2009: The Year in Review

January
Sarah started teaching/training at MCA and Daniel started an English Club for children as well as an after-school homework help program for some of the kids at MCA. And we continued our language study two days a week.

Rallies and protests against the elected president began led by the mayor of Tana followed by Black Tuesday, January 27, the looting and burning of many shops and buildings, especially those of the president’s dairy business. School was closed for a week because of this!

February
Political unrest continued with a shooting on February 7 at the palace which killed about 30 people and heightened the problems. Ice cream and other dairy products became scarce. Our AIM team met often to pray and to plan in the event that we would have to evacuate the country. We also received a visit from the AIM Crisis Consultant who in the end recommended we stay in place as we were not in any danger, really just inconvenienced. We were glad to stay and continue to work with and encourage our Malagasy friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

March
We enjoyed a conference on Transformational Development by Lois Ooms. During that same week, Karin took over as Unit Leader for AIM Madagascar and March 17 we experienced our first coup as the mayor of Tana overthrew the president of Mada and the political rest continued.

Later that same week, we went to Johannesburg, South Africa for a leadership conference and interpersonal skills training with AIM.

April
We returned from South Africa to continued political unrest but despite continued protests, life began to take on a sense of normalcy again.

We celebrated our first Easter in Madagascar.

Daniel started the Talatamaty Language Center with an English class for adults in addition to the English Club for children.

May
We enjoyed a visit from Terry & Robbie Mason (Daniel’s team leaders when he did TIMO) when they came to Mada for his work as AIM’s Personnel Director.
Sarah organized and ordered the curriculum for the next school year.

June
The school year finished with plays from Aesop’s Fables, written by Daniel. We celebrated our first Malagasy Independence Day, June 26.

We praised God for how far we’d come since leaving the USA one year before.

July
The curriculum began to arrive and Sarah made many trips to the post office in the center of town to pick it up.

We went on vacation to south central Fianarantsoa and took the train to the east coast. We were involved in a horrible train accident on the return trip in which many people were killed and injured. We praised God that we were unscathed.

And we celebrated one year of life and ministry in Madagascar!

August
We traveled with Dudley and CAPRO missionaries, Diti & Sam, to survey the port cities of Mahajanga, Diego/Antsiranana, and Toliara. Time was also spent here in Tana. In all places, we met with pastors and Christian leaders to challenge them to pray about reaching out and doing missions in other parts of Mada and beyond. It was a rich time of partnership building as well as seeing how the Lord is already working in the Malagasy church in this way.

Sarah led a week of training (August 17-21) for the MCA teachers and prepared for another school year.

We traveled to a nearby island where Daniel received training to become a language facilitator for the LAMP (Language Acquisition Made Practical) course and became the language coordinator for the Madagascar unit as well. Sarah took care of the kids from the new TIMO team who were receiving the training for the first time.

September
School began again. In addition to teaching classes in creative writing, Sarah met regularly with the new teachers to help them prepare their lesson plans. She also observed all of the English classes at the school and made suggestions to the teachers on improvements that could be made.
Another term of the Talatamaty Language Center started with two classes and increased enrollment. A new Malagasy teacher was hired to teach one of the classes.

Daniel also led his first course in language acquisition using the LAMP method for some other missionaries.

October
We were blessed to be able to spend a week in France reconnecting with Daniel’s parents. We enjoyed seeing the sights, eating French food, but most of all doing it all TOGETHER!
We also did a lot of planning and preparing for the AIM Annual Team Conference held October 25-30.

November
On November 4, we celebrated 3 years of marriage!

Sarah traveled to the Short Term Forum in Uganda November 9-15. She learned a lot and officially took over her role as ST Coordinator for AIM in Mada.

November 18-19 Sarah took part in an American Embassy event to promote English education in Madagascar. It went really well and she even got her picture in the newspaper! : )

After a long search, we finally purchased a car, a 1993 Land Rover which has had many faithful years of service within the AIM family here in Mada.

December
Sarah welcomed her first Short Termer as the ST Coordinator, a gal from South Korea who will teach music for a year at a music school run by AIM missionaries.

Daniel introduced a new conversation class to the Talatamaty Language Center which will continue in the next term, along with another level of English for a total of 3 English classes!