesday morning many of the men came by and they discussed the specifics of our plan to build huts there. They marked out the land they would give, and Abdoulaye marked out on the ground where he wanted the huts constructed. The walls of the huts will be made of bricks, handmade and fired by the villagers. They will give us the bricks for one hut as a gift, and the bricks for the other we’ll buy from them. Several thousand handmade bricks is quite a generous gift!

After the impromptu meetings and a few more greetings we took off to see the other well nearby where we plan to replace the pump with a solar powered system. We talked with the villagers briefly, asked some specifics about the depth of the well and how many households are served by it, and then headed on for the final stop of our trip to visit some friends living in a nearby town and drop some of their belongings off for them. After that, mid-afternoon on Wednesday, we headed back to Abeche. We arrived just after dark, exhausted but thankful for a profitable trip.

Chad by the Numbers

By josh

On November 11, 2019

In Chad

Here’s a snapshot of the recent (September 2019) Chad Country Report from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Access the full report here:

https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/chad/document/chad-country-profile-september-2019

2 Nights in the village

By josh

On October 24, 2019

In Chad, Family

This past week we took the whole family for 2 nights in a Maba village, the same one Josh visited about this time last year. Josh’s language tutor is from this village and had returned there to visit while we were in the capital. So we decided to take our family to visit his village and pick him up to come back and restart language lessons.

The road passed through this wadi (a seasonal riverbed, dry during most of the year)- happily not too deep for us to cross. For about a dollar some young guys will wade out and show you the best path across. Definitely worth at least a dollar.

We arrived mid-afternoon on Thursday after taking our time and making several stops in towns along the way. We spent the afternoon greeting people and eating and drinking hot, sweet tea. People seemed to be genuinely happy that I returned and brought my whole family.

One highlight of the trip was our time down at the wadi about 1km from the village. Most villages are near wadis because even during the dry part of the year people can find water by digging a hole in the sand, going deeper and deeper until they hit water. With water not far below the surface for most of the year, and filled with water for several months of the year, wadis are the greenest places in the Sahel. Many wadis in Chad have mango, guava and palm groves. And the temperature beneath the shade of these large, leafy trees is significantly cooler than outside.

Another highlight for the boys was getting to ride donkeys down to the wadi to fetch water.

4th Annual “Road Trip” With Chadian Pastors

By josh

On October 22, 2019

In Chad, Ministry

After returning from N’Djamena on the 7th, I left with several pastors from les Assemblées Chrétiennes au Tchad (ACT) on the 9th to do our annual trip to visit missionary posts in the east. We had planned to do the same route as other years, but some late rains made the roads impassable so we had to go in a different direction. This wasn’t too disappointing for me because it allowed me to visit several places I’d never been before. So instead of heading southeast from Abeche, we headed northeast to higher elevations and dryer roads.

We visited Amouna, the widow of an MBB who passed away last year. She lives in this refugee camp, that’s her house in the background.

Looking down the road

By josh

On July 24, 2019

In church, language, Ministry

The past few months have involved prayer and discussion about our future ministry. Our stated goal is seeing churches planted among the Maba people. This is the lens through which we evaluate all of our decisions and activities. Will it further this work? We must say “No” to many good things in order to pursue this one thing well.
The most important activity right now, the one that lays the foundation for all others in the pursuit of this goal is learning the Arabic and Maba languages. God in his infinite wisdom has chosen to save people through the sharing of a message, one that involves sounds, words, sentences, etc. Our God is a communicator, and in representing him to the nations to which we have been sent we must also seek to be skilled communicators. Communication of a message necessarily involves language, and language cannot be separated from the culture in which it exists and from which it evolved. So to communicate this critical message, the first and foremost activity for the cross-cultural (e.g. cross language-barrier) worker must be language/culture learning. “Well, duh,” you may say. And indeed, this was widely assumed by earlier generations of missionaries. The William Careys and Adoniram Judsons spent years getting fluent in the languages of their people. But it is no longer assumed today. Most workers it seems commit to a year or two of half-hearted language learning with many other activities serving as distractions. Methodologies promising rapid multiplication that don’t rely on the communication ability of the missionary abound. And indeed it is a great temptation, one we feel, but one which must be overcome if we are to communicate the gospel clearly, disciple new converts thoroughly, and defend the young church from error and heresy.

This is why we continue with formal language learning long after many of our colleagues have moved on to bigger and better things. And this is why, as we’ve considered the next several years of Maba language learning, we’re now considering moving out of our large town to a smaller town or village that will enable us to have more concentrated language practice. We’ve realized that in our current town we will have to work hard to find Maba people to talk to because there are so many other groups here as well. But, to learn Maba well, wouldn’t it be much easier being in a place with a higher concentration of Maba people, where we could use Maba in the market and on the street and not just in our lessons? That is the question we’re asking ourselves.

It’s with that question in mind that Josh recently took a trip to a smaller town with a much higher concentration of Maba people. This is a town we’ve visited many times before, but this trip was for the specific purpose of gathering information about a potential move there. Josh traveled with some friends from another org, one of which is considering a move to the same town for many of the same reasons.

on the way…
the school run by the church
with Dr. Ann, Abdoulaye and Pastor Jeremie
the abandoned airstrip

The trip was just an overnight trip, four hours from our current town, but it was very productive. We searched the market and made notes of what things are available daily, what things only once a week (on “market day”) and what things are not available at all. We observed materials available for building (fired bricks, sheets of tin, concrete, etc.). We asked about water availability, travel to and from the town during rainy season, security issues, and more. We found out there is an old airstrip that has been abandoned for years. We drove to the edge of town and looked at it and it seems it could be made usable for MAFs Cessna Caravan 208 without too much effort or expense. We also spent time with the small church (made up of southern Chadians working as teachers or nurses in this town far from home). It seems like this town might be just the right size to allow us to live relatively comfortably while still being in the middle of Maba-speaking people.

Would you pray for us that we would have wisdom in this decision? We wouldn’t plan to move anywhere until after our next home assignment, which will start sometime next May. But there will be much planning and preparation to be done between now and then if we decide to make the move.

In the most recent 12 months dominated by war, political crises and humanitarian emergencies around the globe, Chad, a landlocked country in north-central Africa, took the unwelcome honor of being the world’s most negative country.

As per the survey, in 2018, more than seven in 10 Chadians (72 percent) said they struggled to afford food at some point in the past year.
Astha Agnihotri (CNBCTV18.com) commenting on the newly released Gallup 2019 Global Emotions Report

See the full article here.

By josh

On May 4, 2019

In Chad

Great message for potential missionaries and those who would send and support them.

By josh

On April 30, 2019

In Bible, church, Ministry

A Maba Wedding

By josh

On March 7, 2019

In Chad, Culture

Last week I traveled about 2.5 hours out of town to attend a wedding for Abdoulaye’s cousin.

The Maba, like most of the tribes here, have a two-stage wedding. They first do what’s called the fateh, which is something more than an engagement party but not quite a wedding ceremony. The fateh takes place once the bride’s family have agreed on a bride price and the groom has provided at least part of the price. The price for this wedding was something around $500, several large sacks of sugar and rice, and a cow or two. This can vary greatly due to the status of the bride and her family. For the Maba, unlike some of the other tribes, once the’ve had the fateh the groom can “visit” his wife, even though she still lives with her parents. Yep, I imagine this leads to some awkwardness, but culturally it’s very normal.

After a time (months, even a year or more), when the groom has paid all of the bride price (or the bride’s family just gets tired of waiting and gives up), the second part of the wedding takes place. This part is called the “arrooz” and it involves officially taking the wife to her husband’s house. At this point the wedding is finished and they build a home of their own together. This stage also involves a big party, lots of good food, and housewarming gifts for the bride. Often large glass cases (with mirrored back panels) are bought to display the dishes the bride receives. So it would not be unusual to go into a mud brick house and find a large glass cabinet displaying fancy dishes.

Of course, all of this varies a bit from family to family, and from village to city, just as with American weddings. But this is the general process.

Back to our visit… The unique thing about this fateh, I learned in the car on the way there, was the the groom’s father was also re-marrying the groom’s mother after having been divorced from her for 5 years. So it was a double wedding! Divorce is relatively easy here, especially for men, but I’ve yet to fully understand the rules governing it. So maybe a later post on that when I figure it out. The time in the village was a joyous one, with lots of singing and dancing by the women and cheerful conversation by the men. Thursday afternoon, soon after we arrived, the actual ceremony for the son took place. The grooms’s representative and the bride’s representative recount the bride price and the amount paid so far to the men sitting on mats. The two representatives shake hands three times, one of them saying something that I can’t quite remember, and then the proceed with someone leading prayers. The prayers are presumably for the newly married couple, although I couldn’t hear a lot of it because the guy leading was speaking too softly. Others offered what seemed like spontaneous contributions. When the prayer was over (after about 5 minutes), that was it, the fateh was complete. All that was left was the celebration.

We stayed that night, at one point visiting the women and greeting them, at which point they began dancing and singing. The sisters of the groom were apparently overcome with joy that their father was returning home as well, and their songs were all about “good rains” and “crops being plentiful”, I think a metaphor for their joy at being reunited as a family. We ate lots of meat and sauce that night, slept out under a tree, and the next morning continued the celebrations with more dancing and singing, horse races, and lots of laughter. At one point during the morning there was another short meeting of the men similar to the night before, but this time for the father. He even had to pay another bride price!

Around noon we loaded up and took off for home, for me a bittersweet time. Just before leaving, I had gone with some of the men to visit the wife the father had taken while he was divorced from his first wife, and our mission was to inform the other wife that her husband had reunited with his first wife and that she was now #2. She held it together pretty well, at least until we left. They had said that when her husband had mentioned the possibility to her of reuniting with his first wife she had thrown a brick at him. After all the joy of seeing a family reunited, I was reminded of just how broken the institution of marriage is in the Islamic world. Something meant to be shared between one man and one woman has been corrupted, just like in the times of the Patriarchs and Kings of the OT, and the consequences today are just as terrible as they were back then.