FORBIDEC 2007

My, oh, my. How long it has been! Sorry.

The lack of posts on this blog does not reflect a lack of activity at the Phare! My apologies.

In fact, all the normal daily activities continue apace. Jane and Antoinette are working with the talibé boys, feeding a few and doing first-aid all morning. The shelter with its shower stall and spigot continues to be a wonderful addition for this work. I was told again recently that the Hamptons and the Phare are known for this effort throughout Ouakam.

Through the summer we’ve seen training camps and missionaries taking time off and churches holding retreats and teams from American churches (two here to help us). Now we’ve come to the end of August and for the twelfth year in a row our friends from the Bible institute in Geneva are here to teach courses. Over 60 African believers from churches all over Senegal and a few from Mali are here for two weeks. FORBIDEC 2007 it is called: Formation Biblique Décentralisé, that is, Decentralized Bible Training. They are taking four courses during that time: Galatians, Nehemiah, Communications, and Evangelism. It’s quite a strenuous mental workout since the teaching is at a college level. Many of the students from the Dakar churches are university students on summer vacation, but some of the people from the interior churches have not ever gone that far in their studies.

FORBIDEC is a great opportunity and we’re excited, as a UWM team, to be part of helping to make it happen. The Duttweilers and I have been helping with logistics. José is teaching the evangelism class. (Yearly, the Swiss provide a professor or two. Local pastors and missionaries take the others.)

Most of the students are staying on campus with us. The dorm is packed and we even put a few of the ladies into Apartment A (our family moved to a neighborhood in Ouakam in June). Hervé’s wife Patricia is catering the affair. Things are crowded.

But, in fact, they were even more crowded at the beginning of the week and will be again. The Bible Institute folks scheduled a visit with 22 young full-time Christian workers for this same period. So just before our 60 African students came, we had a couple dozen Swiss folks with us. They left the day the courses began, but they’ll be back next week. As a result, we hustled to get the second half of the Apartment B renovation done and bought twenty new foam mattresses and generally scurried about frantically last week!

But God is good. Everyone had a place and our returning Swiss friends were amazed at the physical transformations that have taken place here. That makes us feel good after the stress of these last months of renovations. But, of course, all that work was really for them and the others who pass through here so that African students and visiting Western believers alike may experience personal transformations that will last for eternity.