“Reunited on the ashes of their homes.” With these vivid words, a Chadian church leader told Barnabas Aid what happened to people who scattered and fled after a terror attack on seven villages in the Leo Chiefdom. When they later made their way back to their home villages, they found each other but their houses were gone. The terrorists had set fire to hundreds of homes, many grain stores and five church buildings. They also killed 50 villagers and wounded many more.
Will you help desperate Christians in Chad, afflicted by floods and by terrorist violence?
Soon another blow fell on this grieving and desolate community, as the heaviest rains for 32 years brought devastating floods. Some homes that had survived the terrorists were destroyed by the extreme weather, which also drowned cattle and obliterated growing crops.
“The population needs food”
“At this moment,” wrote the Chadian church leader to us on Thursday (13 October), “people move from one village to another in the area by canoe as the level of water in some areas is up to the chest of a tall adult person. The population needs food …”
Mud houses collapsed in the floods, leaving nothing but their straw roofs. Those same straw roofs would have burnt easily in a terrorist attack
Local churches in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, have given what they could for their suffering brothers and sisters. Their gift brought encouragement but hardly began to meet the scale of the need.
They asked for “more prayers to survive”
Nevertheless “people expressed their gratitude for prayers that saved them and asked for more prayers to survive”.
The brick walls of this church in Leo Chiefdom survived when the terrorists set fire to it, but the thatched roof has vanished
We hope, by God’s grace and your gifts and prayers, to feed 4,000 Christian families who have been made homeless and destitute, whether by floods or by terrorists, that is, around 25,000 people.
50 kg of maize for one family costs £22 ($24; €24).
Will you feed a Christian family in Chad who have lost everything?
Father God,
Our strong deliverer,
Please guard and keep
Our brothers and sisters in Chad.
Protect them from those
Who seek to do them harm.
Provide for them
And all who have lost homes and livelihoods
In this year’s floods and violence.
We pray in Jesus’ Name.
Amen
