News Summary -
Our move to N'Djamena for the coming year, an update on the oil
exploration in Kwongland, and a summary of our annual discipleship tour
in outlying Kwong villages round out this update's news items.

New
Newsletter -  Missionary work in Africa is full of ironies. In
this newsletter a pagan chief welcomes the gospel while  a
Protestant pastor shows contempt for the discipleship classes we offer
his parishioners. Also, on the back
page, we describe the work which awaits us in N'Djamena for the
coming 14 months while our regular administrators take their
furlough.

Current
Prayer Requests - We have already begun to assume the administrative
responsibilities that we will be performing for 14 months. Grace for the
stresses of the job, protection from shysters, and the growth of the
Kwong church in our absence are our principle requests.

Welcome to our
home - two new web pages of pictures and commentary describe
everything from the spacious thatched atrium to the solar powered
electrical system of our home in Chageen.

Picture
Album - Purchasing grain for famine relief, the change of the
seasons, and more.

We have moved to N'Djamena... for one year

At our new home in N'Djamena

On April 15 while you were all scrambling to get your
taxes done and mailed, we were moving our personal belongings from Chageen
to N'Djamena.  Why the move? You will remember, if you read either
our last web update or our current
newsletter, that we have been asked by the TEAM-Chad field to handle
the administrative responsibilities of the field for this coming year
through July 2003. We have closed up our house in Chageen, and the work
among the Kwong will be mostly on-hold until our assignment in N'Djamena
is completed, at which time we will return to Chageen to resume our
ministry there.

The fact that we have to leave our ministry in Kwongland
is (or should be) an object lesson to all of us: the mission field is
woefully understaffed. We will be mostly pushing paper, making phone
calls, and running errands this coming year. Because of us, other
missionaries will be able to carry on their ministries, so we don't
begrudge the job. However, it is hard not to remark that most any of you
that are reading this would be capable of doing this job if you knew
French, and that would release us to do what only we can do - minister to
the Kwong.

Black Gold in Kwongland - the latest

You will recall that in our last web
update we mentioned that they were prospecting for oil in Kwongland.
Here's the latest. The company doing the prospecting is Cliveden
Petroleum, a Swiss company based in Geneva. They have hired a
subcontractor called Seispros out of Houston to do preliminary research.
The general gist is they bulldoze 30 or 40 miles of road through the bush,
set up instruments along the road, and then set off some dynamite. The
instruments pick up the vibrations passing through the earths crust and
their geologists can in theory tell if there's oil underground or not.
They have cut hundreds of miles of such roads through
Kwongland.

When we were teaching our discipleship classes in
Ngam, where Cliveden's main base is, we paid them a visit and were warmly
welcomed by a couple Canadian chaps who showed us their maps and exclaimed
(to our dismay) that they were getting "real good data" and that one of
the two areas of particularly interest is "right here", as he traced a
neat circle around Chageen with his finger. (All the village names on
their map were in Greek for some strange reason so he had no idea that it
was our village he was pointing at.)

Travels in the
hinterlands - 2002

The Soto-Ngam ministry team - Mark,
Joseph,
Laurrent, Marie, Tabitha, and Diane

During the months of March and April, we traveled with our
own closest disciples from Chageen to the villages of Mobou, Ngam, Soto,
Saya, and Danang to advertise the first four volumes of the Kingdom of God
discipleship books we have published in Kwong. The plan was simple:
shepherd the men through one of the four books so they get used to reading
Kwong and learn how to study them and develop a taste for more of them,
and then sell them the other three books so they can preach and teach from
them over the long haul. The verdict, when it
was all said and done, is that the men's enthusiasm dropped off pretty
fast when it came time to put good money down for the other three books
even at subsidized prices. I dared to remind some of them of the parable
of "The Pearl of Great Price." Notwithstanding the apathy of the many, we
found in each village true "Bereans" who were eager to take advantage of
what we had to offer.

This year Diane had painstakingly
(remember she's still learning Kwong) prepared seminars for the women,
addressing issues that really "hit home" such as how to treat husbands,
raising children, not appeasing spirits, and not being saved by good
works. Unfortunately,  and perhaps because it was
the first time for such seminars, the women who attended sometimes seemed
more interested in drinking tea than listening. On the positive side, this
meant she had a lot of time with her assistants Tabitha and Marie who were
part of our ministry team. The many hours they spent talking under the
stars on grass mats at night gave new insights into Kwong thinking and the
questions women face.

Contact Information

Personal Telephone

None

Personal Postal address

BP 127

N'Djamena, Chad

Electronic mail

[email-masked]

Mission Telephone

800-343-3144

Mission Postal address

TEAM

PO Box 969

Wheaton, IL 60189

Electronic mail

[email-masked]

Web site

http://www.teamworld.org/

Send mail to [email-masked] with
questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2000
Vanderkooi's Ministry in Chad
Last modified: June 16, 2002