Marc Mailloux's Blog

“Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my territory!’”  I Chronicles 4:10

Dear friends,

        The immigration official at the St Martin airport flipped impatiently through the pages of my well-worn passport and complained that there was no more blank space for him to stamp our arrival date.  I didn’t know what to tell him save that my passport would expire in September so I would soon have a new one.  He grumbled something and perfunctorily mashed his stamp down adding more blue ink to an already illegible page.    We may not have prayed like Jabez, but the Lord has certainly enlarged our territory and made us familiar veterans of numerous airports of the French-speaking world.

       Since we last wrote following the graduation of our group of students in Martinique in March, we’ve made a teaching trip (Apologetics/Islam) to St. Martin, and a couple of mission conferences in Kingsport, Tn. and Baltimore, Md.  At the end of April, I accompanied Dr. Jean Petit on a trip to Montreal for our S.  Florida Haitian Bible school.  Most recently, Aline and I went on an exploratory excursion to French Guyana (May 16-21) where we hope to start a new teaching program in September. 

        It’s an all day journey to French Guyana including ten hours on Air France’s flight #3943 from Miami to Cayenne, with stops in Port-au-Prince (Haiti); Point-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe); and Fort-de-France (Martinique).  The French overseas “départment” in S. America—with its notorious “Devil’s Island”—was once used as a penal colony and housed the famous Captain Louis Dreyfus, but also criminal elements the government was eager to keep away from the “métropole”.  It was made famous by the publication (1969) of Henri Charrière’s semi-historical memoirs called “Papillon” (butterfly) of which Hollywood made a movie starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

     There are around 200,000 people in “Guyane,” called  “l’enfer vert” (green hell) by the French for its virtually impenetrable tropical rainforest and legions of pesky, disease-carrying mosquitoes.   More than half are descendants of the slaves brought over from Africa in the 18^th century; 12% are metropolitan French, 5% Antilleans from Guadeloupe and Martinique, and about 30% foreigners, including Haitians, Brazilians, and Hmong from Laos.    The local economy—largely dependent on subsidies from Paris—is based mostly on fishing, a bit of gold-mining, and timber.  Unemployment hovers around 30%.    The Guiana Space center at Kourou (30 miles up the coast from Cayenne) which serves as the launch base for the European space program employs 1700 people and receives hundreds of European scientists who come to work on the rockets and high-tech satellites.  We’re eagerly anticipating the prospect of showing them apologetic films on intelligent design, creationism etc.    

Like many of the former French colonies, F. Guyana has a rather dynamic church (especially in comparison to metropolitan French standards), with many young believers, but a woefully inadequate teaching program.  In fact the “Guyanais”, as they are called, are bereft of Bible schools or any institution to train their teaching elders.  Hence their eagerness to learn about our program.                   

          Our man in French Guyana is Jean-Michel Bonnet, an electrician by trade and  president of the local GBU (French Inter-Varsity) an acquaintance of our colleague and co-worker Gordon Woolard.  We stayed with him and his wife Malou and their two children  at their home in Kourou.  He surprised me on Saturday night with the news that I’d be preaching on Sunday morning at the church in Iracoubo, Malou’s home town. Fortunately we’ve learned to be like scouts: always ready.     We’ll need Jean-Michel’s help as coordinator, promoting the program, reserving the classroom space, contacting the students, collecting the homework assignments etc.   

      The goal of this first trip was to introduce ourselves to some of the church leaders and assess the situation to see if a teaching program there would even be feasible. The pastors of Cayenne received us on Monday night at their monthly meeting and enthusiastically applauded our proposition.  Still, it’s a major decision over which we have prayed much as it entails a significant expenditure of time and resources.  But even the relatively expensive flights from Miami are a bargain compared to what it would cost to send a Guyanais  Christian to a Bible school in Europe or  America  whence most never return.  Hence the rationale for bringing the training directly to them.

           We don’t know if there will be enough interested in doing biblical Hebrew or Greek to justify Aline’s ticket.   But it looks as if I’ll be returning there on a fairly regular basis. There may still be a few mosquitoes—the “flying infected syringes” as one put it graphically—that didn’t get a piece of me yet.  A small price to pay for the edification of the Kingdom.

                                                                                                                                      In His service,

                                                                                                                                      Marc

 Praise:

1-For encouraging, inspirational visits to mission-minded churches in Tennessee and Maryland.

2-For the Lord’s provision and protection for the Guyana trip.

3-For the grace of being able to function on 4-5 hours sleep/night.

Prayer:

1-For good stewardship with the Lord’s resources/ provision for the teaching programs in F. Guyana

2-For the spiritual and professional welfare of our son Calix, still  without a pilot’s job.

3-For our summer travels including another week of teaching apologetics in St. Martin (June 30—July4); and replacing a French pastor colleague in Marseille July 24-Aug.18