We arrived back in the States in March. We spent several days in DC on the way back to Alabama, visiting the Smithsonian Museums and getting over major jet lag. We’ve realized that the trip from our town in Eastern Chad, all the way to North Alabama, is best done in stages. So we left our town in mid-February to head to the capital for some training and a retreat. We had about a week of down time after that before flying out. We flew out of N’Djamena on March 3, and after a relatively short layover in Casablanca we arrived in Washington D.C. on March 4.
We made the final leg of our trip on March 9, arriving in Huntsville in the early evening. Whew!
Some of you are probably wondering what we’ll do with all this free time. Well, since you asked, we do have some goals for our time home…
Reconnecting
Two and a half years is a long time. We did make a brief visit to the States in the Spring of 2016, but not nearly long enough to visit anyone other than immediate family and our church. So one of our primary goals for our time in the States is to reconnect with people – friends, family, churches, supporters, etc.
Sharing Our Vision
We have a very specific vision for our work – to see churches planted. We have been spent the past 2.5 years laying a foundation for the work of realizing (by the power of the Holy Spirit) this vision. We have some reflections and lessons learned from this season. We have some ideas about the next season (when we return in December of this year). We want to share these with like-minded brothers and sisters. We want to mobilize prayer for our ministry and the wider ministry of the gospel in Chad. We want to account for the use of our time to those who’ve supported us financially. We want to recruit others to join our support team as we revise our budget to better represent realities in Chad. We want to share our struggles so that people can pray. We want to share some encouraging stories so that people can praise the Lord with us.
Further Equipping
Our time in Chad has helped us to identify some personal strengths and weaknesses. We want to grow in the areas we are weak. Josh will be doing further studies in biblical counseling, systematic theology, and biblical hermeneutics among other things. Kimberly will be studying biblical counseling as well. We are excited about having some time to study and grow in these areas!
Refining Vision/Future Planning
Josh is meeting regularly with church leadership as well as a guy whose family is considering joining us in Chad. They are discussing and refining the vision for the ministry, guidelines for inviting people to join us, doctrinal distinctives of the team, and many other things. This has been a very helpful time of discussion that is helping to clarify, and express in our team documents, issues ranging from the definition of “church” to the definition of the “gospel” to what it means to “make disciples”, as well as which issues (doctrinal, philosophical, etc.) must be agreed upon by all team members and what issues have room for disagreement. Kimberly will also be involved in these discussions from time to time as she’s able.
In addition, we are beginning to discuss some concrete ideas for ministry when we return. We have realized that there are seemingly endless good activities that we could be involved in, but not all are effective for church planting. How might we get access to people, in our town as well as the hundreds of surrounding villages, so that relationships can be built and the Gospel shared? How can we help meet the overwhelming physical needs of the people while not neglecting the much more critical spiritual needs? These are the questions we are asking ourselves, and now having a few years as cultural “learners”, among the people, under our belts, we can begin to discuss answers.
Catch Up With Us
We hope to see many of you as we make visits to East TX and within Alabama. We’ll be near Gadsden, AL at the end of this month. We’ll be in TX mid-June, participating in VBS at First Baptist Church Liberty City and visiting a couple of other churches. We’ll be in Birmingham, AL in mid-July. Josh will be in Germany in August for our organization’s International Conference, and then in Jupiter, FL for another conference in September.
If you’d like to have us share with your church or small group about our ministry and the needs of eastern Chad, we’d love to consider it. You can contact us here.