Light of Togo

Because this is such a long story, I decided to do two versions of it.  Feel free to read the longer one if you’d like , but I wrote it more for ourselves as a memory and for our family who may be interested in the added details.  This is the abbreviated “journal version.”

Friday early afternoon: I get a phone call.  It’s a missionary friend asking for our help for their coworkers who’ve just had a car accident 3-4 hours North of us.

Two hours later: Tiffany and I take two vehicles up to the accident site.  We meet Glen (who was driving) and his wife, Karen.  Rick is the owner of the truck.  He was in the backseat with no seatbelt, so he’s in the hospital with some possible broken ribs.  Broken ribs and busted truck, poor guy.  Glen and Karen are fine, but their stuff isn’t.  They were moving from Togo to Mali, so all their personal belongings went through the wreck too.  We load all their things into the two trucks and head to the Dapaong hospital.

Five hours later: It’s been decided that Rick’s in too much pain to go anywhere by vehicle.  I coordinate with Randy Alderman to have him fly up the following morning to get Rick and Karen and bring them to Lomé.  Rick has a great attitude about the whole thing - amazing.

One hour later: Tiffany and I are settling into our hotel room after deciding it’s way too late to attempt the drive back home to Kara.

45 minutes later: Tiffany and I have just finished a successful preemptive strike against the flock of terrorist mosquitoes living in our hotel room.  We go to bed not realizing they have called for reinforcements.

30 minutes later: I have become the target of the mosquitoes’ counter attack.  I decide these must be some kind of specially-trained covert ops mosquitoes, since they’ve somehow figured out how to bite me through the sheet! I get up and exterminate another 20 or so of their forces when I realize that this could go on all night.

10 minutes later (now 1:30 in the morning): Changing rooms.  Check…double check…ok, clear.  No evil, winged phantoms of death in this one.

2 hours later: “Why am I awake?  Why do I feel like I haven’t slept at all even though I’m exhausted?  Why am I itching…again?”  The hunt begins…again.  Found out that one mosquito can ruin your sleep just like 500 can.  Thankfully he was fat and slow due to sucking half the blood out of my body, which inevitably ended up smeared on the wall and my palm.

5 minutes later: Aaaah, sleep!

90 minutes later: Randy calls letting me know the weather is good and he’s clear to fly.

Around 8 o’clock: We discover the hospital’s sole ambulance is broken down.  I’m the new ambulance.  Rick laid in the back seat as I drove slowly, like 2 mph slowly, down the 15km bumpy road to the airstrip.

5 minutes later: Bump.  Rick, “ouch!”

3 minutes later: Bump.  Rick, “Are we there yet?”  Me, “Sorry, it’s gonna be a while.”

50 feet later: Bump.  Rick, “Can anybody see the plane yet?”  Poor guy.  He asked “are we there yet” more times than a 7 year old kid on a road trip to Disney World.  I don’t blame him, the back seat of a pickup truck is the last place I’d want to be with broken ribs!

Around 9:30: Saying a prayer for Rick, Karen, and Randy as they take off headed to Lomé.

30 minutes later: Picked up some sandwiches at our hotel’s restaurant for our trip back to Kara.  More on the sandwiches later.

Two hours later: Took Glen to the gendarmerie (local government office) so he can sort out the formalities of the accident.

Three hours later: Home at last!  Glen is sorting through all his things in our living room, picking out what’s damaged or broken.

27 hours later: I’m feeling unusually tired, my back aches, and I feel chilled.  Guess what?  It’s malaria time!

Two days later: Malaria’s gone.  Wasn’t nearly as bad as the first two times I had it.  But remember the sandwiches?  Tiffany and I think the chicken was bad.  For three days she couldn’t wander more than a stone’s throw from a bathroom, and I’m still fighting it.

Summary: Thankful.  Thankful we could help people in need.  Thankful to see God work even in bad circumstances.  Thankful for the new friends.

Oh, and as for the truck, it was rolled twice and looked to me like it was only good for scraps.  The mechanics, however, managed to do a couple temporary fixes, drive it all the way to Kara (2 hours), and they say they’ll have it looking and running like new.  I’m beginning to believe the missionary myth that Landcruisers are indestructible.

This is a very detailed version of the story that is meant to keep a memory for our family that we can read in the future, but if you like all the details of a story go ahead, but you’ve been warned…

This time last week I was having a pretty normal Friday afternoon when I received a phone call from some missionary friends of ours in Lomé.  They explained that some of their coworkers had been in a terrible car accident near Dapaong, and asked if we would be willing to drive up and help them out if necessary.  They didn’t know many details at the time, but we told them we’d of course do whatever we could to help.

Two hours later Tiffany and I were headed North with our SUV and our coworker’s truck, still not really knowing what exactly what the situation was, what we needed to do, or how long we’d be gone.  What we did know is that one guy, Rick, was in the hospital in Dapaong and that the guy who was driving, Glen, and his wife, Karen, were not hurt but had all their personal belongings sitting on the side of the road next to the accident.  They were in the process of moving from Lomé up to Mali, so the vehicle was packed to the brim with all their household things.  In case you’re wondering, it’s generally not a good idea for all your possessions to sit on a roadside in Africa.  On top of that, it had been raining all day.

When we arrived we met Glen and immediately started loading all their things into the two trucks.  One of the many miracles of this whole situation was that the accident happened not even one mile away from one of their mission’s Bible schools, so the first people to show up on the scene were the pastor of the local church and some of the members!

While we did this, Tiffany talked with Karen to make sure she was alright.  She was visibly shook up what happened, but not hurt in any way.  Once they explained the accident we understood why she was so shook up.  They were traveling through a rural area when they came up on a village, going about 60 miles per hour.  Coming up on their right side were three large cows and a small boy “leading” them.  At the very last moment one of the cows stepped into the road directly in front of the truck.  Glen quickly swerved to the left and managed to miss it, but because of their top and rear-heavy load the inertia caused them to spin out, bringing them to the right side of the road where the truck went down an embankment and rolled two times.  When it finally stopped, Glen’s window was flat against the ground, Karen was suspended in air by her seatbelt, and Rick had been bounced all around the back because he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt (kids, take note!).

Then it was off to the hospital to check on Rick.  Because of the poor quality x-ray machine, we did not know at the time what the extent of his injuries were other than some possible fractured or broken ribs.  It turns out that he broke four ribs on his left side, one on his right, and the membrane from his lungs separated from the ribs.  I’m no doctor, but that just doesn’t sound good!  He was amazingly in great spirits though.  By the end of our four hours at the hospital it was decided that he was in too much pain to drive, so we arranged for Randy Alderman to come up the next morning in his airplane to pick him up and bring him to Lomé.

By this time it was too late for Tiffany and I to head back down to Kara for the night so we ended up staying the night in a local hotel.  We learned an important lesson that day: always come prepared to stay the night!  In typical only-in-Africa fashion, our hotel room evidently was the local breeding ground for mosquitoes.  I killed 30 or so, was satisfied that I had got them all, and went to bed only to be bitten through the sheets from head to toe.  After killing another 20, I figured there had to be a hole in the window screens where they were flooding into the room.  After changing rooms (it’s now 1:30 in the morning) I discovered that there was one, yes only one, mosquito in our new room.  How do I know this?  Because at 3:30 I awoke from a very restless and itchy sleep to kill the accursed blood-filled agent of death.  Then I went to bed for a very restful hour and a half when Randy called letting me know he was clear to fly that morning.

This is the part of the story that gets very painful for Rick.  Because the hospital’s sole ambulance was broken down, we had to load him into the truck I was driving, bring him 15 kilometers to the airstrip, and load him onto the airplane.  Even though I drove a maximum of 2 mph down the bumpy road to the airstrip, he often winced in pain and asked at least 10 times, “Are we there yet?”

As he and Karen took off in that tiny airplane, I remember thinking how thankful I was that the situation worked out as it did.  After seeing the vehicle, I was amazed that the worst that happened was a few broken ribs.

The next few hours were spent taking Glen where he needed to go in order to take care of the legalities regarding the accident, then we finally headed home.  I had a really great time talking and getting to know Glen while we drove and Tiffany, well, she followed behind us.  I felt bad that she had nobody to talk to, but I think she probably enjoyed the peace and quiet.

That night we emptied both vehicles’ loads into our living room where Glen sorted through all the broken and damaged luggage.  Surprisingly, there was not a lot that was broken, even from the two trucks that were strapped to the roof and therefore had been crushed, twice.  The trunks have seen better days, but the only major losses were Glen’s Kindle (he’s an avid reader) and their coffee maker (a great tragedy!).

The next morning some of Glen’s coworkers came and picked him up along with all his things to bring them back to Lomé, which is ironically where their journey started.

That night (Sunday), I started to feel unusually tired, achy, and chilled.  Guess what that means?  It’s malaria time! Thankfully after having it twice I know what it feels like at the beginning so I was able to begin treating it right away and by Wednesday morning it was completely gone.  Unfortunately, Tiffany and I both picked up some kind of illness, probably from Dapaong, which has caused all kinds of stomach issues including not being able to wander too far from a bathroom.  Thankfully Tiffany got over this pretty quickly, but I’m still having major problems with it a week later.

We are incredibly thankful that God allowed us to help out these people in need and to make three new friends in the process.  It was a very unfortunate circumstance but we’re glad to see that everyone came out of it with their lives.

Oh, and the truck?  It’s a Toyota Landcruiser, which are evidently indestructible because the mechanics simply changed the tires on one side and drove it three hours South to Kara!  I didn’t think it was good for anything but scraps, but the mechanic says he’ll getting running like new!  Only in Africa.

Last week was certainly one to remember.  I believe it (the pastors’ conference) was a great help to the Togolese pastors as they were able to see every one of their “sister churches” in Togo, get to know the other pastors, and recieve biblical teaching on topics relevant to them.  I personally had a good time getting to know several pastors who I had never met before.  I would like to ask you to pray for them if you could.  Many, if not all of them are struggling to make ends meet, dealing with serious health problems, and trying to lead churches full of people in the same situation as they are.

I had the opportunity to speak two times during the conference.  I basically did a verse by verse study of Jean 15:1-17, dealing with the topic of abiding in Christ.  The main idea was that without a deep, trusting, abiding relationship in Christ, their ministries will only bear the fruit of their own efforts and not that of the Spirit.  The other sessions given by the other missionaries were incredibly helpful as well, and I was really challenged and encouraged by them.

Without going into too much detail about all the rest of what we did during the week, I’ll just say that we drove a total of 24 hours, many of which were spent on roads so bumby that they made my truck beg me for mercy.  In fact, it’s making a few new little noises that I’ve never heard before!  During the last two days, we were in the Dapaong area visiting some remote village churches.  It had rained really hard just a couple days earlier.

Other than my vehicle we had Jim’s, which doesn’t have 4×4.  Just in case you don’t know, remote village roads, hard rains, and no 4×4 aren’t a good combination!  Because his vehicle is larger, he also had the majority of the people (9) in it which just added to the problem.  Needless to say, he got stuck in the mud 4 times!  A couple times were pretty bad and we had to tow it out using my vehicle while everyone pushed on his.  Overall, it was a great experience.  Really!  There’s something exciting about being stuck in the mud out in a remote African village with no cell phone service.  It makes me want to buy a helicopter actually.

So, now that the conference is over and several other time-consuming things are wrapping up,  I expect to have quite a bit more “free” time.  Free time is a very relative term, isn’t it?  What I mean is that I’ll have more time to catch up on all the other stuff that’s been put aside while I was too busy.  So as always, I’ll do my best to keep you updated with anything else that’s going on.  Thanks so much for praying for the conference, and don’t forget to pray for the pastors.

Before the films, we let the kids play with a big ball, which was a completely new experience for them. Joshua even jumped in there with them and had a blast running around with all the kids, stirring up the biggest dust cloud I’ve ever seen!

It was interesting to see how at the beginning of the films there were only a handful of church members there watching, but by the end there were probably around 150 people, many of whom were standing outside watching through the windows.

Afterwards, Pastor Sopa gave, in the local Moba language, a clear explanation of how to know Jesus personally. Sopa, by the way, is the pastor of six churches right now, and as you can imagine needs help very badly. He started out by walking to each church, then he upgraded to a bicycle, and now he has a motorcycle that Randy Alderman bought for him. He preaches at two churches each Sunday and rotates between them. Please pray for him, and for God to call other Togolese men to go help in this needy area.