April 2008
Vol. 7, No. 11

Hello Everyone,

We’re getting adjusted to our daughter Elisabeth Gabrielle, who joined this world on March 24, 2008. She’s doing great and seems to be the hungriest of our three girls. Now she is more active during the night and sleeping more during the day, but that might soon change. I hope that you saw the email we sent out immediately after her birth, which gave all of the details, but since it went out through my sister (due to email complications in Zinder, where Ellie was born), some of you may have missed it. Both she and Aïchatou are fine. In fact, Aïchatou has more energy now than I’ve seen in more than a year!

Because of the birth, our family has actually been apart for much of the past five weeks. We chose to have the baby in Zinder, since Aïchatou’s family lives there, including an aunt who is an obstetrics nurse and who actually helped with the birth. I needed to stay behind at the Dogon Gao Bible School to supervise the completion of our house addition that our Iowa volunteers started in February. We wanted this finished before the baby arrived, as we need the extra storage space it will provide us, but also so that Marie and Laurey wouldn’t be underfoot when some of the work was being done.

The Johnson family on the day of the naming ceremony for Elisabeth Gabrielle.

I joined the family in Zinder on March 22, which amazingly was just two days before the delivery (April 1 was the expected due date)!  I stayed in Zinder until the baby’s naming ceremony eight days later (in Niger, the baby’s name isn’t made public until the ceremony) and then returned to Dogon Gao.

On April 10, we largely finished the building (except for some interior painting), and then I went again to Zinder to collect the family and to bring everyone back to Dogon Gao. We arrived back home on April 14, just in time to celebrate Marie’s fourth birthday.

Despite having the classroom and apartment just about ready, we recently received some disappointing news about getting a teacher. As I mentioned in an earlier newsletter, it looked pretty certain that a young woman from northwest Iowa was willing to come teach our children for 10 months, starting this fall. Unfortunately, we learned that she has decided that she needed to stay in the United States and will therefore not be coming to Niger. There is still another candidate who has applied to the Reformed Church of America to be a volunteer teacher, and we’ll need to see if she would be right for us in Niger. Please pray for this situation. We’d even consider hosting a volunteer teacher for periods shorter than 10 months, as our girls are still at the pre-school stage and wouldn’t need to follow a curriculum this year.

Elisabeth Gabrielle Johnson, born March 24, 2008

We’re again going to be apart for a week, as I travel to Kenya for an RCA missionary gathering at the end of April. Normally, Aïchatou and the girls are invited to come along, but we thought that might be too stressful for everyone to travel that far for four days of meetings with two small kids and a newborn. Usman and our guardian and his wife will be close by, so Aïchatou should have adequate assistance to deal with whatever comes up.

Prayer and praises

• We give thanks for the healthy arrival and continued growth of Elisabeth Gabrielle. We pray that her life might be a blessing for everyone she encounters.
• We are grateful that Aïchatou has been able to quickly recover from the birth.
• We are thankful that the building addition is largely finished and that we have this additional space for schooling our girls and for storing our personal and work items.
• We are cognizant of all of you who have been keeping us in your prayers, and we humbly ask that this support continue.
• Please pray for the Dogon Gao Bible School and that its teachers will exemplify Christian living and teaching in their professional and personal lives.

In Christ,

Tom, Aïchatou, Marie-Florence, Laurey and Ellie

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 7