Tracts and Snakes

Written by Jonathan DietrichDecember 20, 2024

Dear friends and family,

So much has been happening, it is hard to know what to write about. The print shop has been a buzz with printing and folding and stapling and binding and cutting. It seems so many boxes of literature have been shipped out recently. We praise God!

Our translation director, Timothy, has been doing a great job of organizing the process of translating tracts and other documents into various local languages. The translation into the Kera language of the book God’s Answers to Mans Questions is nearing completion. Today, we just printed eight copies to distribute for corrections. Once we input the corrections, we can begin publishing it. Multiple tracts are in the process of being translated and edited.

Melody and the kids, along with the Waterbrook family have enjoyed distributing more tracts and extra clothes to needy people in the community.

Recently, a friend of Frederick’s asked him to translate a document titled “100 Facts about the Sabbath”, originally published in 1885. He paid for the translation and for 1000 tracts to be printed. DTM decided to print 1000 more, to make a total of 2000. We have already received multiple requests for more copes of this tract as people are discovering it. Click on 100 Sabbath Facts to see an English version of this document Online.

We never know where tracts end up or who might receive them. Let me share with you where one of these tracts ended up. Yesterday, Beni drove to another village for outreach activities. Here is his story of one of God’s miracles.

"This man that you see (in the picture below) has been searching and hoping for a very long time to find a document to help him to better understand the Sabbath truth. Before I met this man, I gave a tract on the Sabbath to a child, who went directly to his father and gave him the tract. The father could hardly believe his eyes and questioned his son, ‘Who gave you this?’ The child said, ‘They are still out there by the road.’ The man ran excitedly out of his house toward the road and motioned for us to stop, as we were beginning to drive away. After asking a few questions the man said, ‘It is God who sent you here today so that I might receive this document. I am so happy to have the book Desire of Ages, too. Thank you!’"

For those of you who complain about snail mail and how slow USPS is, consider our situation for some perspective. In order to print tracts, we must have paper and ink. These supplies are always challenging to import into this land-locked country of Chad. Unless you live here for a while, you probably will never understand how frustrating it is sometimes. There are no organized transport services like UPS or FEDEX or USPS. For example, I made an order of 240 boxes of paper back in July of 2022. Within a few months, we received part of that order. Then the remaining part kept getting delayed, time and time again. The merchant kept giving me story after story as excuses. Well, recently, over two years later toward the end of 2024, we are finally getting the rest of our paper order! We just praise God that it is available now, because we thought it was going to be a loss. Here is a recent delivery of 63 boxes of paper from this shipment.

Speaking of lost boxes, do you remember the prayer request we sent out about the $6,000 box of ink that went missing? It was shipped on July 31, 2024. It showed up recently in Chad! We praise the Lord. It was His ink, purchased with His money, to be used in His work. So we left it in God's hands, and He took care of it! Here's a picture of the box when it arrived:

We praise God for His continual protection over us. Just recently one of our staff opened to the door to the cook house and was greeted by a green snake, eager to escape. Apparently it had been trapped in there since the day before. He was able to kill the snake before it did any harm.

Another example of God’s protection happened at the brick pile. We are excited to finally be building a water station to serve the community with clean water from our deep well. (We’ll report on that soon!) The mason was short on some bricks, so I was helping Madou and another man pick up bricks on our property left over from a small construction project. As I carefully lifted a brick, I noticed a small black scorpion, and exclaimed, “A small scorpion!” Just moments later, Madou excitedly cried out, “A big scorpion!” Clearly, he was excited, so I concluded it must have been a really big scorpion. He said, “Get me a weapon!” So while he kept his eye on the brick pile, somebody brought him a very short stick. “That’s not long enough!” We kind of mocked him saying, “That’s plenty long enough to kill a scorpion. Here, give us the stick. We’ll kill it for you.” But he protested and pushed us back with his hand. “Get me a long weapon,” he urged, “a really long one.” So we did, and he started pushing bricks away one at a time. I found a cricket and said, “here it is!” “No, no, it’s not that!” I found a big centipede almost as thick as my small finger under another brick and teased him, “There it is!” Finally, we determined that this was not a scorpion, but a snake. It was a problem of communication in French, which is a difficult language for him.

Now that we knew it was a snake, we were a bit more careful and serious. “What kind of a snake was it?” I asked. “A bad kind,” was the response in simple French. “What color was the snake?”, I asked, trying to glean a little more information. “A bad color.” “How long was it?” “A bad length.” And so we continued to tease him as we looked for the snake.

Suddenly, Madou shouted as he moved a brick, “There it is!” And sure enough, there it was. The biggest viper I can remember seeing since moving to Chad. It was not a huge snake, but big for that kind of viper. Now, it all made perfect sense. Madou used his long weapon to pin it down. Then we got two more long weapons and finished killing the snake.

Now, I said to Madou, “That IS a bad snake! That IS a bad color! That IS a bad length! It even smells bad!”
And we thanked our dear Lord for protecting Madou, whose hand had been literally centimeters from the deadly snake.

Before we close this collection of news, I wanted to share one more encouraging story. A nomad girl came in with severely infected teeth. In fact, the infection was so bad it spread to her bones and skin on her cheek. She has a long road of recovery ahead of her. Somebody gave her a solar audio player with Scriptures in her language. It is touching to see her listening to Scriptures as she lies for hours in her hospital bed.

We just received a donation sufficient to purchase around 120 of these players! We are so grateful for this and are looking forward to getting them eventually.

Stay tuned for a report from our literature team who just returned from a trip to the eastern part of the country.

Until then, remain faithful to Jesus, because He is returning soon! Let us be faithfully working for Him until He comes!

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In His service,
Jonathan, Melody, Gideon, Liliana, and Eliora Dietrich