May 2018 update

Bye Bye Daddy!

Sam is off to Kenya today for a week. He is attending a MAF regional Quality and Safety meeting along with another colleague from our programme here and joining with colleagues from all the different MAF programmes in Africa. It will be a time of learning and sharing as we continue to ensure that in all our operations we are putting safety and quality at the forefront. 

Alongside this meeting Sam will also be trying to get a visa for Thailand for the International Managers Meeting for MAF that is taking place in Bangkok this year in late April. For Sam, travelling on a Ugandan passport can at times prove quite difficult in relation to how, when and where to get visas for various meetings he has to attend. This is just one of the disparities in life that we have learnt to just get on with but it does add a layer of difficulty at times! Sam will try and get the visa this week while in Kenya but if that will not work he will have to add a week to his travels in April to go via the UK to get the visa before heading to Thailand. Please pray the visa can be issued this week in Kenya and can be postdated forward to the time of his travel. 

It has been a very busy week work wise for Sam as he has been pursuing certain permissions and authorisations that we need to be able to continue to fly here before he leaves for the week. This has meant he has worked most of the weekend to ensure the programme here is good to go while he is away. We are hoping for some time together when he returns - date to be confirmed depending on the visa!

Life here seems to have quietened down a bit with regards to the issues I raised in the last blog post but it is evident they have not gone away. Please do continue to pray for the people of Chad and for our safety this week as we move around the city on school runs, especially while Sam is away. It does make me a little more anxious!!

The girls have been busy drawing and writing this morning to send Sam on his way!!

Farewell January!

Every new year I set my expectations high and think that this will be the year I master blogging! It seems such a simple concept, just share what we are doing in easy little snippets so people can share our journey. Only most of my life is the daily mundane everyone does everywhere in the world which doesn’t make for very interesting reading!! So my aim now is to try and give some more regular updates of our highlights, low lights and the completely unexpected things that cross our paths here in Chad. Let’s see how long it lasts!

So, we have now just bid a very sad farewell to January - it is our cool month and it is lovely (bar the sand storms and incredible amount of dust)! The nights can drop to the teens and the days at times struggle to reach 30C. It makes daily life so much easier and it is so comforting to have to snuggle under a light duvet at night and wear a jumper in the mornings. But, as February arrived the dial was spun. We hit our low of 20C  and our high of 40C this week and we probably won’t drop back to below 20C until early December!

As you may be aware from our last newsletter, at the beginning of January we moved house. It is great that our team is finally expanding but not so great that we only have limited housing available on the MAF compound. So, for now we decided to move off the compound and found an apartment block with modern apartments that were ready to move straight into. House hunting here is hard work as the price is either astronomical, or you need to do so much work to make the house liveable. So we decided to opt for this apartment which needed very little work, is furnished, and is comparable to the standard of housing at MAF. We are still working on making it homely and unpacking but so far we are all coping well with the move. The girls obviously miss the freedom of the MAF compound and being able to run outside and play with friends any time of the day, but they are doing well with spending more together and we pop over to the compound very regularly.

Becca in her new
school t-shirt

Another highlight in January was that Becca started school. We had tried to get her into the French international school for this academic year, but it is oversubscribed and English speaking missionaries don’t seem to come very high up on the criteria! So we had thought Becca would stay at home with me. At the end of last year we then heard of a Tchadian Canadian school that was just in its second academic year. So we took a look at the beginning of January and decided to give it a go. The school is Chadian run and is aiming to teach all children English as well as French from age 3 and so we thought this could be a good mix for Becca. She goes 4 morning a week has loved going, adapting to it very well.

So 3 weeks ago when Becca started school I was suddenly faced with 4 free mornings a week child free. What was I going to do with all this time? Well fear not, I have not been putting my feet up…at the exact same time the city descended into an outpouring of frustration and anger at the rising prices of commodities and yet cuts in salaries. So for the last 3 weeks we have been negotiating school closures and assessing each new day to see whether the roads are safe to venture onto. Unfortunately, as the protests hit the streets they were met by a very strong resistance and so riot police en mass were a regular site. Now strikes are in place with many schools, hospitals, offices etc shut. Both girls are finally back to school today after Becca being home all week and Rachel only having Wednesday at school.  Please pray with us if you can for the people of this country and for safety as we move around.

Finally the unexpected…well we do live in Chad so I guess this isn’t completely unexpected but its not a daily norm. We rode camels!!! We have had a visiting engineer from Madagascar who has been supporting our team over the last 18 months while we haven’t had a permanent engineer in post. He has come for month long stretches at a time to help us with such an important part of our work – keeping the planes flying! But this was potentially his last visit for a while as we have a permanent engineer family arriving next month (hooray!). Michel had requested to ride a camel, so as a thank you we had a team outing…it was so much fun if not just a little uncomfortable! Enjoy the photos…

Merry Christmas

As you can see from our photo we have been trying to get into the Christmas spirit this advent! Living in a hot, predominantly Muslim country, Christmas could almost pass unnoticed. In some ways, this is nice, as we can stay away from all the commercialisation of Christmas, but in other ways we have to make a conscious effort to bring Christmas alive for our family. So, our little tree is up, we have some lights twinkling and our banana fibre nativity from Uganda is set out. Each day the girls are enjoying lighting the advent candle and putting the next nativity figure up on their advent calendar, while understanding more about the meaning of Christmas. 

Rachel as Mary in the school play

Rachel took part in her amazing school Christmas play this week and was a beautiful Mary, Abby is busy preparing the Sunday school children for a small slot on Sunday morning, while Sam is preparing to lead the candlelight carol service on Sunday evening. It’s a fun time of joy and expectation as we look forward to Christmas day. To the day our Saviour became a tiny helpless baby…to the day Mary and Joseph showed incredible faith and trust as they carried the Son of God into the world…to the day God brought hope and healing to us all. May the true joy of Christs birth be central to all our festivities this Christmas time.

Flying for Life... While trying to think through what to share this time, we were struck at the vast contrast in what we can share. On one side, we could focus on the daily impact our work has on so many people, through the many flights we make. Like the story of the missionary family we were able to pick up last week after a terrible car accident. They were travelling between two cities in the east of the country and had an awful car accident. Miraculously the whole family plus two young ladies travelling with them walked away with minor injuries, and thankfully the next day our plane was already flying that way with space for all the adults and children. Praise God we do what we do, and praise God for protecting and healing this family.

But on the flip side the arduous daily work that goes into ensuring that each flight can take place can sometimes preoccupy us and we get bogged down by the huge amount of paperwork, logistics, legalities and personnel management that keeps our planes in the air. For Sam, this is his daily work and at times it can feel like an uphill struggle as he works so hard to keep the integrity of MAF and the witness we have, central to every aspect of our work. If this side of the work was easy enough for us to do within our own strength, then it wouldn’t be the frontline of mission that God has called us to, so we thank God that he has enabled us to continue to work in this environment and uphold the vision of MAF.   

MAF Chad International Team

Brief updates…   
The team: After two years of running with a shortage of international staff, both pilots and a permanent engineer, we are very grateful that these positions have now been filled and our team is slowly building back up to meet the demands for flying that has been increasing steadily since we restarted operations in April this year. Two new pilot families joined the team, one in April and one in October of this year and we are looking forward to the engineer family joining early next year.

The MAF Chad team at the Hanger

Partners: Many of our partners that we regularly fly, especially to the North and the East of Chad, are beginning to see more people coming to Christ amongst the unreached people groups whom they have been working with for so many years. As a result of this the number of missionaries in these areas are expanding and MAF is playing a critical role in enabling many of these missionary families to be living within such remote communities

Operating environment: The political and economic situation in the country which forced us to temporary suspend our operations at the end of last year, has not greatly improved, and although the risks that we were exposed to have somewhat diminished, the situation is still unstable and quite unpredictable. Sam finds this takes up a large proportion of his time in trying to work towards a fair and just resolution to these ongoing issues

Flying to a remote airstrip in the
far north

New opportunities: During the rainy season (June-September), many communities get completely cut off as roads become impassable. We are looking to work closely this coming year with two partners who are working in rural communities and are forced to leave their work and home during the rainy season. Therefore, we are hoping to build two new airstrips before June next year to enable the missionaries working in these areas to carry on operating in the villages even when the rains come, knowing they have MAF to help them come in and out once the roads are blocked

Rachel and Becca's birthday party!

Family: Thank you for your continued support to us as a family. We very much appreciate your prayers as we live here in Chad and navigate daily life in the city. As a family, we are doing well at the moment. We enjoyed a recent break to Uganda and Kenya in October which really re-energised us, and then Abby’s parents came out to Chad for a two week visit in November and we were able to take a MAF flight and visit a game park in the South of Chad. The girls have both just had their birthday and are now 6 and 4 years old. They enjoyed a party with a few friends at the horse farm where Rachel continues to have her horse riding lessons. Rachel is doing very well at school and is enjoying all the new experiences that school brings. Rebecca continues to be at home with Abby, and is enjoying new friends to play with in the team. Due to all the new families arriving and limited housing available on the MAF compound, we have decided to move to a new house off the compound but still in the same neighbourhood in January to create space for the new families coming into the team

Please pray with us:

• For our two new families that have recently arrived as they settle in to Chad and their roles, and for two other new families as they raise support and do their final preparations before coming to join our team early next year.
• That the word of God continues to really take root and spread among the unreached people groups within Chad and for MAF as we are so privileged to be working closely with so many partners facilitating them to do this work.
• For Sam as he continues to work with government officials and regulatory authorities on the financial and tax issues. Please pray for wisdom and the strength to stand up for truth in very complex situations.
• As we look for funding to complete new airstrip development work, and that we will be able to have the airstrips operational before the next rainy season in 7 months’ time.
• As we move house, especially the girls as they cope with new living arrangements and being off the compound and further away from their friends. Please pray for continued strength for us all as we find living and working here quite tiring, with many daily demands, the unpredictability of driving around the city, and coping with doing ‘life’ in a different language.

Wishing you a very happy Christmas and many blessings for the New Year.