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.