Ergatai

Johnson October 2009 Prayer Letter

Florence — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:43:25 +0000

October is our last full month in Mahadaga before we start our journey back to our home base in Pennsylvania for our first home assignment. There is so little time left and so much to do! We appreciate your continued prayers as we wrap things up here and get ready to go home for some refreshment, relaxation, rest and renewal. The biggest challenge in front of us is the smooth transition of all the necessary leadership tasks at the Center as Dale steps out of the Director role for a few months. We are grateful for our missionary colleagues who are here to fill in the gap while we are gone, but it is still daunting to figure out how to leave things in such a way that we are not leaving the with more work and headache than is necessary. Pray for them as you pray for us, that they will have the strength to carry the extra load on our behalf in addition to their usual responsibilities.

Follow the link below to read our October 2009 prayer letter and see the rest of our prayer requests.

Johnson October 2009 Prayer Letter

We are in the process of putting up a new website/blog. It is not finished yet, so I will save the “unveiling” for another time, but wanted to let you know that it is coming so that you can keep an eye out for it. I am hoping that this new site will allow us to share more “every day” stories with you in blog format now that we have internet here to be able to do that. Also, if you tried to access our quarterly newsletter a few weeks ago and were having trouble with a broken link, we apologize for the inconvenience. In the process of setting up the new site, we accidentally pulled down the old one. The old site is back up now (as you should know if you are able to access the prayer letter linked to this email) and we plan to continue using it until we have the new site ready to put into production.

Thanks for your patience and your perseverance!

Love,

Dale, Florence, Caleb & Joel

Johnson Fall 2009 Newsletter

Florence — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:32:26 +0000

Believe it or not, this is our last quarterly newsletter before the end of our first term here in Burkina Faso. Though the last 2.5 years have not always been easy, we are blessed to be able to leave this first term behind us on a positive note. We are, however, very much looking forward to some rest and refreshment during our time home, as well as a chance to see you, our family, friends and supporters. We have really missed you! In our next quarterly newsletter we hope to include an itinerary for our time home. If we happen to be near you at any point, don’t hesitate to contact us so that we can catch up with you! Of course we want to share our ministry with you – it’s too much a part of our lives for us not to – but we also want to hear about you and how you have been doing over the past couple of years.

We also want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of you who have supported us financially during this first term. We are so blessed to be able to come to the end of this term still at 100% support! It has been a comfort not to have financial concerns be an added burden on our ministry. The Lord always provides! And we appreciate that you have been His willing instruments.

So without further ado, follow the link below to read our Fall 2009 Quarterly newsletter.

Johnson Fall 2009 Newsletter

Love,

Dale, Florence, Caleb & Joel

Johnson September 2009 Prayer Letter

Florence — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:04:29 +0000

You may have already run into us online and know that we now have internet in Mahadaga. But in case you haven’t, WE HAVE INTERNET IN MAHADAGA! We’re so excited to be able to stay in touch with our loved ones around the world on a much more frequent (and less costly) basis. We hope that we will be able to better keep you informed of the work we’re doing here and the ministries we are involved with here in Mahadaga, as well as Burkina Faso in general. And now you can do the same for us as well. It’s easier than ever to keep us posted on how things are going for you: we’re on Facebook, Skype and email, so drop us a line from time to time!

In the meantime, take a quick minute to catch up on our latest prayer letter located at the link below:

Johnson September 2009 Prayer Letter

The beginning of the school year at the CAH is fast approaching, and Francoise is on her way back from furlough this week. Our own furlough is just around the corner as well, so keep your eyes and ears open for more information about that in the near future.

Love,

Dale, Florence, Caleb & Joel

P.S. We’re online in Mahadaga!!! Because of the switch, we are no longer using the simbf.uuplus.com email address, so please delete it from your address books. Do continue to use johnson@ergatai.com as our primary email address. With our new service, we are no longer limited by time or size in our ability to send and receive emails, so stay in touch!

Johnson August 2009 Prayer Letter

Florence — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:49:42 +0000

We hope you are all doing well and enjoying your summer. We’ve been having a pretty busy summer with the return of the Walsh family and the visit from our home church missions team. We recently participated in the SIM Burkina Faso prayer conference and visited another mission station in Piela, Burkina Faso.

We have been looking forward to a much needed vacation coming up in mid-August, but the lack of reliable technology seems to be throwing a wrench in our plans. It looks like we’re going to have to reschedule, which is a bit disappointing, but I think will work out for the best in the end. In the meantime, we’ll have to try and find other ways to take a break. We are so grateful that our furlough is coming up soon. We are finding our groove in our ministry here in Burkina, but we are feeling tired as we near the 3-year mark since left our home and went to language school. Pray with us that we can hang in there for the final push and finish this term off well.

As mentioned earlier, we’ve been having some difficulties accessing our email and staying in touch the last few weeks, so if you haven’t heard from us, don’t panic. We are working on the problem and are hoping to have a solution in place in the next week or so. As frustrating as it has been to be unable to communicate with the “outside world” easily, we’re reminded of how much easier we have it now than those who came before us! Much like camping, it’s good to “rough it” from time to time, but we’ll be glad when we’re back online.

In the meantime, you can try and catch up with a little news by reading our prayer letter which you can access by following the link below:

Johnson August 2009 Prayer Letter

God bless you all and keep you throughout your summer activities!

Love,

Dale, Florence, Caleb & Joel

Johnson Newsletter - Summer 2009

Florence — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:39:01 +0000

Drawing near the end of our first term here in Burkina Faso, we find ourselves missing you, our family and friends, more and more. Fortunately, many of you have been wonderfully encouraging and faithful in reading our letters and replying to some of them. We thank you so much for taking the time to read these longer newsletters every few months. It’s a great chance for us to report back to you about everything going on here, on the other side of the world.

But so much changes between each newsletter. Your lives don’t slow down, and neither do ours! One of the major changes coming up (hopefully) for us is the arrival of a satellite internet system. With that in place, we hope to be able to use email more and also great tools like Facebook in order to keep in touch with you. Hopefully we can keep in touch more often.

Well, we hope that this short newsletter will be a blessing to you, and that it will help you know how to pray for us. To see the newsletter, please click on the link below:

Johnson Summer 2009 Newsletter

Thanks!

Dale, Florence, Caleb, and Joel

WALSH JOURNEY TOGETHER ~ JUNE 2009

Matt — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:29:29 +0000

Dear Family & Friends,

We are preparing to head back to Burkina in a couple of days (June 22nd). We had a great time visiting with many of you and we are sorry that we were unable to see all of you. We thank God for you and all the support and encouragement that you have provided. Here is our June newsletter for your enjoyment. Please pray as we transition back into life in Burkina.

Thanks,
Matt, Julie, Thomas & Tessa

JUNE NEWSLETTER

Johnson June 2009 Prayer Letter

Florence — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:22:49 +0000

It’s been a fairly quiet month, though quiet doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been busy. It does mean that we never got around to taking any pictures, though! We realized this as we went looking for a picture to include on our prayer letter like we usually do and saw that there were none. So we decided to go back in time for this month’s picture, which, of course, brought on a lot of reminiscing. In some ways it seems like time has crawled, and in other ways it has flown. Regardless of which it is, though, crawling or flying, it has been a good exercise in recognizing and remembering God’s faithfulness. Things may not always have been easy or good and we don’t always understand why they happen, but the fact that we are here today, still standing, is a testimony already of God’s faithfulness. We remember the times when we thought we couldn’t take another minute, another step or another stressor without falling apart - some days still have a little taste of that in them. But we’re still here and we’re still hole. God is not good because He gives us all roses and candies. He’s good because He really, truly sustains us. We are so profoundly grateful for that! We are confident that even when we do fall apart, He puts us back together. We hope you know that, too!

Below is the link to our June prayer letter. One prayer request that didn’t make it into the letter involves some personnel issues Dale has been dealing with at the CAH recently. Specifically, Dale and his co-director are suspecting one of the other members of the leadership team of some dishonest behavior and are trying to decide how to best deal with the situation. Of course we ask that you pray for wisdom in knowing how to proceed, but more importantly we ask you to pray for this individual. Whether he has a change of heart right away or some day in the future, it’s his soul we are most concerned about. Sometimes, it seems, it’s easier to believe in physical miracles (like healings) than in spirtiual ones.

Johnson June 2009 Prayer Letter

We trust you are all enjoying spring in full bloom. We miss spring and are looking forward to seeing it next year!

Love,

Dale, Florence, Caleb and Joel

Johnson May 2009 Prayer Letter

Florence — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:36:26 +0000

April showers bring May flowers…the saying seems to hold true even here! We haven’t had as much rain as we’ve heard you all have been having back home, but we’ve had enough to see a few flowers start to bloom. It helps make the sticky weather a little more bearable when I can look out my kitchen window and see the big orange blossoms growing on the tree just outside. This past week we had 3 rains in one week, 2 of which were real, bonafide thunderstorms. As much as we look forward to the rainy season to bring us a break in the hot, sticky weather and make it easier to sleep at night, we’re reminded that there are different reasons we don’t sleep during rainy season - our boys are not so good at sleeping through the night when there’s thunder and lightning flashing around them, or when the rain beats very loudly on the tin roof of our house, or when the wind howls. I guess lack of sleep is just part of a parents’ life - for a little while anyway!:0)

The month of May will probably be one of the “quietest” we’ve had since arriving in Burkina. Our mission station in Mahadaga is almost empty, though we still have the occasional guest popping through. It reminds us that even though Mahadaga once felt like the end of the world, it’s become much less so lately. We certainly don’t feel alone and we probably wouldn’t have all that much time to think about it even if we did. It reminds us, too, that the disciplines of a simple life are just that - disciplines!

Our ministry partners, the Walsh family, will return from furlough at the end of June. Looking forward to the next several months, we are realizing that even though our own furlough is still several months away, the time will fly. We are already beginning to make preparations and are looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible while we’re home. We should arrive in the US sometime in December and are expecting to return to Burkina in July of 2010.

Thank you for your faithful prayers throughout this first term and in the months we have left to finish it up!

To view our May Prayer letter, click on the link below:

Johnson May 2009 Prayer Letter

Love,

Dale, Florence, Caleb and Joel

Johnson Winter 2009 Quarterly Newsletter

Florence — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:17:08 +0000

Greetings from very, very hot Burkina Faso! It’s probably just a bad case of “selective amnesia”, but we really don’t remember it being this hot last year! Regardless, we’re surviving the heat (though Caleb has a really bad case of heat rash) and taking it a day at a time, praying for rain as we go along.

Our ministry partners, Matt and Julie Walsh, left on a 4-month furlough in early March. Our short-term missionary friends, Jason and Shannon Brink and our semi-retired missionary colleague Betty Eichhorst are all at the end of their terms and are flying back to Canada this week. So, we’ll be by ourselves for the next couple of months, except for Liz Barr, who agreed to come help cover some of the administrative load during the Walsh family’s absence. Praise God for her willigness to serve!

We hope you all had a special Easter celebration this year. Dale was asked to preach the Easter sermon at our church this year, and we reflected on the fact that, despite how long ago the story of Christ’s resurrection took place, it is still a story that is in process…a story that is very relevant and should have much impact on our lives today. After all, if the point of Christ’s death on the cross was that the necessary debt for our sins was paid, then it’s His resurrection that makes it possible for Him to offer us salvation (having conquered death) and for us to accept His gift (knowing that He’s God and NOT just another good man). So today the story is far from over…the plot thickens as each of us must make a choice whether to claim the promise of the resurrection or to try and find our own way. And one day the clock WILL run out and the story of the resurrection WILL end. We hope and pray for a “happy ending” to this story for every single one of you.

We’ve just posted our first quarter 2009 newsletter on our website and we’d love for you to take a minute to catch up a little bit on our lives here in Burkina the last few months. Click here to read it.

God bless!

Dale, Florence, Caleb and Joel Johnson

Johnson April 2009 Prayer Letter

Florence — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:09:57 +0000

April showers bring May flowers…or so the saying goes. Well, it hasn’t exactly been raining a lot yet, but we have had a couple of showers in the last month or so, including one on Easter Sunday. That makes it 2 years running that it rains on Easter. Back home we think of Easter Sunday as a sunny, warm day filled with promise. Here, the overcast, rainy day has the same effect. It makes me think of the promise of new life we have been given, though it’ll be some time yet before the dry season is over and we see the cycle of new life begin again here.

Despite the hot, dry weather, we are doing well. We’re as busy as ever, of course, but as I think back on where we were last year, I am so grateful that the Lord has carried us through to this point. It’s hot, sticky, and unbearable sometimes, but my heart sings of God’s faithfulness all the same, knowing that He will carry me through each hardship…even the miserable weather!

Click here to view our April prayer letter. Please take a moment to read it and pray for us this month, that we’d continue to be faithful and to persevere in the work God has laid before us. The rest of our ministry partners on the station, Jason and Shannon Brink and Betty Eichhorst, are on their way home now, so there are much fewer of us on the station for the next 2 months.

We pray God’s blessing on you!

Dale, Florence, Caleb and Joel