Category: Ministry Page 2 of 7

A Big Step Forward

On December 7, 2019

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.

Ladies Bible Study

By kimberly

On November 1, 2019

In Chad, Ministry

Recently, another worker moved to a smaller town outside of Abeche, leaving 5 women without a place to meet for their Bible study. I know all the ladies, but I hesitated to lead the study because of the time commitments I have learning Maba right now, as well as my own lack of Arabic biblical vocabulary. However, one of the ladies speaks English, and after praying about my involvement, I was moved to compassion for these ladies who likely wouldn’t meet if they didn’t have a safe, semi-private place to gather. So, I offered to meet with them. We’ve met twice now. Three of the more committed ladies have attended on Thursday afternoons at my home. We are going through the book of Colossians. I am encouraging one of the ladies to take a leadership role in facilitating our study, and if she has questions then I can help answer. This opportunity is giving me a lot of hope and dreams for future Maba ladies that I pray God provides for me to one day meet with over the Word. These ladies have a hunger for Scripture, a faithfulness to try to live out their faith amongst Muslim family and friends, and a desire to share that faith in Christ with those they love dearly. I am encouraged as I grow in my own vocabulary in a safe and gracious environment over God’s Word. We all walk away deepened in our love for one another and for the Lord. I look forward to the day where I see faithful Maba women meeting together to feast on God’s Word and love one another through prayer and encouragement!

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.

My Evolving View of Language Learning

By kimberly

On June 4, 2019

In Chad, language, Ministry

When I first became a missionary, my view of language learning was somewhat nebulous since I had never seriously studied a language before (high school and college Spanish doesn’t count). I had never committed my life for an agreed-upon time frame to studying day in and day out for the purpose of speaking and being understood, listening and comprehending. My first missionary assignment required that I spend my first year studying the local language. I was single, so that task came with few inconveniences or distractions. After my year was up, my given job was to be a rural evangelist. My experience was that although I had invested a long year of diligent study, I passed my sending agency’s required language evaluation, and many people in the local community told me I spoke well, I still had to put in long hours each week of translating words and ideas into the local language before I could take a Bible story to a group of village women. Then, because my language was “good” but still very amateur, I always traveled with a local believing friend to help me re-tell the story and participate in the follow-up discussion so I knew things were communicated well. Each time I did this, the women always positively affirmed what they were hearing. However, I had enough cultural teaching beforehand to assure me that they were most likely “saving face” – that is, keeping the peace and treating me respectfully to my face but questioning or disbelieving my message once I left town.

Fast-forward three languages. Josh and I spend a year learning basic French with a splash of Biblical vocabulary thrown in. This was mainly so we could navigate our way through government bureaucracy in the Chadian capital and interact with the Chadian church. Then, I spent a few years getting a little more than halfway through a six-phase language learning method with Chadian Arabic. Josh has continued on and well surpassed me in that endeavor. (Maybe it will require another blog post to explain that reasoning.) I am at a point where many people tell me my language is really good. I am also at a point where I realize how much I don’t know. I have learned that people will tell me my language is really good because they are pleased to hear a white person speaking their language, but this cannot be my measuring stick for a job completed.

Now I have just begun, God willing, a life-long endeavor learning to communicate well in the Maba language. What has changed? How did I go from investing one year in my first language on my first missionary assignment to committing to a life of learning the Maba language? Certainly, several factors have influenced the decision Josh and I have made to invest significantly on the front-end of our ministry career in learning language well.

One reason is that we have come to understand that the value of the gospel message is worth our efforts to put in the hard work of language study up front so that when people hear us communicate precious truths of Scripture, we are communicating them in a manner worthy of the message being presented. We have a treasure to share with our neighbors, but we don’t want to sound like my toddler when we try to tell them this good news. We seek to present the gospel message, as well as do discipleship, with clarity. Communication in a foreign language and across a huge cultural barrier is not a trivial matter. We are concerned with both the words we say as well as their connotation and the way they’re understood in the minds of the hearers. In an Islamic society, this is further complicated by the Islamic corruption of the biblical narrative and biblical terminology, so that what words like “grace” or “sin” or “heaven” mean to us are not necessarily the same as what they mean to a Chadian Muslim. So we devote ourselves to the tedious task of achieving language proficiency in order to, like the Apostle Paul, “declare the mystery of Christ,” to “make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.” (Col. 4:3-4)

Another factor is that from my own experience and from observation, it makes a lot more work for us in the long run if we have to constantly prepare not only the content of our messages but also the language translation each time, we plan to go share with someone. It was painful to spend that amount of time hoping I had the right words and phrases. There was always a nudging sense of doubt that something was only half-communicated. How did I know if the valuable message I was sharing was actually the message that my friends were hearing? This is not something that can be learned in one year of language study.

Another significant reason we choose to invest more time learning language is because over time we have come to understand and appreciate the entirety of the Great Commission. We are not in eastern Chad just to make converts and leave them to flounder on their own, producing fledgling churches that are not grounded in the Word, but are instead tossed to and fro. No! We are here to obey the words of the Great Commission that say, “Go and make disciples…teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” How can we obey Jesus’ command to us if we have only a half-knowledge of the language and we are chopping up the language or wondering if we actually communicated clearly the message we are hoping to communicate? How can we discuss deep spiritual truths with a novice understanding of language and culture?

Friends, thank you for standing with us and persevering alongside us in your prayers, support, and encouragement of this ministry. For years, our updates to you have been mostly about more language learning instead of more converts. I assure you that the convictions we have come to regarding language learning are currently unpopular in many missionary circles, probably because it doesn’t result in quick converts and exciting stories. However, in missions history, we see many examples of men and women in invested years of language learning up front before they were able to engage in strong ministries amongst indigenous people which resulted in biblically sound churches. Thank you for your commitment to stand with us as we seek to honor the Lord in the way that we hope will communicate the precious truths of the gospel as well as disciple believers to maturity in the Christian faith.

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

By josh

On April 30, 2019

In Bible, church, Ministry

Learning Maba

By kimberly

On March 7, 2019

In language, Ministry

Very recently, I made the decision to start learning the Maba language. I have to say, I was not initially excited. This will be my fourth foreign language to learn, not counting high school and college Spanish. For good reason, I have felt ready to be finished learning languages. Did I really have time to add space in my schedule to learn Maba? I did not enjoy learning Chadian Arabic. When I began, I was still new to the culture, new to the method of language learning we chose to use, and I was learning in the afternoons when temperatures were rising. It was a challenging experience which still evokes negative emotions in me.

The drudgery of learning a foreign language and achieving the level we need to reach in order to effectively communicate the gospel to the Maba people is a large commitment to make. So, as I became convinced I should study Maba if we were going to do what we say we want to do – plant churches amongst the Maba people – I simultaneously began questioning whether it was worth it and whether God was worth me investing years more of my intellect and time. I was scared to ask myself that question.

The reality is, since we have already given up so much in moving to eastern Chad and learning French and Arabic (not even reaching a level where we feel we could effectively disciple someone), you and all our supporters think we are doing a great job. Why should we continue even farther? Why not just stop here and stay in a place of comfort since we get so much positive feedback from you? The motivation for investing years more in even further language study can only be that God is enough and that He is worth it.

So, in a place of honesty before the Lord, admitting to Him I didn’t know if I believed He was worth it, He graciously reminded me of His love for me and His presence with me. For so long, I have tried to obediently live out the Great Commission, but I often disregard Jesus’ last phrase, “And lo, I am with you always.” Through His word and through the testimonies of others who have gone before us, God comforted me that He is with me as I enter this season of learning the Maba language. He has changed my heart, and I am encouraged and sincerely joyful to have the honor of learning a language that only one other worker is currently learning. What a privilege it is for me to get to be one of the first to bring the gospel to women who otherwise will never hear the good news of the Gospel!

Throughout the world, reports of Muslims are coming to faith, but the truth is, it is mostly men who are believing. How are the women going to hear if only missionary husbands learn the languages these unreached people groups are speaking? Mothers have so many home responsibilities that it is only by much sacrifice that we will learn to speak the heart language of the people we are trying to reach. But I have decided it is worth it and that God is worth it.

Praise God with me for His comfort and reminders that He is with me and that He is worthy of my life poured out for the Maba people.

Pray for our family as Josh homeschools the boys part time in order to allow me time to study the language.

Pray for perseverance and continued encouragement in language learning.

Pray mostly for the Maba people to have hearts prepared to hear and respond to the Gospel when they hear.

On Learning Yet Another Language

By josh

On February 25, 2019

In Ministry

Not me, Kimberly. I’m still plodding away in Arabic, seeking to achieve a high level of competence before moving on. But Kimberly has decided to begin Maba now, because Maba will be even more important than Arabic. Many Maba women in villages don’t speak Arabic. So today was Kimberly’s first day of learning her 4th foreign language. Hopefully she can find some time to share about it here soon, I will encourage her to do so.

Language learning is, believe it or not, a bit of a controversial topic in missions today. Many people are satisfied to get enough language to live (i.e. buy things, catch a taxi, etc.) but for whatever reason not many people become truly competent. At the risk of stating the obvious, sharing the gospel, discipling, answering questions and objections – these things require more than a beginner or intermediate level of language. We have become more and more convinced of this. It may take 3-4 more years, a total of 7-8 years in Chad, to become competent in Arabic and Maba. But the importance of clarity and competence in proclaiming, teaching, correcting and exhorting a fledgling church requires a seriousness in language learning. A desire for deep relationships requires seriousness in language learning, otherwise relationships are necessarily shallow. To assume that somehow the Holy Spirit will overcome our lack of discipline and preparation is presumptuous and unbiblical. Enjoyed this quote I came across recently from William Cary:

That which, as a means, is to fit us for the discharge of these laborious and unutterable important labours, is the being instant in prayer, and the cultivation of personal religion. Let us ever have in remembrance the examples of those who have been most eminent in the work of God. Let us often look at Brainerd, in the woods of America, pouring out his very soul before God for the perishing heathen, without whose salvation nothing could make him happy. Prayer, secret, fervent, believing prayer, lies at the root of all personal godliness. A competent knowledge of the languages current where a missionary lives, a mild and winning temper, and a heart given up to God in closet religion, these, these are the attainments which, more than all knowledge, or all other gifts, will fit us to become the instruments of God in the great work of Human Redemption. Let us then ever be united in prayer at stated seasons whatever distance may separate us, and let each one of us lay it upon his heart that we will seek to be fervent in spirit, wrestling with God, till He famish these idols and cause the heathen to experience the blessedness that is in Christ.
Article X, The Serampore Form of Agreement

6 Nights in the Village

By josh

On December 23, 2018

In Chad, church, Family, Ministry

We’re back now from our trip to the town/village where we spent 6 nights starting last Friday. It was a great trip, very encouraging and also eye-opening!

We arrived Friday afternoon after about a 4-hour drive. We’re thankful that the drive was uneventful, always a blessing here. We settled in Friday evening, girls sleeping inside and the boys outside under the stars. I was glad we had brought all of our thick blankets because it was COLD!

Saturday was market day, so the ladies went to visit the market in the morning and the men took a walk around town, including the market, in the afternoon. Iwas asked that morning if I would preach the next day at the church. It wasn’t a total surprise, because we’ve learned it’s typically an honor given to visitors and I had been put on the spot once before. So I had come more prepared than the last time, with a sermonette I had just shared the weekend before at our TL retreat. But it was in English, and I had to preach in French. So Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning were spent translating the sermon, because my French is not good enough to just do it on the fly.

Sunday was church, of course. The kids do Sunday School first, and then they leave and play outside or go to their houses while the adults do church. The service was pretty typical, about 2.5 hours long with lots of drumming, dancing, singing, preaching, and church business at the end. After that was a break and then a separate communion service. Needless to say we were ready for a break Sunday afternoon, and we just spent the time resting.

Monday through Wednesday mornings were English class for Kimberly and Danielle. They did great and the kids and teachers loved it. They asked when we’d be back to do more, but at the moment we don’t have any plans.

Josh spent the mornings with the kids, doing math with Isaac and reading with Judah on a mat under a shade tree while Norah took a nap and Calla Grace played. We brought Ashta, our house helper, with us so she helped as well.

We enjoyed talking with the missionary, Jeremie, about his ministry in this town. He’s been there for 17 years, and is well-known and respected by the community. We learned more about the school, the upcoming “evangelization campaign” that the church is planning in a nearby village, and the particular challenges faced by the church in ministering among Muslims. Our good friend Abdoulaye was with us, and he spent much time in the market sharing the gospel and his personal testimony. He gave away many of the memory cards we had prepared with Bible stories in the Maba language as well as some evangelistic videos in Arabic.

We are thankful for our time in the village and the time spent strengthening our relationship with Jeremie and the small church there.

Here’s a link to some more pics from our trip, as well as other pics from the past couple of months.

Visiting “Eat and Rest”

By josh

On December 21, 2018

In Chad, Culture, Ministry

I recently took off southeast from Abeche with Abdoulaye and his brother, “Omar” to visit their home village, who’s name in Maba is literally “eat and rest.” As it turns out, this is quite the appropriate name because that’s precisely what we did!

I taught them the word “selfie”, although they were already quite familiar with the concept. Chadians love taking selfies!

The trip took about 3 hours to go 90km (56 miles), so you get the idea of what the roads were like. We arrived early afternoon and immediately went to greet the adopted mother of Abdoulaye’s brother. Their mother had given Omar to her sister to raise because she couldn’t have children, so he had grown up in the village and remained there even when Abdoulaye and their mother moved to the city.

Greetings were very warm, and the initial greetings/blessings lasted several minutes each as is their custom. The longer it’s been since you’ve seen someone, the longer the greeting. Even if you repeat the same words over and over (“God Bless, I’m well, thank God, God Bless, Praise God, etc…”), no big deal. So after the initial greetings we were seated on large mats next to where they had stored the peanut harvest (which was convenient because you could just reach over and grab a handful of peanuts whenever you wanted). We spent the afternoon in further greetings every few minutes as the women came by to bring food or the men came in from the fields.

The night in the village is much cooler than in a large town like ours. I slept under a large blanket and still was cold. So the next morning none of us moved to much until the sun had started to warm the air a bit. After a breakfast of sweetened millet with milk and goat’s head soup, we went for a walk around the nearby wadi. A wadi is a seasonal riverbed that runs with lots of water when it rains but during the dry season the water remains underground, sometimes only a few feet. This wadi was full of date palms, mango trees and guava trees. We ate our fill of guavas straight from the trees while watching the monkeys playing in nearby trees.

I was told to ride the horse, apparently they assumed I was too fragile to walk all the way to the wadi
view from horseback, headed to the wadi
The stirrups were sized for someone about a foot shorter than me, so I just let my legs dangle. not. comfortable.
The owner of my horse striking a pose
In the wadi, looking like a band of Wild West outlaws
The wadi was full of guava and mango trees, date palms, and what I think were figs
This flower is incredibly beautiful, especially in contrast to the various shades of brown all around
The broken pump at the village well

That afternoon we walked in a different direction to see the well that was dug several years ago by some charities in cooperation with the European Union. It was located between several villages so that it could be used by all. But no one from the village was trained to repair it, so when a technician who had been working in a nearby town on another project finished the project and left, there was no one responsible or trained to repair it. So for the past year it has sat idle. This is such a common scenario in the developing world. Helping people improve their lives is usually much more complicated than assumed.

As we walked back from the abandoned well, my head began to throb and I started feeling worse and worse. By the time we arrived, I just wanted to lay down and try not to throw up from the pain. When I laid down it was around 5 PM, and I didn’t get up again that night. Fortunately though my friend Abdoulaye sat up with some men, including the village chief, and shared the gospel along with more of his testimony. As I was in and out of consciousness I heard them around me talking, but didn’t know what was going on until he filled me in the next morning. He shared openly, and people were attentive, and when a guy who had been in Sudan started to argue and tell them not to read the Bible, the rest of the group made him be quiet. Abdoulaye was very encouraged by this time!

The next morning, my head still throbbing, we gathered our things and after another round of goat’s head soup, headed home. I arrived at the house around lunchtime, thankful to find a bottle of Alleve and a real bed…