Second Term Updates – Niger

Updates from our Second Term June 2006-June 2009

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!

Merry Christmas 2007

Even in our far-away corner of the earth, we experience some of the busyness of Christmas season with its attendant round of gift-giving, parties and Christmas programs. Sahel Academy celebrated this season with an elementary school musical visit from Hark, the Herald Angel, while each of the classes at Mission Ecole Goudel (EBM’s French school for national children) once again ‘recited’ the reason for the season. We’re thankful for each one of these presentations. Many people listen to the messages proclaimed by children who would not otherwise hear this good news.

Boubacar (our weekend guard for whom many of you have been praying) has gone to church with me a few times in the past month.  (He used to be quite resistant to going for fear that someone he knows might see him.)  He likes the music and he listens to the preaching of the word. The message this past week was about how God gave His Son to be the sacrifice for the sin of the world.  As Boubacar and I were walking out, there was a small herd of rams being led down the road.  He told me that the rams for Tabaski this year are very expensive. His father will have to spend over a month’s salary in order to buy one.

You may know that Tabaski commemorates God’s providing Abraham with a ram to be sacrificed instead of Ishmael. Those celebrating Tabaski this week believe that Ishmael was the son of promise, and millions of rams will be sacrificed on that day in commemoration. At this Christmas time of year many people emphasize decorations and presents, in essence nullifying the meaning of the day; here in Niamey we have rams all over the city in another attempt to nullify the importance of the true sacrifice. Christmas and Tabaski stand in stark contrast between two major belief systems in the world.  The Jewish line branches off from Abraham with Isaac while the Arab line are the descendants of Ishmael. Ultimate truth either rests in a descendant of Ishmael or a descendant of Isaac.  The very existence of the Jews today and Christianity itself stands as a testimony against a worldview of millions of people around the world.  Once again, I explained to Boubacar that the true ram is Jesus who was sacrificed for us and lives today to bring us to the Father and give us eternal life. Please continue to pray for him as he wrestles with this truth.

At Sahel Academy, we’re still very much in need of a math teacher starting in January. Another one of our staff members has a very ill father and may need to go home unexpectedly. We know that God knows what the solution to these teacher situations will be, but we are ‘anxious’ for Him to share it with us soon. If you could be part of His solution, please contact us at info@sahelacademy.com and let us know of your interest. For more information, you can visit the school website at www.sahelacademy.com.

Thank you so much for being part of our support family this past year.
From hot Niamey, we send you our warmest Christmas greetings
And wish you joy in the New Year.

 

Weekend Ministry

Weekdays are pretty full for Lois and I working at Sahel Academy; however, sometimes the weekends are also full with rich and rewarding ministry. For example, last update we wrote about a village that had been devastated by the recent flooding. Two hundred families were rendered homeless and without food. With some relief funds that were donated to our mission we were able to show the love of Christ by supplying each needy family with an arm load of food.

Recently I went along to help on one of the Sahel Academy outreaches over a weekend. We took the students out to a village to assist missionaries with a project. Some friends of ours are helping Christian families who live in outlying villages and have no opportunity to educate their children.  We took 10 Sahel students out there to paint the dorm just before school started. The days were filled with painting and a soccer game with the local children. They also had a game night with the Christian youth group who had never played games like Twister. On Sunday we went out and sang at the Baneira church that is close by. It is great for these kids to rub shoulders with people who may be very poor but are rich in faith.

The next weekend I went out to the Baneira church to help with a baptism. This is the church we have spoken of before that was started by an African believer from one of our local mission churches. He was concerned for his village and rode his bike out each weekend. Today over 90% of the village of Baneira professes Christ. They are also reaching out to nearby villages and planting churches there. This work is not done by missionaries; they don?t even have pastors, just believers who are doing what the Bible says. One of their church plants is growing very fast. We believe that it is due to the fact that they have prayer meeting four evenings a week. Our mission helps out when we can, but they are doing so well that we don?t want to spoil it. We did recently help to build a church building in Baneira that is now overflowing each Sunday. One Sunday a month an EBM missionary teaches at the Baneira church. We were asked to help with the baptism of over 69 new converts last year. This year we baptized 46 in the muddy waters near the village. I might add that four of the lay leaders have expressed interest in attending a Bible school in nearby Burkino Faso. We are looking into ways to help fund the education of these future pastors.

Please continue to pray for the staff needs here at Sahel Academy. We believe God will provide, by I admit we’re beginning to wonder who is going to teach Math next semester. Our current Math teacher is leaving in December. If you are interesting in working with MKs and TCKs in this way, check out the school website at www.sahelacademy.com for more information.

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