After our visitor left, we’ve had 7 Harding interns with us in Kara. For the first week and a half we were intern-less as the boys went to the Kennells home and the girls to the Emersons but now we have three Harding girls staying with us for two weeks. So far so good, it’s been encouraging to have them with us and to have company close to our age. We hope that their presence here will help them be inspired to support or become missionaries in their future. In July we’ll take them north to Mali, where we’ll show them an unreached people group called the Dogon, show them how to go about collecting data for future works, and hopefully give them insight into the early formation stage of missionary life.

    Personally I feel like since May my Kabiye and French language and village relationships have improved dramatically. We’ve continued to help as we can with some individual needs, orphan aid, health emergencies,etc. This month one of the Kabiye elders, Eyebene from Kaachade was bitten by a poisonous Red Adder while farming. He tried to take care of it with traditional medicine and then found that his hand and arm swelled to where he was having trouble moving it and became disoriented “like the snake was inside my head, moving around.”  His wife had him taken from the village to the city hospital where he found out that the cost for the medication would be $80, which is about two months salary here. His family petitioned their village and was able to borrow the money which saved his life. He came to tell me about all of this at our home where he works 3 nights a week as a guardian. Eyebene has planted 4 churches and has been a christian since the beginning of our movement here. He told me the doctor told him he had good luck, to which he responded “no, God did it and it is He I have.” Grace and I for the next two nights fed him well and covered his medical costs, ordering him to rest. It was a scary reality of their lives here, that one day this great Christian leader was alive and active and the next moment all was nearly lost. We’re thankful that we could be here to help and also to be encouraged by this man’s great faith throughout this event.

    Another exciting opportunity that’s come to us this month is the opportunity to disciple a young Christian named Sobo. We started studying Acts together this week in his village. Sobo, who is 22, has been teaching in a small house church at his father’s home (who is the chief of his village). Sobo is extremely intelligent, can read Kabiye and French very well (which is rare)and has a great thirst for God.

    I’ve been going with another elder and evangelist (Jean Marie) to the Soomdina Poyi church, where I’m happy to say that 5 people were baptized last Sunday. The church there is struggling now to establish leadership in a church were families and backgrounds are often complicated and messy. Please join us in prayer and wisdom for this church.

    Also I’m continuing to take Mike Squires, the development teacher from Wycliffe, to several of our village churches. We’ve been teaching on the importance of literacy, composting, choosing good leaders, and taking care of the environment. In a culture that is lacking education and the learned ability of critical thinking, these seemingly simple lessons seem to have a large impact on their simple lives.

    Tuesdays are trips to Tchamba, a two hour drive, to a pocket of Kabiye people who are assembling themselves in to a church. Here we’re teaching this group how to read, studying the scriptures, and hoping to see this group giving their lives to Christ in the near future. We ask for prayers of wisdom to conduct ourselves and know when to push them forward and when to hold them back.

    Add to that 4-5 days a week of 2 hour language lessons and study time and you have some full weeks.

    We hope you all are doing well and continue to covet your prayers and concerns. We hope to continue to blog regularly and try to share God’s workings here in Togo.

In Christ together,

Matt and Grace