Kabiye Team News
February 20, 2003

Dear Family and Friends,

We hope this update finds you all doing well and walking in the light of God's love. It has been awhile since we have sent out our family e-mail newsletter, and we would like to begin updating you on a more consistent basis. We are so blessed by your prayers and emails and ask you to keep 'em coming! They are such an encouragement to us, and such a need for the furtherance of God's kingdom here among the Kabiye.

We returned from a 3 month furlough in the states December 3rd and have adjusted back to life here rather uneventfully, for which we are very thankful. We had a wonderful furlough in the states, visiting many of you and enjoying for a few months the culture we are still most comfortable in. We were so blessed to introduce Elijah to many of you and to watch our children enjoy their grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and new friends. It was so good for us, too, to reconnect with many of you and to see that God has been working in your lives, just as He has in ours, over the past 3 years. How faithful and compassionate He is!

Upon our return in December we re-entered into language study and lesson development and teaching, but spent most of the last two weeks of the month getting ready for, and celebrating, the holidays with our little family here, teammates, and friends here in Kara and a couple of families from the Tabligbo team in the south. After New Years, we continued to struggle at establishing a predictable, weekly schedule. David and all of the other men on the team are out in villages a lot more than before we left for furlough, teaching evangelistic series, church maturation lessons, and partnering with existing churches to evangelize their neighboring villages. Days of the week when different villages wanted men or women on our team to come seemed to change weekly, but as of this past month, we've finally seemed to slip into more of a predictable routine. The Ries family left for furlough at the beginning of this month so we are here on the field with only the Neal and Miller families. This has also caused our workload out in the villages to increase, as the three men here fill in for works that Mark and Bryan have been a part of in recent months. Andrea, Jane, and I are continuing to teach the women in different existing churches. We usually get out only once a week right now because the men are out in their respective villages the rest of the week.

We are so excited about the work that God is doing here among the Kabiye! Soon after our return from furlough in December, two new churches were born in the villages of Te and Kpindi. 27 new believers were baptized into Christ in Te and 7 were baptized in Kpindi. Don and Jane Neal have been working in the village of Te and Mark Kennell was teaching in Kpindi. Mark returned to the states to be with Nicole and their girls on Christmas Day and Dave has picked up for Mark with the work in Kpindi. January 24th, 3 more believers were baptized in Kpindi. We've included a picture of one of the baptisms on that day. There are now 5 village churches among the Kabiye and 3 of these churches are evangelizing their neighboring villages. Don and Matt are also currently preaching at three other preaching points and Dave is planning to start evangelism in a fourth within the next month. That means there are now 5 existing churches and within the next 2 or 3 months, there will possibly be 7 others to add to their number! God is truly doing an awesome work through our human weakness. There is an all-church retreat planned for the end of March where all of the churches are invited for a weekend to the village of N'djei, where one of our first churches was planted. It is a weekend retreat that the Christians in N'djei are planning with a little bit of guidance from Matt. We're excited for all of these churches to meet each other, as some of them are a 2 or 3 day walk from one another. Please pray for this time as these new Christians meet together and encourage one another.

We mentioned that our teammate, Mark Kennell, returned to the states near the end of December to be with his family. Since that time, the Kennells have decided not to return to Togo for both physical and emotional reasons. We grieve the loss of their family from our team and ask for your prayers, both for them and for us, as we each continue in the work that God lays before us. Please pray specifically for the Kennell family's readjustment to life in the states and for the healing process of their loss to continue and be rooted in God's truth and love. Please pray the same prayer for our team as it is difficult to be separated from a family we've spent the last 6 years of our life with in such intense growing times. God has truly used the Kennell family in His perfect plan for our team for us to sharpen each other, encourage each other, and for Him to directly speak to and teach us through one another. We praise Him and thank Him for the blessing of bringing us together for the past 6 years. We will miss them very much.

On our family front: Elijah turned 2 on January 13th and we celebrated with a Blue's Clues party with all of his teammate friends. He and Hannah are doing well and have been less sick since we've returned than they were on furlough in the states. We praise God as this has definitely made our family's readjustment back to life here easier. Everything is always a little more of a challenge when we are concerned over our childrens' health. We also took a small trip to Accra, Ghana near the end of January with the Millers to get our cars tuned-up and to buy groceries and relax a little. The kids had a great time going to the zoo and jumping on the "jumpy toy" at the food court and we enjoyed finding some new places to eat out in the evenings, including a Mexican restaurant with great food!!! Elijah is talking up a storm and he and Hannah have a lot of fun playing/getting into trouble together lately. It brings such joy to us to watch them grow up together. Hannah is enjoying preschool and Jane and Andrea are doing a great job sharing teaching responsibilities and getting our older kids ready for kindergarten this September.

We are working on readying a schoolhouse/teacher's home for our children that is centrally located among our houses in town. We are in the process of beginning to raise money to pay for a teacher to come and teach our children and to pay for a curriculum. Our supporting congregation in Richland has committed to raising the quarter of the money that will be our family's share in paying for Hannah's, and soon after - Elijah's, education. If you are interested in contributing towards this, please let us know and we will have the church contact you.

Other news is that Dave and I enjoyed an outing on Tuesday to the game park only an hour and a half away from here in Togo with Matt Miller and Marvin Friesen (the director of S.I.L./Wycliffe Bible Translators here in Kara). We were searching for elephants on foot and found a lot of their evidence from just hours earlier in some places, according to our guide, but we didn't see them ourselves. One of the more exciting things for me was walking over the bed of an elephant where he/she had slept the night before. We also spotted pattus and vervet monkeys, 3 kob antelope, and a variety of beautiful birds. We did a lot of walking and I've been hobbling around on blistered feet the last couple of days, but I still say it was lots of fun! Andrea graciously watched Hannah and Elijah for us and it was really nice to have a day of adventure to break up the slow routine of much of the rest of my week!

I'd better close before I write too much more. We have included the picture of one of the baptisms at Kpindi and some shots of Hannah and Elijah around Elijah's birthday last month. Thank you again for all of your support of us through prayer! Know that we remember all of you before the Father, and please let us know if you have anything you would like us to pray for specifically over this next month. May God bless you!

In His Love and Service,
David, Becky and family