tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26723672339422896382026-01-14T07:41:16.181-08:00Becki and Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14757247362994103815noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2672367233942289638.post-47040287317368641102024-08-20T10:48:00.000-07:002024-08-20T10:51:30.499-07:00

 We know that many people have been praying over our move to Tanzania, here is an update on how its gone so far.The last two weeks in England were punctuated by trips to London for Luke to have some medical tests to try to get to the bottom of a problem with his vision. Eye scans at Moorfields Eye Hospital and an MRI scan at University College Hospital showed no problems but we were still

Becki and Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14757247362994103815noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2672367233942289638.post-25580315257248512352023-03-25T13:33:00.002-07:002023-07-28T03:04:12.982-07:00

Last weekend we (Matt & kids) joined Becki's flight which was taking a team of pastors to the South then picking up a group of doctors from America, who had been working at a hospital in Bere, and taking them to the East. It was more cost-effective for the aircraft to stay for the weekend rather than make two flights so we grasped the opportunity to come along too and spent 2 nights at

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The last few weeks have felt like Piccadilly Circus on the compound, all four houses have been full and there has been a constant stream of airport runs. Three weeks ago our new program manager and his wife left for Morocco to learn French, a few days later the Henderson family left for a two week break to visit their eldest daughter in Kenya, leaving us as the only permanent MAF family in

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A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to take Bethan along on a flight. Since I started flying on the Caravan Bethan has been keen to come along but there hasn't been a flight with space on a day when she wasn't at school until now. The flight was to the north east of Chad, stopping in Guereda and Abeche, in total 6 hours of flying. She was super excited to come along, and packed a bag full of

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           The last month has been difficult for many Chadians living in N'Djamena, including a number of our national staff and our house-help, Sarah. People who live in Walia (shown in the above photo taken from the air) and Kousseri have been displaced from their homes. There has been a lot of rain during the wet season, which recently ended, and it

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Two weeks ago was hectic! I had originally planned to take a couple of days of annual leave but as Phil's licence had not come through, I needed to postpone it and fly. First up was a flight to Bardai in the far North of Chad, this involves a detour to Faya to be able to refuel and means staying overnight amongst the Tibesti Mountains as there isn't enough time to get there and back in a day.&

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10 days ago we got a flight request to try and locate a vehicle that was missing after it had been washed into a river. Unfortunately we had to turn down the flight initially because we were still waiting for my license to be renewed by the authorities. But by the end of the day, with licence in hand, we called the organisation back and arranged to do the flight the following day. We agreed to

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Last week, if you follow us on Facebook, you will have seen that I celebrated my birthday with a fantastic engineer cake. Apparently I spent much of the summer telling everyone we met that we really need an engineer here in Chad, so Matt and the children decided to make me one. Unfortunately Playmobil people don't qualify to get licences here, but I did also have a temporary engineer

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 We have already been back in Chad for a week, it has passed so quickly! After queuing for hours to check in at Heathrow on Saturday evening and being concerned we might not make our flight, we flew through the night and made it to Chad on Sunday afternoon. I hit the ground running, needing to be in the office at 7am on Monday morning. Our temporary program manager had left the country

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Two weeks ago we spent the afternoon with fellow Brits celebrating the jubilee with our own pudding competition in N'Djamena. In the two weeks leading up to the competition, Matt had us sampling various mango jelly and mango custard concoctions and even trialled one variation on our visiting guests and asked for feedback! In the end we settled on 'Meringo' - a fresh mango base, followed by mango

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Yet another two weeks have flown by in a haze!Visitors: On Saturday 14th our look-see visitors arrived to see the program they are planning to join later this year. They were with us for 6 days which we filled with visits to various places in Chad. We took them for a tour of a hospital so they know what sort of medical care to expect, a trip to the market and supermarkets so they had an idea of

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The last two weeks flashed past so quickly I didn't get time to write a post at the end of last week. In the office, we are busy making preparations for our next set of visitors. A couple will come for a look-see visit, which gives them a chance to view the program and see N'Djamena before hopefully coming to join us permanently later this year. We also have a couple coming to visit from South

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Last week marked one year since we heard that there were rebels advancing from the north, that there was fighting 200km north of N'Djamena, near the town of Mao, that tanks began to appear on the streets, that we hunkered down on our compound and held daily meetings to discuss the situation with MAFI, that the British Embassy issued advise to its citizens to leave the country, that school closed

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As mentioned in our previous blog post, on Good Friday we were able to join our community church evening service, coming together to worship, share communion and listen to bible readings. Matt went along early with the children to set up the projector and sound system, I arrived in the nick of time after returning from a long flight. After the 6th and last flight of the campaign. On

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Last weekend we had a team BBQ at our compound, with our two permanent families, Leon our temporary program manager and two visiting pilots. It was fun to have a bigger team with all the houses full, even if it is only for two weeks. Kalvin, one of our visiting pilots arrived to do some check flights with Phil in preparation for coming back in June to allow us to return to the UK for the

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Round up of the WeekLast weekend we celebrated Bethan turning 10 years old, she had a party with friends on the compound playing wink murder, capture the flag and lots of water games, followed by a swim in the pool, snacks and cake. In the evening we had a fire where we melted marshmallows - a special treat brought to Chad by our short term program manager who arrived a few days before her

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The Past 12 Months in Chad - Eric Carle Style(Part 1)I opened our blog a couple of weeks ago and was ashamed to realise that although we have been keeping our Facebook feed up to date and have published quarterly prayer letters, we have not posted a blog post since last summer! The past year has been unpredictable, and unprecedented for the whole world. In the last few months things in Chad

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A-Z of Lockdown in England Now we are back in Chad we've been looking back at the 3 months we spent in England. We enjoyed being able to do things that we can't do in Chad and don't usually have time for when we come back for home assignment. We've compiled an A-Z list of things that we did during our unexpected break during the Coronavirus lockdown. Spending time with Jack A is for

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An Unexpected Return to England On the evening of Monday 16th March, the Chad government announced that it would be closing it's borders, stopping all commercial flights from "midnight on Thursday" due to the escalating Coronavirus situation around the world. Becki was due to remain in Uganda for another 2 weeks but on hearing this news, with MAF's permission, she tried to book the earliest

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Update For those who receive our quarterly prayer letter, you will know that I left Chad in early March and arrived in Uganda for my MAF conversion training onto the Cessna Caravan. This was planned to be for just over 3 weeks, giving me time in Chad with our other pilot, Phil, to do some supervised flying in program before taking the reigns while he went on home assignment with his family for

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A Week in a Tchadian Village On 13th December Bethan's school gave their Christmas performance based on the Gospel of Luke and the term ended. The next morning we packed up the car and then transferred everything into the aeroplane (Cessna 182) to spend a week in the South of Chad. We were based in a village called Tchaguine, staying in a guest house within the property of a family that I had

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Storm Racing For the past two years we've had one last big rain at the beginning October and then rainy season is over and dry season begins. This year the rains just keep coming, meaning roads that are normally drive-able by now still resemble rivers and flying conditions are more challenging. On Friday I had a flight to Koumra in the far South of Chad to drop off two Chadian pastors

Becki and Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14757247362994103815noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2672367233942289638.post-8243038381308528342019-04-16T05:43:00.000-07:002019-04-16T05:43:53.638-07:00

Re-opening Koblagué Airstrip In MAF we love opening new airstrips. For MAF, it represents the potential to reach more people with the love of Christ through aviation and technology. A new airstrip represents entire new communities with the potential to be transformed physically and spiritually. For the missionary or the church worker a new airstrip means the promise of a vital link to

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Flying for the Local Church One of our flights last week was for a missionary here in N'Djamena who flew to the south of Chad for a week of teaching at the missionary training school, here is his story from the week: This past week a colleague and I had the privilege of being served by MAF as we went for a week-long visit to the remote town in southern Chad.  Located on the

Becki and Matthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14757247362994103815noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2672367233942289638.post-6410779788016295342018-07-08T13:58:00.001-07:002018-07-08T13:58:26.119-07:00

Wildlife in Chad We have seen some interesting wildlife since we've been living in Chad so here is a selection from photos that we've taken. The Sun beetle is very common here. This colony of epauletted fruit bats sleep in the tree next to our house and fly around the compound at dusk.  Geckos are absolutely everywhere in Chad. This is the (male) red-headed rock agama

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