MARCH 28, 2007

Dear friends,

Excuse us for such a long delay in transmitting our news to you. Many activities and projects have been carried out since our last news letter. The needs in Sénégal are great, and since we set to work, we are being called upon more and more by different churches and ministries. Gaétan has needed to revise his priorities in order to concentrate on what is most important.

• From December 26th to 29th, we held our second national training conference for evangelism club and Sunday school instructors.

This was both a time of spiritual refreshing and teaching for almost 70 instructors who came from all over the country.

Since January, we have held twelve evenings of evangelism in various regions. We went close to the border of Guinée, to a village where we held two evenings with the goal of planting a church. The Sunday morning, 64 adults participated in the first church service, held in the open air.

Since then, people from other villages have joined with this young church and are asking us to also go and evangelize their villages. This whole region of Sénégal is the most open but the least evangelized, mainly because of its great distance from the capital. We also evangelized the village of Khombolem, not far from This, with the goal of planting a church there.

Two teams came in February, one from Moncton, supervised by our colleagues from Dakar, and the other from St-Hyacinthe, that we had the pleasure of supervising. We organized 10 evenings of evangelism with these teams, and 10 days of medical clinics in different places. About 1500 patients were able to receive care.

This was an intense month that allowed the different churches involved to have an important impact on their communities. Two clinic days took place at the Kaolack school, which allowed us at the same time to make the school known. We also started construction with the team from St-Hyacinthe with the goal of enlarging the Thies church.

Four Operation Christmas Child containers arrived in Sénégal at the end of January. We are presently at the height of the distribution campaign with the involved churches and ministries.

More than 40,000 gifts must be distributed before the end of April during different events where the gospel is presented to the parents and children.

The weekend of March 16-18, we started the construction of a building for the Kaffrine church. Thanks to the participation of a group of students from Dakar Christian Academy, we were able to dig and pour the foundation. About 80 students were involved in the construction, making benches and bricks, evangelising the children of Kaffrine and the surrounding villages, and evangelism evenings.

Presently, the masons have to finish the building. We will return there during a coming weekend, again with a group of students, to install the roof. The goal of this project is to open a new work in this town where there is presently no evangelical church.

Gaétan was at Tambacounda for a seminar on the foundations of the Christian life last weekend. This church, after years of difficulties, is in the process of coming back to life. About 40 Christians attended the meetings the three evenings, and about 100 people were at the Sunday morning service. From Tambacounda, he took advantage of the opportunity to return to Kolda to check on the progress of the construction work on the parsonage. The roof is ready to be installed, so it will be essential to make the next visit to Kolda soon.

We are already preparing for the second phase of construction of the Kaolack school. We need to add new classes before the start of the next school year, to allow for the substantial increase expected in the number of students. We are in the process of making the bricks and expect to start the foundation in April. We are seeking the necessary funds. we need all possible help for this. If you are interested in helping us, you can send your contribution directly to the PAOC or through your local church, designated to us, with the memo, “Kaolack School Project.”

The family is well and we are preparing to go to Quebec at the end of June so rest a bit and tour the churches. As you have no doubt noticed, the needs are great compared to the activities we have carried out, and largely exceed what we can accomplish

Prayer requests:

PRAY FOR ...

• Wisdom to discern priorities for where we should be involved.

• The PAOC missionaries’ retreat April 5-8, that it will be a time of refreshing.

• The development of new works at Khombole, Ibel et Kaffrine.

• The next meeting of the national church April 11, where the pastors will have to find solutions to a serious problem concerning the main church.

• For the work of God in Sénégal, the missionaries and the national pastors. We must keep up a constant and intense spiritual battle to see things move forward.

• The necessary funds for the construction of the second phase of the Kaolack school within the planned time.

• The success of the Operation Christmas Child distributions. That God touches hearts and opens doors to plant new ministries.

We wish you a beautiful spring and thank you again for your faithfulness,

Gaétan and Jacinthe Gaucher