Author name: Lois Gillespie

Down time around the corner – I think…

Did you hear that huge sigh of relief? Because we now have a 2-week Spring break, we think we will have some down  time. We do have some plans, though.

  • Bob is working on curriculum development, ACSI re-certification, and planning a trip to Beneira to hang out with Jellygoo, one of the lay leaders at a church being encouraged by our mission.
  • I will be working with a man who arrives from Edmonton today to run and terminate network cable in our new Media Center. He is an answer to your prayers; I asked you to pray that Luke could come out and help. This man’s name is Binh, but he is the Luke you prayed for.

Yesterday was an special experience for us as one of our workers was married in a local, very Nigerien church service which lasted 3 hours! That doesn’t include the ‘reception’ or celebration which we are told lasted well  into the night. We praise God that Jean has married a godly girl who will walk beside him as he seeks to follow Christ.

After almost 2 months of sickness, Boubacar’s father is well again. Although Bob visited him and prayed with him and for him, it’s hard to say which God the family credits for his return to health as local religious leaders were praying for him, too. Please pray that the family will clearly understand our compassionate and caring God.

Last Sunday night was Sahel Academy night at The Evening NEWS (Sunday evening’s Niamey English Worship Service).  What a blessing to hear the secondary choir sing about God’s gift that was Written in Red, and then to hear student reports on this semester’s 3 weekend outreaches to Inates, Maine Soroa, and Tera. Through these trips, God’s love was demonstrated and proclaimed as the kids ministered by cleaning up and painting a village clinic, putting in insulation and remodeling a missionary’s kitchen, constructing hangars for village school classrooms, visiting remote villages and ‘sitting’ with the elders, playing soccer and other games with the village ‘youth’, holding children’s Bible clubs, and singing in Sunday services. These villagers saw ‘Jesus in skin’ even as they heard His story of love. Pray for the people in each of these villages who have seen and heard this message.

One of the blessings of this past month was to see how God worked through one woman’s willingness to listen to God and follow the ‘dream’ He placed in her heart. About a year ago, Cathy shared with our Bible study group that she had a desire to put together a woman’s retreat for the ladies of Niger; she asked us to pray with her about that dream. Cathy shared her dream with her sister Debbie who is involved in Women’s Ministries at her church in the states. To make a long story short, Debbie’s church not only paid for her plane ticket to come out here and minister to us at the retreat last weekend, but sent all kinds of love gifts to us as well. Their mother Eleanor came to serve and love us all. We were so moved and blessed by the love shown to us, and challenged as well to consider a few of God’s Gifts of Grace to us: His love, His faithfulness, and our identity in Him. Thank you, Cathy, Debbie, and Eleanor, for listening to God and following the dream He placed in your heart. You are an example to us all. Thank you, also to all of you who got behind this dream and helped make it happen. You have encouraged many who were weary.

A Different Kind of Celebration

With school recommencing at Sahel Academy on Tuesday, many students (and staff) are traveling with their families to Niamey, either by car or plane. Traveling in West Africa is challenging at the best of times, but recent events have called for increased security at the borders and throughout the country, making these trips even more challenging. Please pray for the safety of these travelers, and for calm hearts as they face these extra checks along the way.

Although we’ve been thankful for the change of pace, we have kept busy. Lois has ‘attacked’ projects in her technology world. Most are still ongoing, but at least they are started. She’s very thankful for a few fellow ‘geeks’ who were part of a 20-member team here in Niamey to help with a missions conference. Their advice and help has been a great encouragement.

Speaking of missions conferences, we were blessed to part of this recent Niger missions conference. We were encouraged and challenged in many ways as pastor and author Ken Burkey shared about Finding Hope in the Quitting Points of Life. Thank you, Pastor Ken and others from the team, who have shared with us and encouraged us in lots of ways this past week.

Work teams – what a blessing! Please pray for a possible work team from our sending church who will help with a major upcoming project in Lois’ technology world. They are willing and wanting to come, but need to work through many details including finding the finances.

Christmas Eve found Bob helping Pastor Abdourahamane show a video at their service celebrating the birth of Christ, while other EBM team members showed a video at a Christmas Eve outreach across town.

For us, Christmas day was a very quiet day – until Boubacar, our weekend guard came to the door with the book we had given him for Christmas in his hands. The book contains daily readings from the Bible and is supposed to be read throughout the year, one reading each day; Boubacar was about two-thirds of the way through the book. He told Bob it was messing up his heart. Bob spent some time explaining to him why that was so, and answering his questions. Boubacar’s final request surprised us both. He asked Bob to show the Jesus film to our neighborhood, saying that everybody in Niger needed to hear this story. So Bob hung a sheet outside our front gate, ran an extension cord, and using his laptop, speakers, and the video projector some of you helped us purchase, showed the Jesus film to about 120 neighborhood people. We’re not sure what the end results will be; maybe it was Boubacar who needed to hear the story one more time. Maybe he wanted to see how others would respond to this message. As the film was in French, we’re not even sure how many of our neighbors understood it since not all Nigeriens speak the official French. We’re planning another showing in Zerma in the near future; we want to ask co-workers to be on hand to help with anyone who shows interest in this message. Please pray for this outreach. We also ask you to continue to please pray for Boubacar. His heart is under attack as a result of your prayers. We need to pray him through this difficult life-changing decision.

What’s happening to the US dollar in the world market is affecting missionaries worldwide. We here in Niger are feeling the crunch. Please pray for those who will be considering our support needs as well as the support needs of other missionaries in the coming weeks.

We received Christmas cards, e-mails and gifts from many of you this past month. Thanks for helping us through a really lonely time!

Math Teacher Needed

Faithful Prayer Supporters, I?m sending you this special update which includes a letter from a missionary family here in Niger. It mentions a major concern of ours that we ask you to pray about tonight as you meet together and then this week as you think about us. Thank you.

“Whenever you create a file or install a new program on the computer you want to make a backup copy of whatever it is.  Then in case the original copy gets corrupted or deleted,  you haven’t lost all your work.  In a war, the troops on the front line need plenty of support and backup to maintain their momentum.  Without adequate transportation facilities, doctors, air support, food, water, and ammunition, the army cannot do its job. Planning ahead and working together as a team are essential if the war effort is to succeed. Likewise,  any country needs a good infrastructure to maintain a certain standard of living.  Roads, airports, electric grids, water and telephone lines, sewers, schools, postal systems, offices, churches, and manufacturing plants are all essential to our way of life.  But what if all these backup systems were pulled out from under us and we had little support to continue living our lives the way we always have?” (Written in 2002)

We have often said that if it were not for the support of Sahel Academy, we would not be able to continue our work in Tera.  That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we certainly would not be able to continue with the same amount of effectiveness.  We also look at how well Daniel and Suzanne are doing and know it is in part because of the partnership we have enjoyed with Sahel Academy.

Because we are 100% behind Sahel Academy and their mission, we come to you with two very urgent prayer requests.  By mid-January (or before!) we need to have a high school math teacher (or two) and a principal (grades K-12).  It would be ideal if the principal were also familiar with the accreditation process for ACSI and MSA, but we won’t be too picky at this point!  We need somebody to fill each of these positions until early June. 

Our high school math teacher came to do a year and will be finishing 3 1/2 years in December!  So, a warning comes attached to this plea: You may like it well enough to stay!  He extended another 1/2 year this year because no math teacher was in the pipeline for the fall, but he needs to be back in England in December.  Our principal has finished a four-year term and is on a much-deserved home assignment in Australia.  She will be back for the beginning of the school year in August 2008.

Please pray for these positions to be filled.  Our teaching staff is already over-extended and cannot take on any more classes.  Our director is trying to do his job, the principal’s job, and keep the school moving forward in the accreditation process and has more to do than one man can possibly ever get done.  Some of the teachers have taken on extra responsibilities to try to lighten his load.

Please think about filling one of these positions.  If you are interested, contact SIM directly through their website (www.sim.org), write to them at Box 7900, Charlotte, NC  28241,  or call them at 1-800-521-6449 or 1-704-588-4300.  We’d love it if you were able to partner with us in reaching the Songhai.

It is also possible to come to Sahel Academy under EBM (www.ebm.org) or SIL (www.sil.org). If that were to be your preference, contact them through their websites.

Thanks so much for your prayers for these urgent needs.

Love,

Nancy and John DeValve (and Suzanne who needs a math teacher!)

Maybe you are God?s answer to this prayer. If you need more information, please visit the school website at www.sahelacademy.com.