If penguins are cool ... how come I'm so hot?

Potratz Mission Update March 14, 2008

Hello to all,
The Tera service trip went very well.  There were 19 kids and 7 adults that took part in different kinds of outreaches over the weekend of Feb 29 - March 2 (I know, I'm a little late on this one!)

The first excitement on the trip had to do with getting to Tera along an "under construction" road.  An oncoming land rover spit some rocks up at the van I was driving and broke the side window directly behind me, and the window just shattered into the laps of the 2 girls in that seat.  Praise the Lord that the rock was diverted away from them, and there were no more serious injury than fright and a couple of minor scratches

The time at Tera was most interesting.  I was mainly with the team that were building "hangars" for the public girls school in Tera.  Hangars are carefully selected tree branch vertical beams and then straight branches horizontally over them, and then the sides and roof covered with grass or stalk matting.  The total size was about 20 feet by 12 feet for each one and we built 2.

We were met at the site by the director of the school and maybe 40 of his students.  They brought tools to use, and the director made a bit of a ceremony of it.  It was great to see the girls working along side our kids to improve their school.  The hangars will be used to house half of 2 different classes that have 50-60 students in each of them.  So each hangar may end up with 25+ students!

Because I was the one with white hair, soon after the opening ceremonies, the director gave me a tour of the school which housed the class rooms for the girls in one building, the boys in another and another small kindergarten building.  I was impressed with his passion for the education of his students, and his desire for the children of Niger to be educated.

During this time another team was having a kids program across town.  Later in the day there was a soccer game with the two teams having both Teraeans and Sahel academy students.  Again, like the last time we were in Tera, the cattle cantered slowly through the sand field early on in the game!

Sunday was church at a nearby village, in a mud brick building about the same dimensions as the hangars.  We sang songs of worship in English, French and Gormanchi, shared testimonies and worshiped through the hearing of the word of God. Pictures from the trip are here. 

The trip back was pretty anticlimactic after all that, but we thank you for holding us up in prayer for safety and the good example of Christian love we hope that we showed to the people of Tera.  We did not go there to just do something for the few Christians in Tera, but also to show the love of God to the larger community through our service.  In his closing remarks after the hangars were built, the director was clear in telling his students that.

The last few weeks have been very busy ones at the office. I will fill you in next time, but suffice it to say that as the weather gets hotter, the computers get crankier, and I get busier.

The next trip on the horizon will be to Galmi hospital to do systems work there sometime in the next month.

Please pray with us:
1 - Thanks for the safe travel, and the witness the team was to Tera, and the witness that God was to us as we worked there.
2 - For Wanda.  As Sahel Academy has been striving for accreditation, she has been working on creating the curriculum structure for kindergarten there.  Ask that God would give her patience and grace as she does that and teaches some elementary classes.
3 - For the boys that they would finish this quarter strong.  They have been working hard.
4 - For Randy that he would be able to prioritize tasks well, and that he is able to continue to share his knowledge with Jean (John).
5 - For the planning of the Galmi trip, that all things come together.
6 - For our perseverance as the weather is now in the triple digits again.  :-\
7 - Thanks for your prayer for our colleague with the suspected cancer.  The biopsy came back benign!