Dear praying friends,
The Ryckman's will arrive home in Rochester tonight (Thurs. 12/20) at 8:50pm. Flying in on United Airlines if you are interested in welcoming them home:) Once again, no news is good news when your out in the middle of Chad!! It will be great to see their faces and hear of their extended trip.
Sherry
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Louis and Sherry Sabo
Dear friends,
Half of the Chad team is on the way home! Bekah Sabo and the Goodnough's should have taken flight about 6pm our time. They will arrive in Rochester about 9pm tomorrow night (27 hours of combined flying and layovers). Keep them in your prayers for safe return, good sleep on the air planes!, and for the L to help them through the return culture shock graciously. If you see one of these saints, plan to ask them a relevant and thoughtful question about their trip...sharing helps them process the experience! Keep the Ryckmans and hosts and their overland road trip to Am Timan in prayer too (tomorrow) and Ryckman's return flight on the 19th-20th.
Thank you on behalf of the team for your prayers...they have contributed to
Etrny in ways you'll only know the other side of Hvn some day!
Sherry
Hey Everyone,
We have been in Chad now for almost one week and are getting used to the heat! Scott and Suz took the team on a walk to the River. For how dry everything is it also has its own beauty of God's awesome creation! However P. Dana was more amused by a sandal some fisherman had dropped in the River than the scenery itself. On Sunday we went to SIL (summer institute of linguistics) for our Chch. Although we were in Chad the service was very regular for our team because P. Dana spoke. (although with the heat I think it was shorter than usual) The Chch was in English and Mssnrs from all around, not just team, were there. After there was a spaghetti dinner served. Sunday some of the team got the opportunity to see some N'Djamena countryside. Those who went saw camels, donkeys and herds of cows and got some fun pictures. Sunday night they had a bonfire and we finally ate the hot dogs we carried! The mssnrs really enjoyed it and we topped it off with s'mores. We sang songs and Cash (a mssnry working with Nomads) told us some fun stories, a snake story for boys and a romantic one for the girls. After story time Hans, the person who set up the compound for us, came to us with four 3-week old kittens whose mother died that morning. Two mssnrs, Laura and Dawn have taken it under them to get them back to health and are doing a great job! They got baby formula from the market today and are hoping that they get healthy. After a day of rest the conference continued today. During the siesta Bekah, Paul and Brent got to go into town with Scott to get the bread for tonight's sloppy joe's. After dinner the team did devotions and prepared a goofy skit for Wednesday night. The Gdngh's and Rebekah are enjoying the last few days of our trip as the Ryckman's are getting excited about Am Timan with Scott, Suz and the kids. We look forward to tomorrow to start a new day in serving the mssnrs and seeing what God has in store for us.
Emma G
12/5/07
Hi Laura, Susan, Dave, and Marc,
Yes, we arrived safe and sound in Chad! No extra charges for our heavier-than-the-planet-jupiter luggage. Everthing arrived in good shape, even the hot dogs. We helped Scott and Suz clean and set up the conferen cecenter today, and had enough time for a tour of the local market. The flies on the meat at the meat market almost convinced me to become a vegetarian. But when cooked properly, the beef was great! N'Djamena is a fascinating city. It's the capital of Chad, yet the roads (by our standards) are horrible--poorly paved if paved at all and full of pot holes that could consume a small elephant. But no elephants--just goats and dogs around here (did see a couple of camels). Traffic is crazy, a mixture of cars, horse carts, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, and no traffic laws. Mud bricks are being made on every other corner, and there are people everywhere. The conference center is quite nice, with comfortable beds and a breeze coming through the screens. Termperature was about 87 today, not bad at all. And it's a dry heat!, whatever that means! But the ground is dry as well, so everything is sandy and dusty. Just seems to be a way of life around here. The conference attendees come in to the center tomorrow and we begin the conference with an evening dinner. My first talk is Friday morning. Everyone is well and in good spirits. Bought you each a gift at market today, and it doesn't even have any swarms of flies on it! Can't wait to see me now, I'll bet. Thanks for your prayers.
Dana
Hey Everyone,
Well, we made it here to Chad! We arrived yesterday night at about 10 here in the capital, N'Djamena and were warmly welcomed by Uncle Scott and Aunt Suz. That was a relief after nearly missing our flight from Paris to Chad. The check-in station opened 2 hours before the scheduled take-off, so after checking our bags in we got right in the security line. After waiting in line for an hour and a half, we finally ran (literally) through the gate right as it was closing!
And my oh my, we've had quite an adventure already, and it's only the first day! We had an earlier rise than most of us hoped so we could get to another compound to send off some paperwork for the Chadian gov. After that they showed us around the city and it's quite....interesting. To put this into perspective, the entire city of N'Djamena, the capital, is more rundown than the worst parts of Rochester, it was really shocking to see the overwhelming poverty. To add to the excitement, the roads are roughly paved, when you're on the "main street" of N'Djamena, the rest of the time it's partially paved, or just dirt. The overriding traffic law is, 'get where you need to be without killing anyone', the rest is up to you. They have figured out how to drive down the right side of the road, (most of the time) but that's about it. We went to the market to buy some meat for lunch and pastor Dana got to...witness, an authentic Chadian meat market, I wasn't there so I didn't get the experience, but it was quite a shock for him, you'll have to ask him about later.
So, this afternoon we've been preparing for the conference; making beds, hanging mesquitoe nets, setting up chairs and tables, etc. P.Dana has put together a B reading schedule for us to read while we're on this trip which has been a blessing, and we had our first little team-meeting here this evening and discussed the B reading, as well as the culture shocks we had today while out. Tomorrow we'll be making the final preps for the conference and the other missionaries will be arriving tomorrow evening.
Thank you all again for your prayers and support, it has been a major blessing. One big answer to prayer was regarding the baggage. They were all overweight and we could have been charged at least $1700 in overweight fees, but God was with us and we didn't have to pay any extra!! Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Several of the team members have been not feeling so well, because of either a cold or random bug. The heat is really taxing as well, so it's always on our minds to stay well hydrated.
Prayers for sustained health and stamina would be much appreciated.
From your whole Chad Team,
Brent
