Vol. 2, No. 7

Barka da Kirsimati (Blessings at Christmas):

Since I won't be sending out Christmas cards this year, let me take this opportunity to wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! It certainly doesn't feel like Christmas here, with the warm temperatures, the dust in the air, and the large Muslim population, but a few people and churches do decorate their homes for the holidays, and we have started to sing some carols at the Sunday services during December. I brought a three-foot artificial Christmas tree from the U.S., so it is possible to get into the Christmas spirit in a desert country. Indeed, maybe the conditions here are closer to the original event in Bethlehem than in the U.S. There's no shortage of shepherds or camels in Niger!

We did have turkey (just legs and wings—we think the French keep the breasts for themselves and send the other parts to their former colonies), sweet potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce as well as other good foods. Afterwards, we went around the room to say what we were thankful for. The gathering lasted about three hours. However, it wasn't entirely a traditional American Thanksgiving because there was no football game to watch after the meal! Also, it wasn't just Americans. Among the 40 missionaries and their families were English, Brazilian, Northern Ireland, and Canadian colleagues.

I have divided this last month almost equally between Maradi and Niamey. In Maradi, Usman (our newly-hired assistant) and I were busy preparing for the visitors and work teams (15 people in total) that we're expecting in December, January, and February. Each day the workload seemed to grow as we kept discovering jobs that needed to be done before the groups arrived to ensure that they would best utilize their time here. For example, it has become very obvious we need some sort of locked storage at the Dogon Gao Bible School, because nothing now exists and we need a place to keep materials and tools secure. So we started investigating buying a 20-foot shipping container and hauling it to the school. The school still has no latrines (just the bush!) and we needed to find plans and funds to have one constructed before the groups came. Also, different individuals and groups will bring different skill sets and abilities. We have to identify the right projects for each group (or individual) and then determine what are the materials that need to be in place by the time they arrive to start the work. It has been challenging, but praise God, it seems like everything is starting to come together, thanks to some good coordination between the RCA's volunteer coordinator, the EERN Church, and the fact that the necessary money always seems to arrive when we need it (another praise!)

As I mentioned in my last letter, the other big project on the horizon is establishing irrigated gardens at all of the EERN schools, but starting with Dogon Gao, which is where I will be based. Usman and I just finished a two-week seminar on drip-irrigation that was held at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) near Niamey. This was a very hands-on seminar and 20 African community outreach workers (representing Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger and Senegal) and three others (a Swiss missionary, an Israeli demonstration farm manager, and me) got to prepare the land by hand (I got several blisters from the hoeing) and install the irrigation systems ourselves so that we would leave with first-hand experience. It was very practical and a lot of hard work. Of course, the experience forced me to rethink and retool our plans for bringing drip irrigation to the Bible schools. We'll still do it, but like everything else in life, it's a bit more complicated than it first appeared. For example, we'll need to start making compost at least a month before we are ready to install the system because without it, things won't grow the same. Also, we'll need a larger fence around the garden than originally thought (more space around the perimeters of the garden), we'll need to build small, elevated water reservoirs at some of the schools and we really need a pump for the deep well at Dogon Gao (over 120 ft) to make hauling water easier and that means buying a generator or investing in the equipment (poles, wires, transformers) to bring electricity two kilometers km from the nearby hospital to the school. Finally, the irrigation hoses will only last 5 to 7 years in the sun, so we'll need to devise a plan where students are "renting" the systems and contributing money towards replacing the equipment in the future. Otherwise, in seven years, everything will be ruined and there will be no funds to buy new equipment. So, I'm beginning to understand just why development work is so complicated!

Prayer and Praises:

• Generally, I''ve been in good health. Just three days ago, though, I caught another cold in Niamey (the climate here is different than in Maradi), along with everyone else when the winds changed and brought in a lot of new dust.
• Pray for the volunteers and for their health and safety and their travel to and from Niger. Our first volunteer work couple, Wilbur and Madelyn Vander Heul, from Rock Valley, Iowa, were supposed to have arrived on Friday, December 13, but they experienced delays in the Paris airport and missed their connecting flight to Niamey. They''ll arrive on Monday, December 16, God willing, but international travel to Africa is full of glitches and often the only option one has is to wait. Wilbur will help with construction and repair projects and Madelyn will teach English to adults in the Maradi area. Ron Kronemeyer of Grand Rapids, Michigan, will arrive on January 10 and he, too, will help with small repair projects.
• Pray for the EERN church in Niger as they are making some major personnel and organizational changes, which should seriously help the Church better carry out their ministry activities. We missionaries will likely benefit from these changes. Pray that these new people will bring a servant's heart to their work. Pray that the individual churches in Niger develop a spirit of generosity in carrying out ministry, as too often they expect outsiders to fund the work here.
• The money to finish my house has finally arrived in Maradi. Pray for rapid (and solid) completion of this project. It is now more likely that some of the volunteers will be able to do some work on the house (though I'm not sure what).

Pray for God's blessings and protections on Niger and the work here as the new year, 2003, begins.

Thomas R. Johnson

Community Development Missionary
Reformed Church in America/Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Serving l'Église Évangélique de la République du Niger