It's a Death

Photo Credit:  R. Stoll

To be human is to hope, to set one's heart and mind on an outcome and to desire with all that I am to see it come to pass. 

It doesn't take long for us to learn to hope.  I ran into the Mom of one of my first graders from last year who told me that her son, all of seven year's old, has been shedding tears.  He loves Sahel and he had hoped to be there again this year.  He is grieving the loss of that dream because he knows Sahel is damaged by flood waters.  His five year old sister, an incoming kindergartner, is sad too because she's  been looking forward to being at Sahel with him.

On the other end of the spectrum, I think of one of my former first graders, now a senior, hoping to get a scholarship to play softball in college.  She had been diligently practicing and working out all summer on our softball field.  What will happen to that dream now that our softball field is underwater?

It's a death.  It's a death of the hopes and expectations of almost every student and staff member at Sahel.  It's hard and we are grieving it.

Paul's words in 2 Corinthians1:9 resonate.  "Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death."  But then, they go on to remind us of a glorious truth.  "But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God who raises the dead."

This school, this ministry currently underwater, belongs to God, who raises the dead.  Just like Paul said in verse 10, we, too, can say, "He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again."  We went through this in 2012 and God brought our campus back to life.  Yes, it is far worse and deliverance may not come in exactly the same fashion - we have so many questions about the future but "on Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers." (2 Cor. 9:10) 

This is key, we are being helped by your prayers - those of our community, those of our friends and churches in faraway places and those of our fellow international Christian schools.  Your prayers for us are sustaining us during a chaotic and overwhelming time.  As you continue to pray, we know that God will be our help.  He has helped us to locate and rent two school buildings.  He will help us to see the work on these two buildings, particularly the elementary, completed so that we can fully move in and bring some order out of the chaos.  He will help us, students and staff alike, to understand that He is a God who raises the dead, that in Him our hope is secure.  "Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favour granted us in answer to the prayers of many."  (2 Cor. 1:10 & 11)

On the left: circled in green you can see a small plaque placed after the 2012 flood to mark the waterline and commemorate the faithfulness of our God during that difficult time.
Bottom right:  Ken F. uses his canoe paddle to measure how far down the plaque is.  Notice that the rock detailing on the side of the building is not even visible.
Top right:  the plaque's apt reminder - 

I will never forget this awful time,
as I grieve over my loss.
Yet I still dare to hope
when I remember this:
The faithful love of the LORD never ends!
His mercies never cease,
Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
I say to myself, "The LORD is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!"
Lamentations 3:20-24

If you would like to help the school recover from this devestating loss you can do so through TeachBeyond, one of the organizations that partners with us to provide staff.

Flood 2.0

As a school and as a mission, we never wanted to relive this story again.  2012 was enough.  God had spared us in amazing ways.  He had helped us rebuild and come back to our compounds with safer walls that would protect us from the river's threat during rainy season. We were thankful that we could look back and recount all the ways that God had been faithful but had it been our choice that would have been a book we never reopened after the last chapter had been read.

But that is not the story that is being written. Instead we have had a very heavy season of rain and our team of guys watching the river kept seeing the water level go up and up, passing the level that caused the 2012 flood and going up.  They sandbagged. The dyke held. The water level went down and then back up. Our section of the dyke held.  But downriver from us water began pouring in filling the areas behind our walls, walls where a threat had not been anticipated in the past.

Sunday evening we sat on the steps of our Admin building trying to decide the best course of action.  We would give it one more night and reevaluate in the morning.  By 8 am on Monday morning the road to Sahel Academy was impassable by small vehicles and we were starting to enact our evacuation plan, going through the school and putting everything up waist high or more.  I worked together with our elementary team.

At 2:26, I took a moment to look out the window from the second story of our elementary building.  This is what I saw.

I could see all that water being held back by our wall and I could see houses in the distance where it looked as though the water was half way up the doors.  Honestly, it felt like it was only a matter of time, especially when we began to see water leaking through several of the seams.  We continued to work.

Around 4:15, the elementary principal came running around the building shouting that the wall had broken.  There were three of us in the same area and we hopped in one of our colleagues cars and we tore out of that area to one of the higher points on campus.  I didn't want her car to be under water.  I ran by the house of a family in quarantine to yell at them and tell them the wall had broken and then I ran towards my classroom where I had left my phone plugged in to charge. I grabbed it and my water bottle and waited for the principal who had run back to the area as well.  While I waited I watched the water pour in where the wall had broken.  This was not a story that we wanted to be ours and yet here we were again.  

When it was all said and done, we waded out to the front entrance in water that was up to our chests.  It is the first and the last time I hope to be taking a selfie in the Niger river!

I lay in bed Tuesday morning with a barely functioning brain.  Too tired to even open my Bible, God brought the words of 1 Peter 2:23 to mind.  I add a little more here for context:  "For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly."  As you can well imagine there are just SO MANY questions.  In the face of those questions, I have the challenge of walking the same road that my Saviour walked, one of continuing to entrust myself, my colleagues, this ministry and our mission to the Father.  He is sovereign and He knows what He wants to accomplish in this that will bring glory to His name.

Here are some things He has already done:

• In those last hours, He sent some strong young men who helped us move alot of things to our second floor where they are dry and safe.
• Just minutes before the wall broke, several men were standing in front of it inspecting the leaks.  When it broke, no one was there.
• He held back the water until the last bit of chemicals in our science lab were carefully stored upstairs.
• He gave one of our guys the foresight to turn off the electricity to the whole campus so that when water began pouring in we had one less thing to worry about.
• He sent some men in through the wall who stuck with us and helped us put up a bunch of last minute things in the elementary, computer lab and some colleagues' houses that hadn't had time to prepare.
• Passports, wallets and lost pets have been recovered.
• He has given us joy and laughter even in the midst of tears.

He is good and worthy of our praise.

School was to have started on September 1.  We are in the midst of trying to recover as much as possible from homes and the school and we need time to regroup and make decisions about the future.  We covet your prayers for wise decision making, for health and safety for those wading into the water and for God's provision of new homes and school buildings.  For several colleagues, this is the second time they have been through this.  Many of our leaders, including our SIM Niger Director, treasurer and the Sahel Academy Director and their families were all living on these compounds.  This means they are dealing with this loss and having to make important decisions about ministries simultaneously. Many of our Nigerien colleagues' homes are being threatened or have already been lost.  Please pray that all will know and experience the loving care of the Father. 

A Day for Fortifying

There is nothing that a teacher hates more than a rainy day when you've got kids bursting with energy who need to get out and run.  Thursday was just such a day.  It probably started raining at around 8 am and didn't stop until just before 2:30 pm when school let out.  One of our teachers who keeps track of the rain said we received about 2 inches of rain in that time period.  By the time we headed home, the Niger river, a river that just that morning had been significantly lower than the top of the dike, was now dangerously high and bursting with fast moving water.  Friday classes were cancelled as a precautionary measure.  Overnight, the river level which had read 5.4 meters on Thursday morning, rose to 6.1 meters.  Friday was a day for fortifying.

Fortifying

 

 

walls,

 

 

the gate,

 

 

the berms,

 

 

and the dike.

 

During the night on Thursday, the river breached the dike to the north of the bridge in the Lamorde quartier, a neighbourhood where several of our workers reside.  One said the water was up to his walls but had not yet entered.  He said that Jacques, whose story you might remember from last year, had already evacuated his family because their home had been flooded.  Please pray for God's protection and provision for these men, their families and the Nigerien people who are once again facing the devastating loss of their homes and crops.

 

A walk along the dike on our side of the bridge

 

 

finds the water lapping against its restraint 

 

 

like a bathtub threatening to overflow.

 

 

We have done just about all we can to prepare and so we wait and we pray that the things that have been done to fortify the walls around our two campuses will work.

Saturday Morning Update:  After posting this we heard the news that the river went down 15 cm overnight.  That is a huge answer to prayer!

The Lord Helped Us

At the beginning of July on a walk around the Sahel Academy campus you would have been confronted by a whole lot of dirt and views such as these....

Tomorrow these halls, buildings and grounds will be filled with students and their families anticipating the start of a new year.  When they look around they will see...

 

 

What can we say? 

 

The Lord helped us.

If you have prayed,

 if you have given,

if you have put your hand to

the hammer,

the rag,

the wheelbarrow,

the pressure washer,

the dolly,

the paintbrush,

the scissors,

the paper

or any other tool on our behalf...

 

We say, "Thank You!"

 

Through you...

 

the Lord helped us.

 

The work is not finished but tomorrow we'll stop to celebrate the start of a new school year -

one that begins on our very own campus.

 

 

The Lord helped us.

(1 Samuel 7:12)

Building a Berm

If you are anything like me, when you read the word "berm" you thought to yourself, "Huh, I wonder what that is?"  I first heard the word being thrown around after SIM Niger & Sahel Academy began making their plans to restore and protect our campus from future flooding.  So I asked Google for some help and I got something similar to this definition from Merriam-Webster : 

a narrow shelf, path, or ledge typically at the top or bottom of a slope; also : a mound or wall of earth or sand.

It sounded much like a dam to me except I think it has to be built up against something solid.  Notice the words "I think".  I'm not going to claim to know much of anything on this subject but I'll show you what is being built on campus and perhaps you'll get a fuller picture of what a berm really is.

You may remember that a portion of the wall around our campus collapsed.  This is what it looked like directly after the flooding.

That section of the wall has now been rebuilt. 

As you can see, a shorter wall has been built about six feet away from the outer wall.  This does not extend all around the campus but does stretch from corner to corner in the areas that were under the most pressure from the flood waters. 

The short inner wall varies in height based on the height to which the flood waters rose.  In the above picture the wall was at knee level.  The duplex built just in front of this wall experienced very little flooding.  Whereas our soccer field is lower ground so the wall comes to about chest level on me.

Once the short inner wall is completed...

the area between it and the outer wall is being filled with dirt.

The idea is that should the river flood again this berm will reinforce the wall and hold back the water.

Please continue to pray for the completion of this project and wisdom for those who are working on it. 

It's the Little Things

When you're overwhelmed by the dirt,

 

 

the piles,

 

 

the furniture,

 

 

and sometimes just the emptiness,

 

 

it's the little things that bring encouragement.

 

Things like

 

 

a good laugh,

 

 

an organized space,

 

 

growing grass,

 

 

and the knowledge that your favorite appliance survived the flood.

There is courage to press on!

 

 

Thank you, Jesus, for the little things, especially these miraculous little cubes.



Pushing Back the Dust

Pushing back the dust - the largest part of these first two weeks back in Niger has been spent doing just that.  It began in my apartment where everything needed a thorough cleaning.  And that was before I opened the door of my store room where all my boxes and trunks were covered in a thick layer of dust.  Even things tucked away inside boxes needed a wash.  Then there was my car which was equally gross.  It got a good cleaning and spent some time in the shop for repairs.  Meanwhile I had some repairs done around my house as well.

But now that all that has been taken care of it is time to tackle the classroom where the Sahara seems to have overtaken the place.

I thought I was going to be sweeping all morning!  The dirt is so fine that even after several passes across the same area, there would be more dirt to sweep.  It gave me a new appreciation for the guys who clean our floors for us every day.  Thankfully I had some help to get the job done too.

Anyone need some sand for their sandbox?



Somewhat unpacked and looking much cleaner thanks to some help from two hard working ladies who gave me a hand.

Today I'm thankful for...

•  The wonderful people who moved all this stuff back to the school.  What a huge job!
• Kathy's coffee cake and the friendly harassment that comes with it.
• Becky & Cameron who helped me clean.
• Cool drinks of water & nap time too!