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.
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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. |
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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. |
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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.