February 17, 2014

Dear family, friends and supporters;

Chageen is our home where be belong, and bringing the Kwong church to maturity is our mission, but alas, this missive finds us elsewhere - without a Kwong person in sight. We thought you might like to know why. Read on.

Your fellow servants in Chad,

Mark and Diane

Bad News

Team operates a Missionary Support Facility in the capital N’Djamena which provides missionaries from Team and a dozen other mission organizations the infrastructure we all need to function in this country – a guest house, airport services, financial services, purchasing, etc. Our colleagues Ken and Beth Leverich have been faithfully operating this facility for nearly 5 years. They came to Chad as second-career missionaries after working “regular careers” in California, and they fully intended to stay here in Chad until retirement. It was not to be. In these past weeks, Ken was diagnosed with ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease. As you may know, it is a degenerative nervous system disorder for which there is precious little the doctors can do. They are now back in California. Pray for them. You can follow Ken’s blog at www.kandbleverich.com.

What that means for us

Operating the Missionary Support Facility has fallen to those of us who remain in Chad. One of our colleagues, Janet Murray, has come from her town of Kelo in the south of the country to run the financial side of the MSF and provide a modicum of continuity. Several of us “bush” missionaries are taking turns helping out with other aspects of the facility. We have volunteered for the months of February and April. (We will return to Chageen during March.) Diane is running the guest house, and Mark is managing the maintenance and some of the administrative facets of the facility. That is why we aren’t in Chageen.

What this means for our furlough in the USA

Last year, when the temperatures were soaring over 110 degrees every day in April (like they do every year in Chad) we swore that there was no way on earth we were going to spend hot season here if we could help it.  So we made plans to leave the country on April 1. We even made plane reservations. Alas, it really does seem best now for us to bite the bullet and stay on through the miseries of April until May 2 to help out here in N’Djamena, after which time we will return to the USA until November.

What this could mean for you

This scheme cobbled together at the last minute whereby us bush missionaries are pinch-hitting for the Leveriches  is obviously not a long-term solution.  We really need an individual or  couple who is gifted in administration and hospitality to come help manage the Missionary Support Facility over the long term. Unfortunately, knowing French is the main requirement, and probably the main stumbling block to most any of you who are reading this and who might otherwise give it serious consideration. That being the case, we ask that you please do the one thing you CAN do: pray. Pray that the Lord would call just the right individual or couple to come fill this crucial ministry ASAP.

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The compound of the missionary support center as viewed from the street. It is in the old colonial part of town, but up until about 5 years ago the streets were still dirt.

Ken and Beth – back in California, if the trees are any clue.

Janet Murray provides a degree of continuity as the rest of us come and go. Here she is helping our good friend Lago wade through the USA State Department web site to get a visa.

Diane supervises Bria who cleans the guest rooms and makes the beds. Missionaries can stay here for $12 a night per person.

Plumbing and septic tank issues are the most common headache Mark deals with. Here Mark and John, one of our guards, contemplate yet another septic conundrum.