The Justice System in Chad

The Justice System in Chad

It was a beautiful sabbath day. All the volunteers came over for a potluck lunch after church. It is the only day of the week that we don't have a guard on the premisses. So this day one of the volunteers from Bendalay brought the new motorcycle she has been using here. She left it outside the gate because there was no one around to unlock the front gate. No one thought anything of it because they do it all the time. After lunch a few of us went down the road about five miles to do what we call a branch sabbath school. It is mainly children that gather under a mango tree to listen to a short bible story and sing a few songs but our hope is that the attendance will continue to grow and maybe one day we can put up another one day church.

It wasn't until everyone got back that this volunteer went to get her motorcycle but it wasn't there. She came to our house to ask if one of us moved it but there was no one. Everyone goes out looking for it. I get on the phone with our normal guard to tell him to keep his eyes open for it and to tell his friends too and we will give a reward. After about an hour of looking and walking down the road asking people we have nothing. We all gather together in our living room and we decide that we need to pray about it and give it to Him. All of this is all God's stuff anyways.

Someone called Fredrick, this is one of the locals that do a lot of our translating. The guy that called Fredrick told him that he knew where the motorcycle was. He saw it out in the bush somewhere and he also saw who took it. Jamie and some of the other guys go out to look for it and sure enough there it was. Someone was stashing it until they could come back and get it. The guy had cut a lot of the wires already so it was not drivable but they pushed it all the way back. We were so amazed that we got it back. God is good! We had a short prayer to thank God for His never ending love and His concern even about the little things. We knew who took it and decided to wait until morning to talk to the police. Oh and by the way, we figured out that this was taken between 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm in broad day light. Unbelievable!

When Jamie went with Fredrick to report the stolen motorcycle they were told that there was nothing they could do because they know that kid and he steals all the time but he does not have any money so there wasn't much they could do. And that was that! Finished! Later Jamie was told that the best thing we can do is get a bunch of big guys together and go to the guys house and beat him up. That is the justice system here. Crazy!!!

The very next day Jamie was called into the justice office because there was a guy that wanted money from Jamie for bringing gravel to the job sight. Now I'm sure you are thinking that Jamie should pay someone if they brought gravel and we think so too if Jamie had asked for it. This guy brought three loads without being asked. Jamie told him to come and get it because he was not going to pay for it. We don't need it and didn't order it. This guy just wanted money. He had been asking Jamie for the money for the past two weeks and even brought a big guy overt to talk to Jamie to intimidate him but Jamie never did budge so then they went to the police. Jamie ended up having to pay for it he was given no choice. What is wrong here? It is things like this that makes you crazy. And to make us even more crazy this same guy asked Jamie if he could bring him a truck load of sand. Jamie just looked at him like are you crazy? No!



Love,
Tammy