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News Summary - October 2007
If everything goes according to plan, we will be back in the USA for our home assignment from April to October 2008. We are looking for housing in the Springfield, Ohio area, and would be grateful for any suggestions in this regard.
August 1987 - Diane boarded the flight which would bring her to Africa, a continent yet unknown to her. The call on her heart was unquestionable, compelling her to take such a step of faith in spite of the fear of the unknown. Two years of teaching high school math to the children of missionaries at the Rift Valley Academy in Kenya lay ahead. Those two years were vastly rewarding, the best of her life (to that point). This first step of faith, however, also opened up to her a whole new world - she discovered an ability with languages, which coupled with a desire to work among those without a gospel witness, would lead her on an exciting journey which would pass through Brazil for another short term, and then on to Chad 8 years later, to Mark and the Kwong. (Click here to see some pictures and our impressions of RVA.)
As our own history in the forgoing paragraphs illustrates so well, short term mission trips can be key milestones in a young person's call to missionary service. While we are not particularly enthusiastic about some of the junkets taken by kids who are either too young or not serious enough to think of a life-time of missions, we are big fans of serious trips taken by college students who are considering a career of missionary service. It is doubtful whether either of us would be on the mission field today were it not for the missionaries in New Guinea, Kenya and Brazil who welcomed us into their homes and made our experiences with them so rich and memorable. So it is no accident that as we visit the States and Canada this coming summer, we will be reiterating our longstanding offer: If one of our churches or someone we know well recommends a young person who is seriously considering a life-time of missionary service, we will move heaven and earth to welcome him or her in our home in Chageen and make their experience in Chad as rewarding as ours was in Kenya and New Guinea 20 and 25 years ago.
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Send mail to The_Vanderkoois@yahoo.com
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Diane
- 20 years Ago 
Reagan
was in his second year when Mark embarked on an unforgettable trip to the
Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea during the summer of 1982. A summer
of hiking through the mountains, sleeping in native huts, eating native food,
surveying water supplies and sanitation in remote villages, and living with half
a dozen TEAM missionaries confirmed in his mind that a life of missionary
service was not only something that God was calling him to, but that he could
thoroughly enjoy, even in primitive conditions. As Providence would have it, his
dream of returning to the lush jungles of New Guinea never came to pass. But the
summer of '82 was the beginning of a journey which brought him 7 years later to
the sands of Chad, the Kwong, and ultimately, Diane. 
There
was a time when our airstrip in Chageen was less than 2000 feet long and only
about 70 feet wide, and the only plane that ever landed on it was a 5 passenger
Cessna. As the years have gone by, however, we have enlarged the strip - twice
lengthwise, and once widthwise - so that now it is a over 3000 feet long and 120
feet wide and handles a 12-passenger turbo-prop. All that is very nice for us,
except for one thing: it is a grass airstrip, and when it rains, the vegetation
can get thick enough to bring even the turbo-prop to a grinding halt. Rectifying
this problem in the past meant organizing 20 men in a sort of chain-gang to go
down the strip with machetes to cut the grass - a very time consuming and tiring
task, as you might imagine. What to do? Chadians have a very bad history with
internal combustion engines, so a power mower (the obvious solution) was out of
the question. Enter a John Deere circa 1935 horse-drawn mower with a 5
foot cutting bar. We bought the machine from an Amish mechanic in Indiana who
specializes in refurbishing them. It is made of indestructible cast iron,
weights 700 pounds, and is not much more complicated than the bicycles the
Chadians are accustomed to fixing. We use local oxen to draw the machine, and Mark
trained a young man to operate it. This is the second year we have made
substantial use of it, and it has been a tremendous help to keeping our airstrip
clean and safe. 