In a little over a week we will be going back to Chad. It
will be a short visit—only enough time to say goodbye, and pack up our few belongings. (Many things we plan to give away to friends and neighbors.) One of our regular blog readers wrote us an email asking us if this trip was such a good idea? Isn’t it still dangerous there? Isn’t it a lot of money to go to Chad? Is this a good use of your resources? We've considered having Tom go back alone or having someone in Chad just pack up the stuff and send it somewhere, but in the end we decided going back was the right thing to do, and we wanted to share with you some of our reasoning why.Before the evacuation, when we left our town, we thought we would be back in a couple of days. It has been almost eight months no
w. It is almost strange to think about how we left things. One day we were there and then we never came back. Explanations have come second-hand. Before we could fully comprehend it, we were sitting in a living room in California, where days before we had been sitting on mats listening for the call to prayer. There is definitely a part of this trip that is for us. We want some closure. We want to show them our new daughter. We want to say goodbye to them and to that part of our life.Going back also means finishing well (or as well as things can be under the circumstances). Remember, our main purpose there was not to start an ice business, or to make Chadians smarter or richer. We wanted to give them the chance to have their lives changed in the same way our lives have been changed. That starts with relationships. Relationships were our main goal there. Those relationships have been broken and nothing can really fix that. Going back for a short time cannot really fix them, but it can help.
If relationships are important to us, they are equally important to Chadians. It is not uncommon for Chadians to spend a great deal of resources on travel and hospitality. We do not think they will begrudge for a second our choice to travel to them. In their minds, it is likely the best thing we could do (short of actually coming back to stay). A Chadian friend told us a story once. We thought it both appropriate and cultural to repeat it:
There was a very rich man in a town who was always being invited to the weddings and funerals and gatherings by everyone in the town. The man was very generous and always made sure that a large gift was taken to the host, but he himself disliked social gathering and never went. Then one day he became very sick. In Chad, when someone becomes sick it is the custom for all your friends, family and neighbors to come and see you, sit with you and mourn with you. The man looked around, but no one had come. He asked his wife, "Where is everyone? Don't they know I am sick?" His wife said, "No one has come, but look, many people have sent you money." But the man was very sad, because he did not need money, he needed his family and friends around him. (I may be over dramatizing this, but I think the story ends with "And so he died alone.”)
PRAYERS ANSWERED
We’ve begun to organize ourselves and an outline for our time before leaving to the islands in February is coming together. Our visas and passports for our Chad visit have
just come through—we were getting nervous. We got to return to working with the high school youth group this week—it is blessing to see both old and new faces.PRAYERS REQUESTED
There are still a lot of details to sort out for our trip. Grace had her 4 month visit today (lots of shots), pray for her continued health and well-being. Pray for our stress level, we’ve felt it building this past week. Pray that we would find time to step back, breath and pray.
