Metropolitan Missionaries

Dear friends and family,

We came out to civilization a week ago with the intention (among others) of writing a newsletter. Alas, a week is a short period of time when you’ve been 3 months in the African bush. Tomorrow we fly back to Chageen. So in lieu of a newsletter, a brief update via email.

Our main translator Laurent has left Chageen to pursue further schooling at Ba’illi, 40 miles north of us. While we applaud his pursuit of knowledge, the timing, and worse, his attitude in leaving left much to be desired. That being the case it is just as well he is gone. We are trusting the Lord to do something with the remaining two gentlemen on the translation committee which might never have been possible were Laurent still around.

We had a glimpse of such a possibility when Mark managed to translate 4 verses of Colossians with one of those gentlemen, Joseph. It took more than 3 hours of Mark making him plumb the depths of the language in ways quite foreign to his somewhat challenged mind. Nevertheless, we remember that it was Joseph who came up with an elegant Kwong word for “glory” after 3 years of using unwieldy circumlocutions, and it was he who finally came up with an acceptable word for “priest” only a few months ago.

The other member of our translation committee, Luke, has been on strike, back to work, on strike yet again, and finally back to work a week ago. The complaint? He doesn’t want to farm - even though he is very good at it. He wants to work full-time on translation and earn an exorbitant salary to match. Given that it takes Mark two days to prepare a day’s worth of translation, his dream is a scheduling impossibility - quite apart from the fact that Luke is even more challenged than Joseph in matters of translation. The story has a happy ending: the Lord worked in his heart and we heard from his mouth the most unqualified, forthright confession and repentance we have ever heard from a Chadian.

We have recognized for several years now that the Achilles heel of the Kwong church is the transmission of the gospel (or lack thereof) to the next generation. While our standard (and not really truthful) line is that “we don’t do kids,” too much is at stake in Kwongland. A few weeks ago we took the plunge with the little buggers. The basic idea is this: we teach a Bible story (e.g. Daniel in the Lion’s den) to a fine old Kwong gentleman by the name of Jonas who can spin a really good yarn. Then on Sunday morning, he entertains the kids with a somewhat embellished rendering of the story - which we duly record for a children’s radio program.  Considering that many of the pastors and elders of the church don’t know these stories, we anticipate that they will profit more than just children.

For most of this week in civilization, Mark has been making arrangements to have two wells drilled in Kwongland - one for the Evangelical Clinic, and one for Mark and Diane. It has been a stressful experience, but we feel quite confident that we found an honest contractor and got a decent price. We anticipate that the drilling equipment will arrive in mid to late November. Many thanks to everyone who has helped make this project a reality. So far as we can tell, all the money needed for the project has come in.

Dear friends,
As you may have heard if you listen to international news with any regularity, there was a significant battle fought between rebel and government forces outside of N’djamena (the capital of Chad) on Thursday morning. As providence would have it, we had flown up to N’djamena from Chageen on Tuesday for some much needed rest and relaxation. On Thursday morning at 6:30 AM, a contingent of rebels, who had crossed 500 miles of Chad from Sudan essentially unopposed, attacked the capital. They were slaughtered. The fighting was at the opposite end of town from where we are lodged at the TEAM mission guesthouse, but we could hear the cannon and artillery fire all morning long. We were never in any danger. It was a different story for our Lutheran and Baptist colleagues who live at that end of town. One of our colleagues said the rebels, who seem to originate from and are supported by Sudan, had never been to N’Djamena before and were asking directions to the center of town. The home next to our Baptist colleagues home was completely destroyed by tank fire. Apparently their house-sentinel, who stayed at his post throughout the affair, persuaded the tank commander not to shoot up their home. All this is an overflow of the Darfour conflict, which began when rebels backed by Chad began to fight against Sudan beginning several years ago. In the finest tit for tat tradition of Africa, the Sudanese started, or at least have aided, the current rebel offensive against Chad.

The other big piece of news is that our co-worker Theodore, who we recruited to run the radio station, has left Chad for good. He found the isolation of Chageen simply unbearable, and decided for his own good to leave. We are grateful for the four months he was with us - we could have never gotten the radio station going without him. Nevertheless, his departure is a tremendous loss for us. We depended upon Theodore’s taking charge of the radio station to free us up to return to the translation and teaching which we still consider to be our primary ministry. Now that the entire burden of running the station has fallen to us, we are pessimistic about returning to translation work any time soon. The silver lining is that two fine Kwong gentlemen who Theodore was training have really blossomed in his absence to the point that we were able to leave the station in their hands during our present trip to N’Djamena. Their names are Sabir and David. Pray for them.

We were told not to anticipate seeing results from the radio work for months or years to come, but God in His sovereign mercy allows us glimpses of hope to assure us that this is HIS radio station and He is using it to His glory. Here are three of those glimpses of hope: 1) We’ve sold more Kwong discipleship materials in the past month than ever before. 2) A Muslim Arab who listens to our station regularly loaned us his well worn Arabic cassette of stories of Jesus healing the sick and raising the dead so that we could broadcast the stories for others to hear. 3) Seven Fulfulbe nomads who listen to the weekly broadcast in their language came to the studio to meet David who speaks to them on the radio in their language each week.

That’s the news from Chad. We are planning to fly back to Chageen on Wednesday morning, April 19 to resume our ministry there. Thank you so much for your prayers.