A group of 8 persons from the Delmar Reformed Church (DRC) in upstate New York is traveling in February 2009 to Niger Africa. Niger is located in West Africa and 80 percent of its land is in the Sahara Desert. Most of the country is desert plains and sand dunes; droughts are frequent. The climate is one of the hottest in the world. Its estimated population of 11 million are 98% Muslim. Niger is ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world by the United Nations Developemnt Program's Human Development index. Only 13.6% of its population is literate (6.6% of women).
The Reformed Church in America partners with the Evangelical Church of Niger. Their focus in the region is to help with community development, theological training, literacy, medicine, and agriculture. The Mission project for this winter is to build a guest house to assist the Evangelical church's programs. It will give them a facility to house people who come in from the countryside for training in evangelism, leadership and other minstry skills. Bruce and Laurie Hawley are the missionaries responsible for the project and will manage the DRC mission group.
More information is available on the Reformed Church website at http://www.rca.org/.
The DRC Group will be in Niamey from February 12 to February 20, 2009.
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Pastor Dave -
ReplyDeleteThanks for setting up this online journal so we can follow the adventures of your team. I'm sure it will be challenging and pray it will be rewarding to you and the people you will be helping.
For those who do not know much about Niger (like me), here is a compact summary about the country, including a context map: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ng.html
Regards,
John
Thanks, John. Lots of good info on that site.
ReplyDeletePS - who is that guy who claims to be John Tobison in the follower's list picture?
That's what I look like when I'm not playing corporate suit!
ReplyDeleteJKT