(a recent prayer letter received from Phil Long, Madagascar)

To quote the wise theologian Yogi Berra, “It’s like deja-vu all over again.,” that’s right, we are under full lock down again. Last time we reported, we had just come out of a six-week full lock down where we had several outreach opportunities that sped up our timeline for a church launch by about three months. We locked on a place to begin meeting and within three weeks we outgrew it and had to find something bigger. The Lord led us to a decent sized private school that said we could use their facilities, and things really began to take off. Within a few weeks we were preaching to close to 40 adults. We also had a number of kids coming and not wanting to miss an opportunity to invest into their lives, Vala and I, along with our co-workers, began developing a kids ministry. Once we started, every week we saw more kids come. This was awesome, but we were actually starting to get a bit nervous because with too many kids, it would be impossible to maintain the social distancing requirements. We ended up dividing the kids into three groups so we could comply with the regulations. One of our national co-workers suggested giving the kids “cahiers” (pronounced “Kah-yay”) or notebooks, just like the ones they take when they go to school. Honestly, I wasn’t very excited about the idea and I didn’t think the kids would go for it either, but boy was I wrong. They loved their notebooks! We asked them to write their names in them and then their memory verse. They also pasted the words of the new songs we are teaching them into their cahiers. Through this process we discovered that some of the kiddos don’t get to go to school and so they cannot read and write. We decided we would get pictures of the stories to paste inside their books so that way, after they learned the story at church, they could then go home and tell their family and friends. However, before we could start putting visual aids in their notebooks, it was announced that due to the increase in COVID-19 cases here in Madagascar, everything was completely locked down again.

Before the lock down, I was able to talk to several missionaries and local pastors about their experience with tools like Facebook Live, and the response I received was that because people here in Madagascar cannot afford the data it takes to watch on-line, many people were not able to watch the services. So when we got word another full lock down was coming, I suggested to our co-workers that we go “old school” and try to find a radio spot because most people have a radio and it would cost them nothing to listen. To our surprise, we were able to get a 30-minute radio slot on Sunday mornings at 10 am for only 30,000 Ariary. Now, I know when you see 30,000 anything, you automatically think, “Wow, that is a lot!” but 30,000 Ariary is exactly $7.76 for a 30-minute radio slot, so we jumped on the opportunity. With the help of Sarah, Kezia and Rebecca, who you met in the last update, we developed and recorded three weeks worth of programming. Each week we have ten minutes of Bible time for the kids at the front of the broadcast and 20 minutes of preaching for the family. Momma always said I had a face for radio; guess she was right. Anyway, we made sure everyone in our church knew the station and what time to tune in and we had our first show last Sunday. At this point, I’m not sure when we will be able to begin meeting as a church again, but we hope and pray it will be soon. So thank you for all of your prayers and support as we weather the pandemic here in Madagascar, and please remember, we are also praying for you.

Phil & Vala Long