April 2007
Vol. 6. No. 11

Hello Everyone,

I was hoping to inform you with this letter that we are finally moved into our new home at the Dogon Gao Bible School, but we are still a couple of days from that moment. All the painting is done, the cabinetry is finished, the exterior fence has been built, and the tile floor has been laid (in all but the bedrooms). We’re repairing a few interior doors that sustained some termite damage and we need to add some insect screening in a few places, plus Usman needs to finish welding two gates. Knowing that we’ll be moving two little toddlers (age 3 and 18 months) has made us a bit more cautious to ensure that everything major has been fixed or installed before the little girls arrive. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see these two touching wet paint and marching through the house or pulling on something that hasn’t yet “set.” However, I’m absolutely confident by this weekend we’ll be sleeping there! Praise the Lord!

I’ve been doing nothing but attending to the house for the past 40 days or so. I didn’t expect the house to occupy all of my time, but I just found that my being constantly present helped speed up the work and it certainly resulted in the work being done just as I wanted it done. Now my actual building skills are pretty limited, but I can provide guidance to those who are working, and I can see when one activity has come to a close and when we need to start preparing for the next one, which keeps everything rolling along. We had our prayers answered for quality workmen and the guys who installed the floor tiles, finished the woodworking, and fixed the bathroom plumbing and evacuation did excellent jobs. The carpenter actually voluntarily made several smaller repairs on various things in the home (including a plugged up drain) that went far beyond what we had asked him to do—and he did them all well. This was such a blessing after seeing the results of the original contractors!

April brings two big celebrations to our home: Marie-Florence’s birthday (she turned 3 years old) on April 14, and our wedding anniversary (four years now) on April 19. This was the first year Marie really anticipated her birthday and we invited some of the neighboring kids and missionaries to come and help blow out the candles and eat cake. She was quite excited, although she still doesn’t get what being 3 years old really means. I had been counting on moving into our new home by early April and had planned to pick up some toys in Niamey before the 14th arrived. That didn’t happen, but by Providence, a late Christmas package from a Michigan church arrived a few days earlier and it contained some children’s DVDs, coloring books, paints, colors, and a few other toys. So we did get to open up presents—albeit wrapped in Christmas paper! Our anniversary was much less eventful—Aïchatou made a cake and we tried to eat at the nice hotel restaurant in Maradi with the kids. That was a lost cause as they wanted to explore everything and wouldn’t sit still.

Aïchatou has been busy with the children because all of my time has been away at the house. She started sewing on a machine that I bought her for Christmas, but which she really hasn’t had much time to attempt since we quit Niamey in January (and we spent much of January trying to get the machine in good working order). She has been occasionally called at the Danja hospital for evening and night emergencies when another staff member isn’t available and the problem exceeds the nurse-on-call’s knowledge. She also gave one of the messages at the EERN’s annual women’s gathering, which has held at the Dogon Gao Bible School (and some of the women attendees slept in our unfinished home).

Now for some bad news. Earlier this month, I received an email from my Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) supervisor informing me that when my mission term ends on June 30, 2008, the PC(USA) will no longer continue to support me. This decision is largely due to the extreme financial difficulty that this denomination finds itself in as church membership drops and many remaining churches are refusing to contribute their full assessments to protest various denominational policies or because they are cash-strapped themselves. Unlike my support from the Reformed Church in America that comes from individual RCA churches and individuals, my funding from the PC(USA) has come from General Assembly budget funds. Therefore, when there is financial difficulty in the PC(USA), all units must share in the budget cuts. Thankfully, the RCA is committed to us and recently made Niger one of their four priority countries in Africa. Consequently, they will work with us to replace the missing PC(USA) funds, which contributed more than 40 percent of my salary package. The PC(USA) will still keep a relationship with our church partner, the EERN, it just won’t involve directly supporting my work. So, we have a lot of work before us in this next 14 months.

Prayers and praises

• Give praise for the progress that has been made on our Dogon Gao home and for the competent craftsmen who addressed many of the remaining work needs. Give praise that we had just enough funds to make the home comfortably habitable (there are always more things to do!). Please pray that funds will come in for the second apartment, where future volunteer teachers for our children will live.
• Please pray for God to bless our new home and the work that we will soon start in earnest at the Dogon Gao Bible School. Pray that the home will always be a source of peace and renewal for our family and for our visitors. Pray that the children will grow up with many good memories of this house and of Dogon Gao and pray that we may find a responsible person to help us watch the girls part-time so that Aïchatou can be more involved in ministry.
• Please pray for our time in the United States this fall (September-December) and that we’ll be able to find enough time to rest, but also to visit our supporting churches and now to identify new supporters. Pray that we’ll be able to continue our ministry despite the loss of PC(USA) participation.
• Pray for Niger and for its domestic troubles. There have been teacher and student strikes lately and more unrest in the remote desert regions. Also, our large neighbor to the south, Nigeria, has just had a very flawed election, and if there is widespread unrest in the northern regions there, it could affect us in Maradi, since we are rather close to the border of the two countries and the two economies are intrinsically linked.

In Christ,

Tom, Aïchatou, Marie-Florence and Laurey

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 319