Emmanuel; God With Us

Here is a video from a crazy friend of mine, Bruce Sundeen. He visited us in January and made this video for a new Lutheran Health Clinic in Gallo, about an hour east of our house. The video also includes details on other work by the Lutheran Church in our area.

Joe and Deborah Troester are ELCA missionaries in Baboua, the Central African Republic. Joe serves as technical advisor for PASE, which provides clean drinking water and promotes good hygiene and sanitation to villagers. Pastor Deborah teaches at the Theological School in Baboua. Their daughter Christa is attending seventh grade in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Earth Day in the Central African Republic

Today is much like every other day in the Central African Republic (CAR). Life continues its simple rhythm following the annual cycle of seasons. Slowly we are changing from the dry season to the rainy season. Everyone here is a farmer and now is the time I can watch them planting crops. They burn the field, turn over the soil by hand with a homemade hoe, and plant. Then like farmers everywhere, they wait and hope for just the right amount of rain. I know that the dusty dirt roads will soon be replaced with mud, but no one knows when.

 

Family life continues inside and around the traditional mud brick houses in the village. The daily meal is cooked over an open fire. Women and children fetch water every day and carry it home on their heads. Most people get water from springs, which at this time of the year are barely more than mud holes. In a few places where there is a relatively clear trickle of water and then there is a line of people waiting with their buckets. It takes a long time to fill a 5 gallon container from a small trickle one cup at a time. Parents send their children to wait in line. Most children do not go to school. Three out of four girls are kept at home to help with the chores, such as fetching water.

 

Water-borne diseases are common. Those who can afford it, go to the hospital where seeing the nurse costs about 25 cents and prescriptions for diarrhea, worms, or malaria are filled for only a dollar or two.   Unfortunately not everyone can afford even these modest fees.

 

PASE (the water management project that I work with) teaches hygiene and sanitation to villagers. We improve water sources and repair wells. We do simple, sustainable projects to improve the lives of people that live in this part of the CAR.

 

People often ask me, what they can do to help. One of the things I tell them is to be informed. Read. Mail is slow here and I have not yet received my April 2010 issue of National Geographic. But many people have e-mailed me that it is a special issue devoted entirely to water. It talks about accessibility, purity, and the impact of climate change. I have heard that it talks of the work of my colleagues in Water Aid (a British NGO) that are working in Ethiopia and elsewhere.

 

We do not celebrate Earth Day here, but I would like to ask you to celebrate Earth Day by informing yourself about the many water issues that the world is facing. Please think about those less fortunate than yourself. Think about the futures of the children that never go to school because they spend the day fetching water.

 

For those who wish to support the work of the ELCA in the CAR, please contact Rev. Twila Schock, Director for ELCA Global Mission Support at Twila.Schock@elca.org

 

Photo is of the April 2010 Cover of National Geographic.

 

Joe and Deborah Troester are ELCA missionaries in Baboua, the Central African Republic. Joe serves as technical advisor for PASE, which provides clean drinking water and promotes good hygiene and sanitation to villagers. Pastor Deborah teaches at the Theological School in Baboua.  Their daughter Christa is attending seventh grade in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Nigerian Lutherans Help Their Central African Sisters

Recently the Central African Republic has seen a positive development in relations between francophone and anglophone church bodies. Specifically, the women of the Yola Diocese of the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria have come to the aid of their sisters in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Central African Republic. Twenty-eight Nigerian women and one male pastor braved a three day drive on bad roads across two international borders to join their Central African sisters at a national women's conference. 

 

The conference, the biennial synod of Femmes Pour Christ Centrafricaines (Women for Christ of the Central African Republic), was held in Bohong, a town in northwestern Central African Republic.  This area has seen much violence and unrest in past years, but is now starting to recover as peace has been restored to the region. 

 

The women of the Yola Diocese helped provide music for the conference.  Their singing and dancing, accompanied by percussion instruments which they left as gifts, enlivened the synod's proceedings. 

 

In addition to the musical instruments, the Nigerians brought gifts of five sewing machines, jewelry-making materials, fabric, shoes, and kitchen utensils to give to their Central African counterparts.  They also offered classes in jewelry-making and in preparing a local non-alcoholic beverage. The Nigerian church women sell these items to raise funds for their church work and to help sustain their families. All travel expenses were paid for by the Nigerian women themselves. 

 

The conference proceedings were translated from Sango (the Central African trade language) into Hausa (a Nigerian trade language), by Josephine Oumarou, the newly elected vice-president of Women for Christ. Madame Simone Baigo-Dari, out-going president, receives our congratulations for having organized this successful meeting, and for inviting the women of the Yola Diocese, whom she met at an international conference held in 2008 in Cameroon. 

 

In a world full of so much ethnic violence and hatred, the women of the Yola Lutheran Diocese of Nigeria have demonstrated that unselfish love and concern for one's neighbors can still be found - and that you don't have to have a lot yourself in order to help others. 

 

Photo shows Nigerian Women's Choir singing, accompanied by traditional percussion instruments.

Deborah and Joe Troester are ELCA missionaries in Baboua, the Central African Republic. Pastor Deborah teaches at the Theological School in Baboua.  Joe serves as technical advisor for PASE, which provides clean drinking water and promotes good hygiene and sanitation to villagers. Their daughter Christa is attending seventh grade in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

 

 

20th Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Central African Republic (EELRCA)

This past week (April 8-11) we spent an exciting few days at Bossabina 2, a small village in the north-western Central African Republic near the border with Cameroon and Chad.  Together with our friends and colleagues we celebrated the 20^th biennial Synod (national conference) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Central African Republic (EELRCA).   Over two hundred delegates met to worship, study the Bible, and elect their new church leaders for the coming four years.  Twelve new pastors were ordained, all of them having completed two years of pastoral internship after graduating from the Theological School in Baboua in 2008.

 

The synod re-elected Rev. André Goliké to a second four-year term as president of the church (a position equivalent to bishop in many churches).  Rev. Jean Gbami of Bohong was elected as Vice-President.  Mr. Jean Marc Abbo was selected as treasurer.  Mr. Abbo is director of PASE, the church's development program for providing potable water and hygiene education, the organization with which Joe works as technical advisor.  A new administrative committee was also elected, with one representative from each of the church's seven regions. 

 

Representatives from two of EELRCA's partners, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Mission of Germany (ELM) were present at the synod.  As two of the ELCA representatives, we were privileged to be guests of the EELRCA church in Bossabina.  We enjoyed great hospitality, including hot water for our "bucket shower," (heated over an open fire), and lots of manioc, rice, meat with peanut or okra sauce, and, for breakfast, omelets made with fresh local eggs. 

 

Photo is of a traditional Gbaya dancer celebrating the end of the Synod.

 

Joe and Deborah Troester are ELCA missionaries in Baboua, the Central African Republic. Joe serves as technical advisor for PASE, which provides clean drinking water and promotes good hygiene and sanitation to villagers. Pastor Deborah teaches at the Theological School in Baboua.  Their daughter Christa is attending seventh grade in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Hostel Parents Needed For Missionary Children

As you know, Christa lives in a student hostel in Yaoundé, Cameroon, while she attends 7^th grade at Rain Forest International School.  Her hostel (known as UBAC) is run by an association of missions, and is home to kids from several families working in CAR and beyond.  The current 'hostel parents' will leave at the end of this school year.  The hostel committee chair wrote to us recently:

 

"We are still hopeful that the Lord has someone chosen for this ministry, but only He knows all those details.  Please continue to pray and to present the need...  In the meantime, we all need to realize that, if there are no hostel parents, there will be no UBAC hostel next year.  We as parents need to begin to think of what the alternative might be for our kids."

 

In other words, there is no one in sight to take on the job of hostel parents when the new school year starts in August THIS YEAR. 

 

So who's going to be affected if there's no hostel next year?  Not just our daughter!  Look at the range of ministries in their different locations that may be limited or have to stop next year if there's no one to make a home for these kids…

 

Ben, Desirée and Lyle are 18, 15 and 13 years old and their dad has been a Mission Aviation Fellowship pilot since 1985.  They are now working in Lubumbashi, D R Congo. 

 

Jessica is 17. Her parents are church planting among unreached people in Cameroon.

 

Peter and Rachael are 15 and 13. Their father supervises nine Bible translation programs in the CAR and is a translation consultant.  Their mother works for SIL's Central Africa Group and home schools their little brother.

 

Christi is 13 and her mother and father work with the Mpiemo people of southwestern CAR. They are now in Bible translation as well as literacy projects. 

 

Benjamin is 13. His family is with Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship in southwestern CAR. His father is involved in hospital maintenance and repair, printing, and evangelism. His mother is director of a nursing school, helps with hospital administration, and teaches in Sunday school and women's Bible studies. 

 

Our daughter, Christa, is 13. We work with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in western CAR.

 

Being a hostel parent is a demanding job, but brings a lot of rewards. Here's what Janelle Johnson wrote about her time as hostel assistant in Yaoundé (for Cameroon, you could read the Central African region!).

 

"As I was getting ready to spend the evening with 12 teenagers whose collective life experience spans 3 continents, 6 languages, and more years spent in foreign cultures than in their own passport countries, I knew that God was at work in that place…

 

My time in Cameroon was an opportunity to be a part of God's work in that country. I was able to come alongside career missionaries and encourage them in their work as well as to support the work of Bible translation, church planting, medical services, and agricultural development work of missionaries from numerous mission organizations. 

 

So, what in the world is God doing in Cameroon? He is working through teachers and preachers, pilots and musicians. He is reaching the lost and helping the poor. He is helping people learn to run small businesses that support their families. He is going into prisons and transforming lives. He does this through his people. People like you and me. So why not join him?"

 

What kind of people are needed? A husband and wife team, who are mature believers, are in a healthy marriage, have serving hearts, and love teenagers.

 

Please pray and think about this need.  Pray that God will call and equip the people he's chosen for this role. Contact us to know more about what the job involves, and feel free to mention it to anyone who could be looking for just this opportunity to serve.

 

Photo is of some RFIS students watching a football (soccer) match in the rain.

 

Joe and Deborah Troester are ELCA missionaries in Baboua, the Central African Republic. Joe serves as technical advisor for PASE, which provides clean drinking water and promotes good hygiene and sanitation to villagers. Pastor Deborah teaches at the Theological School in Baboua. 

 

PASE helps bring potable water to the dry, dusty Sahel, Part II

Bossabina II and De Gaulle are two adjacent villages in the northwestern Central African Republic (CAR), near the border with Chad and Cameroon.  From 2003 until 2008, this area was plagued by armed bandits and rebels, who carried off anything they could find, including crops, livestock, and what few personal belongings people may have had.  Children were kidnapped and held for ransom, and some villages were burnt and villagers killed.  The people of this region are poor, and the area, part of the Sahel, is hot and dry, with little surface water. 

 

From February 1 to 12, PASE (the French acronym for the Water Management Project of EELRCA - the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Central African Republic) built five spring boxes.   Original plans included only one, or possibly two spring boxes, but the community response was so overwhelming that PASE decided to build five spring boxes total.  Between 100 and 200 villagers volunteered every day to carry rocks and buckets of sand on their heads to the work sites, and to assist in digging out the springs so that pipes could be installed. 

 

 In the photo above, a Fulani girl gets water from one of the five springs, Girgiri 2, to fill up the basin, which she will carry home on her head.  Many Fulanis, a primarily Muslim ethnic group, live in this area.  Although the work was sponsored by Lutherans, local Muslims were among the volunteers and will benefit from this project as well.  While we were working at one of the springs, an elderly Muslim man arrived.  He prayed for our work and asked God to bless us.  The villagers sang and danced at the completion of the spring boxes, which will provide an additional 50,000 gallons (200 cubic meters) of clean water per day to the two villages. 

 

Joe

 

Joe and Deborah Troester are ELCA missionaries in Baboua, the Central African Republic. Joe serves as technical advisor for PASE, which provides clean drinking water and promotes good hygiene and sanitation to villagers. Pastor Deborah teaches at the Theological School in Baboua. 

PASE helps bring potable water to the dry, dusty Sahel

In April the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Central African Republic (EELRCA) will hold its biannual synod in Bossabina II, a village in northwestern Central African Republic (CAR).  Bossabina II is located in the Sahel region of CAR, where it is hot and dry, with little annual rainfall.  Water is scarce and trees grow only head-high.  On a reconnaissance trip in January, PASE (the French acronym for the Water Management Project of the EELRCA) found that the people of this impoverished area have no source of potable water.  Instead, they are forced to drink water contaminated with bacteria and parasites. 

 

This week PASE is traveling to Bossabina II (about 4 hours north of Bouar) to build three spring boxes to help supply the local villagers with potable water. The photo is of the truck ready to leave our office in Baboua with 12 sacks of cement, boards for formwork, wheelbarrow, rebar, pipes, tools, etc. Pictured from left to right are:  the driver, Ninga Luc; PASE director, Abbo Jean Marc; and PASE employee Moussa Salomon (dressed for the long, dusty motorbike ride).  The work crew of seven Central Africans, including one engineer, two masons, and four animators (community development workers), are expected to be in the field for two weeks.

 

Joe

 

Joe and Deborah Troester are ELCA missionaries in Baboua, the Central African Republic. Joe serves as technical advisor for PASE, which provides clean drinking water and promotes good hygiene and sanitation to villagers. Pastor Deborah teaches at the Theological School in Baboua.