In January, we spent a week in our newly constructed huts in the village. It was a very productive trip, and we were grateful to how warmly we were welcomed into the community. The women were very hospitable, offering us food and peanuts from their fields. We in turn, shared our dates and candy from the big city – a special treat they can’t get in the village.
Josh was able to visit several markets in surrounding towns. These are “traveling” markets that only come once a week. It was helpful to see what food items and household goods are available.
The meat section…
Isaac, Judah, and Calla were all able to make some friends, even though the village children only speak Maba. We are hopeful that this will help them transition well when we spend longer periods of time in the village.
Soccer is something of a universal language
One highlight of the week was hosting women from our village and 3 other neighboring villages to make grass mats for a privacy fence for our home. They each donated one or two bundles of millet stalks, walking or coming on donkey, and then spent the day making the grass mats for us. We thanked them publicly and also provided a goat and a sheep as a thank you gift for the women to share a nice meal together.
We attended a village baby naming ceremony that was actually not in a village, but in the middle of a field! We used our car to carry a laboring mother to a nearby hospital and back again, only to learn that her baby suffered trauma during delivery and is paralyzed. I had two women from different villages walk by foot to come greet me and bring me food. We saw camels almost every day outside our front door. We saw amazing amounts of stars in the night sky, and walked far away to use the bathroom since the wall around our actual bathroom was not yet complete! We have so many more stories to share; we look forward to sharing more with many of you when we come to the States this Spring.
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!
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).
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.
With the Sultan and his advisors. The Sultan is holding Norah.
This week, we had the unique opportunity to greet the new Maba Sultan in Abeche. It was a wonderful way for us to introduce ourselves as learners of his people’s language and culture; to congratulate him on his new position as sultan; to share with him our prayers for wisdom and blessing in his work; to identify ourselves as working with the church and longing to show God’s love to the Maba people. We brought our children along, as well as Abdoulaye who helped secure the appointment. The sultan and his “cabinet” of men loved the children! They received us all with a very warm welcome and gave us an invitation to come visit again whenever we want. One of the men said he wanted to come to our home to visit with us in Maba. Relationships are so important in Chad, so all in all, this provided a wonderful occasion for us to establish a positive relationship with this influential Maba leader; our hope is that in the future he will know of us when we choose to begin work in villages.
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!
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.
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.
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.
