Second Term Updates – Niger

Updates from our Second Term June 2006-June 2009

God is using your prayers…

Thank you for your many prayers, e-mails and notes of encouragement. Our hearts are warmed when we think of you thinking of us and praying for God’s work here in Niger and Sahel Academy. God is using those prayers!

Many of you continue to pray for Boubacar. On Easter Sunday, Boubacar asked me to show the Jesus film to the neighborhood again. This time I showed it in Zerma, a language that more of the people would understand.  All of them, approximately 125, were very intent on listening.  Today, Boubacar asked me for a Bible to read.  He said that he did not have school lessons so he had some extra time.  He has been confronting his family with the ideas from the Bible, and his family is a little upset. They say that he is becoming a Christian. He wanted to read the Bible so that he could talk to them more intelligently.  This next week his family is coming over and I will show the Jesus film in Tomasheq, their heart language.  Boubacar hopes that they will understand better.  He has quite the missionary fervor for a guy that isn’t yet born again. Your prayers are storming his heart, and we believe that God is going to save Him. Please continue to pray for Boubacar and for his family as they hear the story of Jesus in their heart language this week.

Many of you also prayed for someone to come and help cable the new Media Center, and your prayers were answered. Binh came from Edmonton, Alberta, to work with Lois (and Ken Golde and Bob – on occasion) for 2 weeks, running and terminating cable in the Media Center. He carried his supplies with him from Edmonton, only to have some of them held up in customs at the airport. Fortunately these were released 4 days later so the work could continue. Binh also helped work through some puzzling ‘connectivity’ issues on campus that were keeping our elementary classrooms from consistently connecting to the network. Please pray that work will continue on this addition to Sahel Academy, and that it will be ready for the 2008-2009 school year. Visit the school website at www.sahelacademy.com for a list of the staff that is needed for this next school year. Your prayers have ‘supplied’ our staff in the past (www.sahelacademy.comsahelian); we know God will use them to meet our needs 6 months from now. Please pray for these staff needs for the 2008-2008 school year.​

Bob: Over Spring Break while Lois was working with Binh at Sahel, I had an opportunity to spend a day and night with Djerigou, a pastor friend out near Baneira. I set my tent up beside their village huts and ‘slept’ to all the sounds of an African village – donkeys, goats, chickens, children, etc.; I was ‘awakened’ to the sound of the women pounding the millet.

I was impressed by their burning desire to know how to read the Bible and to teach others also. In the morning, Djerigou watched his little boy while his wife was with a group who were learning to read.   By 10:00, he went off to a class of his own to learn to read better.  In the heat of the day we rested, but as the sun went down the activity started again with the women pounding their millet for supper that evening. 

Djerigou and I went out to his field where he had dug a 30-foot well by hand and was watering small fruit trees that he had planted. The next morning we went to another village a few miles away. The people of the Baneira church have shared the gospel with this village, and after a year they have a church of 50 people.

As we were coming back, we met up with a group of 5 men from Baneira who were riding bikes out to this village to teach them to read the Bible.  It made me think of how we take reading and the Bible itself for granted.  These people have so little, yet their priority is on Jesus and His Word. Pray for these believers and their unquenchable witness and desire to know God’s Word.

Lois: I am enjoying a Bible study about the Fruit of the Spirit with some other Niamey women. This week we’re studying about God’s tenderness and His goodness. Although I ‘knew’ these stories, they’ve stirred my heart afresh this week as I’ve read again how God’s heart was moved to action by Hagar’s distress over her dying son, and how Jesus’ heart was warmed by simply spending time with the children. I’m being reminded of my priorities. It’s easy for me to get busy with equipment and school work, and ignore the hearts. Although the equipment and school work does need my attention, my heart needs the peace that comes from allowing God to use me to minister to other hearts. Actually, sometimes fixing broken computers does minister to hearts. Please pray that I’ll have wisdom to recognize how I can best minister, by fixing a computer or by “spending time with the children”. After all, they are the reason we are here in Niger at Sahel Academy.

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.

“And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.”

This morning God reminded me of the essence of His promises when I read in Romans 4:21 of how Abraham was strengthened in His faith and was fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.

Our faith is most definitely strengthened when we remember how God has answered prayers and how He has met needs in the past, often through your prayers and gifts. If you’ve visited our website or the website of Sahel Academy, you will probably have read some of our requests for staff here at Sahel Academy. Recently, we wanted to feel desperate as only weeks remained before the beginning of the school term, and there still seemed to be no answer. However, we’ve seen God provide before. Read what Randy Potratz, one of our co-workers, wrote about God’s most recent provision of a much-need staff member:

“One of the things that one learns on the mission field is that the Lord is a Lord of provision.  Beyond that, one learns that many times He uses His church and those who love Him to fill those personal needs and the needs of the ministries we are involved with.

“Sahel Academy has a long tradition of having personnel needs that do get filled, but obviously through the hand of God.  One of those stories of provision involves how the school received a math teacher for the second semester here.  From initial contact to landing on the field the young man arrived less than 2 months from when he heard of the need.  So the Lord can and does miraculously provide in the areas of personnel.”

Randy continues: “That brings us to the needs that are before Sahel Academy for the 2008-2009 School year.  At this point the list looks like this:

 

Kindergarten
Grade 1-2
Grade 7-8 Social Studies
Grade 9-10 Sociology
Grade 9-12 History
Grade 9-12 Science
Grade 7-12 Math
Grade 7-12 English
Music
Art
Physical Education
Computer/Keyboarding Teacher
Librarian
School Youth Pastor
Administrative Assistant
Construction Manager
Food Manager / Cook

“Yes the list is long, and some of the entries probably indicate 2 people to fill (most of the items that start with “Grade 7-12”), but pray with us and watch with us as we see how the Lord will fill these vacancies.

“Maybe as you look through this list you see that you are a fit with some of these areas.  While a teaching degree is a plus, it is not a need as much as a love for the subject you are teaching and a willingness to have God stretch and grow you. For example, in the Science areas we have had former chemists, and engineers that have done well in the class room.”

God is already beginning to meet these needs, and we can strike ‘Art’ from the above list. We first of all ask you to pray for God’s provision of teachers for the coming school year, and secondly to consider how you might possibly meet one of the needs listed. Please visit the Staff page at www.sahelacademy.com/staff  to learn more about this ministry of teaching MK’s. Read what one parents says about its importance, and what a staff member says of the privilege of serving missionary families in this way.

As you pray, if the Lord stirs your heart for this ministry and you find yourself on the list above, please visit www.sahelacademy/contact for contact information, or contact our mission sending agency, Evangelical Baptist Missions, by calling 317.872.4488. We delight in working with those whom God calls and sends our way as we together serve those whom God is calling to His mission field.