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Followup
on Mark’s trip to Mobou
May
15, 2010
The favor of
the Lord our God did rest upon us. He established the work of our hands
for us. Yes, he established the work of our hands. (from Psalm 90:17)
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Construction
at Mobou Kousou
in
front of church
Antenna
at Mobou Nyegin
Impromptu
hymn sing
Home
again – (L to R) Luke Bamadi, Pastor Wanang, David Gouptaan, yours
truly.
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Four days, two goats, two chickens (nicely
seasoned), two radio repeaters, and 160 miles later, Mark made it back
to the comforts of home and hearth in Chageen. Overall, the trip to
Mobou went very well – the weather cooperated, the repeaters worked
better than expected, and our relationships with the Kwong churches in
Mobou have been renewed. Here in brief is how the Lord undertook in
our favor as Mark and his Kwong coworkers made this trip.
We were concerned that rain could make the trip quite
difficult. In fact, Mark and the guys watched
with dismay on two successive nights as very large thunderstorms passed
immediately to the south of Mobou and turned the roads which they had
just traversed into veritable quagmires. As it turns out, they were able
to take a circuitous northerly route back to Chageen. That road had very
little water on it.
The first radio repeater, which we installed at a place
called Mobou Kousou, worked so poorly that Mark was ready to give up. As
a last desperate Hail Mary, he disconnected the coaxial cable and
attached a piece of plain wire to the FM output thinking that maybe
somebody could just walk up to the contraption, hook the wire up to his
radio aerial and hear something. All of a sudden the peanut gallery –
which had been sitting expectantly all day under a nearby tree with
their cheap Chinese radios in hand, and which by now had very forlorn
looks on their faces – erupted in squeals of excitement as their
Kachibo’s squawked to life. To Mark’s ears it was not exactly a
satisfying consumer listening experience, but the Kwong Christians of
Mobou Kousou were thrilled.
Notwithstanding the qualified success of the first
repeater, there was enough frustration involved that Mark resolved he
would not install the repeater in Mobou Nyegin (about 5 miles from Mobou
Kousou) until the engineering types back in the USA could figure out
what was making them work so poorly. Trouble was, he was driving around
with a 20 foot piece of 1½ inch galvanized pipe and a 400 lb block of
cement which he really wanted to dispose of. Once, however, these tokens
of an antenna were duly installed next to the church, the clamor to have
the whole deal, whatever its shortcomings, became a crescendo. There was
nothing to do except give it a try on the understanding that if it
worked as poorly as the one in Kousou, down it would come. As the
afternoon got hotter and hotter and the thunderheads loomed to the
south, Mark took some inspiration from that providential piece of wire
at Kousou and made a completely new FM output connector with some spare
parts – just another of many shots in the dark. It worked. As Diane
switched on the transmitter back in Chageen, the sound of Mobou
Nyegin’s very own youth choir came
blasting out of every radio for 50 meters around without a hint of
static.
The Christians of both churches were genuinely thrilled
with Mark’s visit and wished Diane could have come, too. It was hard,
however, to shake off the impression that maybe we really don’t have
that much to offer them. The day before this trip, we took delivery of
the new Kwong hymnbook. It is very professionally done and looks really
classy – a sure sell, or so we thought. (All over Chad hymnbooks in
any language outsell Bibles by a factor of probably 3 or 4 to one.) Not
in Mobou. At the prayer meeting we attended in Kousou, the Kwong
Christians merrily sang away with their old tattered Ngambay hymnbooks.
The pastor didn’t preach that day, but when he does, he preaches in
Soumray. In Nyegin, while Mark cogitated on the mysteries of the magic
wire at Kousou, a dozen young men borrowed our hymnbooks for an
impromptu hymn-sing – and then turned them all back in when they were
done. We sold exactly three hymnbooks, and not a single item of
discipleship materials. Are obituaries all they want to hear on these FM
repeaters?
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