June: Here

Well,

I had every intention of including current photos in this blog post, but I left my camera in the hotel in Istanbul during my travel to return to Oklahoma.  My previous camera was stolen in Tunisia.  I feel like I’m populating the world with cameras.  You thought that I was perfectly organized… surprise!  Fortunately, neither camera was expensive, and neither was filled with priceless pictures.  However, it did contain a handful of pictures that I was going to post.  So, I’ll just have to give you some word-pictures.

Several weeks ago, I traveled to a village to teach a 3-day course to Nigerien pastoral students.  My friend who knew the way cancelled at the last moment, and I replaced him with two other friends who did not know the way.  We arrived in the village and I made a few phone calls to people who insisted that the school was easy to find but produced complicated directions.  The only helpful tidbit I could discern was, “You’ve gone too far.”  So, I turned around and ventured down a road destined to end at the cattle market.  There’s no better time or place in Niger to gather information than in the market on market day.  I got out of my car and approached the first villager I could find, a younger man with a kind face and crooked teeth.  He didn’t speak French, and my skill in local dialects is not up to par.

Then, an old man on a bicycle heard me stumbling and swooped in to assist me.  He spoke very good French.  Apparently he had lived for a few years in Nice, France.  How a resident of the French Riviera wound up in Makalondi, Niger is beyond me, but there he was, and he was helpful.  He told me to follow him.  I should have loaded him and his bike into my vehicle and have him show me the way from inside my car, but I didn’t think about it.  So, the old man started off and I followed as he intermittently peddled over solid ground and pushed his bike through deep sand.  We moved at alarming speeds until he stopped and pointed to a complex of walls and buildings.  I forced him to take a small payment for his assistance; he insisted that we were guests, and he was obliged to help us.

I walked into the church courtyard, saw no students, and wondered if I had come to the right place.  A lady appeared from a doorway and looked surprised to see a visitor.  She said, “Oh, I know where you need to go.  Go to the red flowers.”  She pointed over the horizon, and sure enough, in the midst of the brown landscape sat a tree with red flowers.  We drove to the tree with red flowers and discovered that we had found the house of a missionary who was away from home at the moment.  The nice lady had naturally assumed that the white man had wanted to find the other white man.  We called the owner of the house whom we happened to know (probably should have done that to begin with) and he was able to give us coherent directions.

I was able to return to the school in Makalondi and attend their graduation ceremony.  Three students completed their programs and will be working in churches in their villages.  Pastors in Niger face unique challenges.  In some instances, being a pastor can garner money from expatriate Christians and represents a steadily-paying job in Niger’s economy.  In these cases, money often becomes the dominating motivational factor.  In other instances, being a pastor demands separation from family, lonely locations, and near starvation.  In these case, despair can be a violent enemy.  Pray for Niger’s young pastors that they would be motivated by love and find fulfillment as they share the hope of Christ with others.

Perhaps the greatest concern on the minds of many people in Niger is the current situation with security.  Mali, Libya, and Nigeria border Niger on the west, north, and south.  Each of these countries is experiencing major political struggles.  As a result, certain influences are filtering into Niger.  A few weeks ago, two bombings in northern Niger killed several people.  Niamey, the capital, has experienced a successful prison break, a number of shootings, and an attempted bombing.  Currently, the situation is calm, but we are waiting to see where the situation goes.  The local population is concerned but generally calm.  Most of the perpetrators of these incidents are external though some of them are indigenous.  One concern is that these outside factors will cause local disgruntled groups to begin instigating problems. Pray for the people of Niger.

At the moment I am in the States.  I arrived about two weeks ago after a 22-hour sightseeing layover in Istanbul.  I have already connected with several of you and look forward in the next several days to connecting with more friends both present and future.  I will return to Niger in July.  I had begun to put together initial ideas of hosting a future short term trip to Niger, but the current situation has sidelined those thoughts. One new development is that I will be officially editing papers part time for a seminary geared toward African theological students.  This position will be paid and represents an answer to prayer (maybe now I can buy furniture…).  I want to say thank you to everyone who supports me with prayer and finances.  Your partnership keeps me in Niger.

During my second year in Niger in 2007, I taught 7^th/8^th grade English at an international Christian school, Sahel Academy.  That year, I was able to build a particularly unique relationship with the 7^th graders, and then I had those students again the next year in 8^th grade.  A few weeks ago, I attended Sahel graduation where I was able to see many of those 7^th graders graduate from high school.  In recent years, the emphasis of my ministry effort has been focused on investing intentional time into specific individuals.  This effort is often very informal and amounts to conversations over lunch, discussions sitting in the street, or chats during softball games.  It is often difficult to quantify the success or failure of such efforts.  However, the graduation process brings out introspection, and many of my students expressed their thankfulness to me.  It was a rewarding time, and I will always hold a special place in my memory for these students who allowed me into their lives.  Many of the students who graduated are entering a very different stage in their journey and many will never return to live in the country that they have called home all their lives.  Pray for these students as they make this transition.

One reason I came home is to strengthen my financial support.  My monthly budget last year was $1000, and my annual budget is about $4000. When I was working on my taxes, I sent a list of deductions to my accountant, and he laughed and indicated that I don’t make enough money to pay taxes and have deductions.  The numbers I mentioned above are the goal, but my current budget is significantly short of that goal.  The editing job should provide a financial boost in the future, but I’m not exactly sure of the details of what that would look like. In short, I need immediate help. If you have considered supporting me in the past, now would be an opportune time for you to do so.

Thanks for Everything,

Jeremy

 

-Well, I scoured the great digital repository of Facebook and was able to find a few pictures.  Blessings.-