Tag Archives: family

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Our most unforgettable Thanksgiving in Chad, Africa

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This is the story of the most memorable Thanksgiving we celebrated in Chad, Africa. Hopefully the lessons we learned will encourage you as you gather with your family next week.

What is Thanksgiving without Bell's Seasoning?

First of all, a fun, obscure fact: there ARE actually turkeys in Chad! Once, as we were walking to one of the shops while in N’Djaména the capital city, my daughter and I saw one in front of a family’s house. It was very colorful, just like the turkey on the Bells Seasoning box. It was also very mean and nasty… which probably had something to do with its concern over her brood of poults (baby turkeys).

So, although there are turkeys in Chad, they are very hard to come by, especially on a plate, and definitely on Thanksgiving! So most Americans living in Africa will enjoy roasted chicken in its place.

Our Unforgettable Thanksgiving

That Thanksgiving, we learned that God is bigger than the "booms"
Thanksgiving Day in Abéché

In 2006, on that most memorable of all Thanksgivings, we invited some of our friends/fellow workers over for an afternoon celebration.

The girls had made turkeys and other decorations out of construction paper.

The roasted chicken was plentiful, tender and delicious! And thanks to care packages from our Church Family in the US, we had turkey gravy and cranberry sauce to remind us of America.

We were so happy together, enjoying the day with close friends.

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Waiting patiently, but waiting in vain

“Wait patiently” doesn’t mean the same thing in Africa as it does in the United States.  In America, we might decide to come back later if the line has seven people waiting in it.  We might call back if the waiting time is longer than ten minutes.  Even 5 minutes microwave cooking time can seem like too long to wait!

Waiting in line to go to a concert in Germany

And yet, when we wait in line in America, we expect that our patience is rewarded in the end.  One of the features of life in the Third World, or where a disaster strikes, is that our patience isn’t always rewarded as we would hope.

How can we learn to make the most of the times we spend waiting for something, even if it ends up being waiting in vain?

Back in September 2010, our family needed to find a place to live in eastern Chad.  We had just arrived back in Chad and were living in the capital city of N’Djaména, 14+ hours west of Abéché.  A friend in the capital promised that we could rent his home in Abéché.

To start moving in, all I needed to do was to pick up the key from the Sultan, his brother.

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It was her wedding ring… until she gave it away…

God is doing some amazing things through Desert Springs Ministries! Yet, we want to be honest with you. wedding ringIt’s not about us… that is, our family. In reality, it’s about you. God uses wonderful people like you to bring His Word to the Nations through MicroBibles and Scripture translation.

One of the greatest illustrations of this reality is the story of how He used a wedding ring to get us back to Chad.

In a time of struggle

It was 2009. We were having a difficult time raising our support to return to Chad.

Since joining AGWM, our support budget had more than doubled. My fellow workers were finding it easy, but we just couldn’t let people know about our ministry like they could. Also, there were so many of us trying to get to the foreign field that year. And almost every pastor I called or visited was already supporting as many of God’s overseas laborers as they possibly could.

One afternoon, while I was out shopping for groceries, I got “THE phone call”.  It was the support raising supervisor at Headquarters.  He told me that, if something didn’t change in our budget soon, we couldn’t return to Chad.

Around the time of that call, I was scheduled to speak at a missions breakfast at Calvary Temple Assembly of God in Fall River, Massachusetts. We were all given five minutes to speak.  When it was my turn, I poured out my heart about our struggle to get back to Chad to continue the work we had started in 1992.

A wedding ring and some change

changeWhen the missions banquet was over, a teenage girl and her Mom came up to me.  They had been collecting pocket change in a large jar, and the jar was full. And they wanted us to have it.

And in response to the LORD’s prompting, the mother slipped her wedding ring into the jar.

I felt overwhelmed… and didn’t want to receive this gift! But they insisted, “This is meant to go towards your airfare.”

We definitely needed help with our airfare. It was going to cost about $5,000 for all of us to get back there.

At the time, we mentioned this wedding ring to you, my prayer warriors and supporters. Would anyone be willing to buy this ring to help us with our airfare? So, we planned on giving it to the highest bidder.

So, you began to pray. Bids and gifts began to pour in from everywhere. “Keep this, and use it to get back to Chad!”

Finally, the time period for receiving bids for the jarful of change and the ring was over. I contacted the winning bidder. “How would you like us to get this jar to you?,” I asked.

This family replied, “Please, keep the change and send the wedding ring back to the mother who gave it.”

And that’s what we did! We were so relieved.

But before the end of the story, God provided the funds for us to return to Chad… plus a bit more, which we would need for meals and other expenses along the way!

Thanks for all you do to bring the Gospel to your backyard, your nation and beyond, through your prayers and support of ministries like ours.