We are very pleased to be hosting a house concert to benefit FAFED orphanage in Chad, Africa. The event will take place in our home on February 20th @7pm for a suggested donation of $10 per person. All proceeds from this event will go directly to the FAFED orphanage.
The acronym FAFED is french and it stands for Fondation d’amour pour la Formation d’enfants en Détresse. I don’t speak french, but my best guess at a loose translation would be Foundation Of Love For The Building Up Of Children In Distress. If you speak french please feel free to publicly rebuke and correct any errors in my translation…in love, of course.
The FAFED orphanage is in N’Djamena, Chad. We came to be aware of this great place through our missionary friends who are home on furlough. The man who runs the orphanage is a local pastor who was convicted several years ago at the reading of Isaiah 58:7, “…to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house”. I won’t attempt to put into words what we’ve 
learned about this man and the FAFED organization, because any description of mine would fall far short of the truly wonderful stories I have heard. Stories of radical faith in God to provide for the needs of more than fifty troubled and homeless children. And, stories of children radically changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. I will provide a link to a blog 
written by our friends that mentions the orphanage, but you should make plans to attend and hear our friends’ first hand account of what God is doing in this part of the world. Let their testimonies “encourage” and “stir” you “to love (verb) and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). Until then, here is the link: http://sharethewell.net/2014/05/03/pool-party-2/
Also, here is a link to an article written about FAFED by UN Volunteers who visited in 2009: http://www.unv.org/en/what-we-do/thematic-areas/civil-society/doc/an-afternoon-well-spent/print.html
So, who will be performing at this house concert? Well, us…and some friends. That’s right, we will be performing our Flat Earth Band music, and some friends of ours will be performing original songs they have written and accumulated over recent years. For those of you who have listened to our Ready For Love recording or attended our Practice In The Park events, you can expect to hear new renditions of all that stuff plus a handful of new songs. You can also expect to see some of our children joining in on many of the songs as we begin to transition toward a family band. We’ve been practicing really hard and look forward to sharing these songs with you. We are also looking forward to hearing Isaiah and Olivia again. This talented young couple have a gift for performing their intensely biblical songs with a unique and honest passion and emotion not often heard. Also, we will be including some of our favorite songs for worship, so be sure to warm up your vocal chords before you arrive.
Finally, I will leave you with this. When I first set out to make music I sought to put some guiding principles into a mission statement and a mantra. As a result, on the original drafting of the website I included this on the “About” page:
Flat Earth Band is about music, good news, and community. It is a vision for reaching out to the whole earth with the gospel of Jesus Christ through music and other art forms.
Those words can still be found on the website and other places where our music can be found. At the start there was nothing. We hadn’t yet done anything with music or art. Since then, we’ve plodded along as the Flat Earth Band, attempting 
with mixed results to create opportunities to share the gospel through our music. We’ve also been blessed to be able to encourage gospel community by hosting some other great and like minded artists in our home. But with this event, I feel as though I am truly seeing a culmination of those original guiding principles. We are excited at the opportunity to share our songs with a growing community of friends. And, we are excited that the gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ in a far off part of the world will be blessed. Hope to see you there!
Sincerely,
FEB