September 2007

Vol. 7. No. 4

Hello Everyone,

We’re writing to you from rural Oskaloosa, Iowa, where we’ve been staying for about the past month on our scheduled home assignment. We’re here for a little rest and relaxation, a chance to see our friends and family, and to report to our sponsoring churches. Also, since our PC(USA) support ends in 2008, we’re looking for some new supporting churches and individuals to replace what we’ll be losing.

Our plane trip from Niamey to Des Moines was quite long and tiring. Marie and Laurey did pretty well on the two long flights that took us to New York City via Casablanca and Marie in particular, was quite excited to fly in an airplane. Once we arrived in New York, though, everything slowed down to a crawl as we were waiting an extraordinarily long time to disembark the plane, go through immigration, customs, and reclaim our bags before passing through the agricultural inspection line. Once we completed all those formalities, we had to take the train from Terminal 1 to Terminal 4 to check in for our Northwestern flight. Despite a scheduled 2 hour and 45 minute layover, we arrived 4 minutes too late to be allowed to board our next plane! We ended up spending the night in New York City before rebooking flights to Des Moines the next day. We were fortunate to find a nice hotel close to the airport and Northwestern agreed to waiver any re-ticketing fees, since technically they weren’t responsible for those types of delays. The girls, however, had lost their enthusiasm for flying by the next day and were quite crabby for our last two flights between New York and Des Moines. We were, however, much better rested.

Here in Iowa, we’ve been enjoying life, getting health and dental check-ups, taking advantage of any summer clearance sales, visiting with family and speaking at churches. On September 9, we celebrated (several months late because they wanted us present) my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary with an open house.

Left to right: Jeremy and Susan Beebout and their two girls, Lydia and Eliza, Laurey, Marie-Florence, Aïchatou, Tom.

We also have spent some time with Jeremy and Susan Beebout and their two girls, Lydia and Eliza. The Beebouts are new Reformed Church of America missionaries who will leave for Niger on October 5. They’ll live in Niamey, which will be about 10 hours from us, but we expect to have regular interaction with them and their family. Dr. Susan will be helping the Evangelical Reformed Church of Niger (EERN) launch a health ministry, while Jeremy will take over many of my volunteer responsibilities and will also work in agricultural development.

The Beebouts gave me a very interesting book by Glen Schwartz called When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement. The book was just published in 2007 by AuthorHouse. Schwartz is a former missionary and now heads World Mission Associates. He describes how unwise Western church involvement in emerging churches and missions in the developing world can often create dependencies that hinder the full maturing of indigenous churches. He uses the example of scaffolding to describe the correct version of helping to build new churches. You would never expect construction scaffolding to become a weight-bearing fixture in a new building. Yet too often well-intentioned mission efforts become like load-bearing scaffolding. The receiving church becomes so dependent on outside support that they think they can’t do any ministry without this help. If one isn’t careful, it is the outsiders (or scaffolding) that are holding up the developing church. Normally with scaffolding, it is useful for a time while the edifice is being built and then dismantled.  The same should hold true with mission involvement.

We’re getting ready to travel in the next month to visit churches.  We’ll start of with a trip to California to speak to an Orange County church called “The Journey.” Their pastor and a church member came to Niger in 2006 for the opening of the Words of Hope recording studio and invited us to come visit them and to see the sights. We hope to experience Disneyland for a few days while we are there. In mid-October we’ll go to Sioux County, Iowa, and visit churches and friends there, while early November promises a trip to Michigan. We’ll be in the United States until the end of January, so we’ll give you more reports on our sojourn here in the upcoming months.

Praise and prayer

• Give thanks for the safe travels that we have experienced. Continue to pray for our upcoming trips and speaking engagements that we will soon be taking.
• Give thanks for the plentiful rains that the Sahel region has experienced this year. However, these rains have caused a lot of flooding and many communities have residents who have lost homes and fields and thus need your prayers.
• Pray for the Beebouts as they make final preparations to leave their U.S. home and family to begin their mission in Niger. Pray for their successful transition to the mission field.
• Pray that our family will make good use of our time in America and that we will grow closer as a family and closer to our Lord as we spend a season a way from our Nigerien responsibilities, friends, and family.

In Christ,

Tom, Aïchatou, Marie-Florence and Laurey

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