Requiem for a passport and a parrot
‘This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be.…
Pandemic brings an ‘awakening’
DAKAR, Senegal — There’s bad news and good news for Churches of Christ in this West African, predominantly Muslim nation of 16.3 million souls.
Arnold Dzah.
The bad news: Christians did not meet their goal of 20 congregations in Senegal by 2020. Circumstances — including a global pandemic — intervened, said missionary Arnold Dzah.
The good news: “The COVID-19 pandemic brought along some kind of awakening,” Dzah said, “where people have face-to-face encounters with death.”
Even as churches have implemented social distancing and met partially online, visitors have come, and the 12 Churches of Christ in Senegal have experienced numerous baptisms in the past year, Dzah said, adding that many congregations are badly in need of funds for meeting places.
Several church members lost their jobs in the midst of the pandemic. Congregations in Churches of Christ in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas and individual Christians in the U.S. provided funds to help.
Dzah thanked the White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ in West Monroe, La., for financing a radio program through the One Kingdom ministry. Senegalese Christians produce gospel programs in Dioula, a language popular in the southern Senegal.
Despite the challenges, “we can say that God never abandoned his church,” Dzah said, “since … more souls were added to the congregations.”
