I love that bit in Mark just after the triumphal entry, when Jesus went to the temple and "looked around at everything" and then went home. He left the temple cleansing till the next day - biblical precedent for reconnaissance, I think. A couple weeks ago Keith and Jim and I drove up into Mali, not to do ministry, but just to have a look around. We spent two days on the bumpy bush tracks and we passed hundreds of settlements, many of them Fulani. Back down into Burkina Faso and it was the same story - lots of huts, lots of goats, lots of Fulani. When we got home to Djibo I looked at a map of West Africa and pinpointed the area we had covered. Pinpointed is the right word, because our epic voyage was just a tiny circuit in one miniscule corner of Mali. It was then that the scale of the task hit me. These areas are vast, and there are a lot of people living in them (although they are still some way from introducing congestion charges). Djibo is in the far north of Burkina Faso, but even between Djibo and the border there are hundreds of scattered camps. They don't know the good news of Christ because no one has told them yet. How can we ever hope to visit them all?

Radio waves never cease to amaze me. We camped in the middle of the desert in Mali and with my tiny hand-held radio I listened to a crystal-clear news-story about that chap who coughed strategically through an episode of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." As things stand, you can listen to English and French in the desert but not Fulfulde. Wouldn't it be great, though, if the Fulani in these places were able to receive news every day in their own language? Even better if they received the news about Christ as well. In most of the settlements we have been to, there is at least one person with a radio. If programmes were broadcast in Fulfulde, from Djibo say, they would be sure to find a wide audience.

This is more than a dream. We have just visited Remy Moret, a Swiss missionary who used to live in Djibo. For a long time he has had a vision for Christian radio. He wants the churches and missions in Djibo to come together and put an FM station in the town, which could reach out to the settlements in the north. We have started tentatively to plan for this.

Working together with development agencies and local people, we would (si Alla jabbi) broadcast programmes on health, education and cattle-farming. We would have songs and Bible readings in Fulfulde and testimonies of local Fulani Christians. We would relay news from Ouagadougou in Fulfulde. We would have updates on the price of grain in various towns, and weather reports ("Turned out hot again..."). It would be the first Christian radio station in the north of Burkina Faso, and its impact would be very significant. We would of course carry on visiting the settlements personally, but with greater effectiveness, and those settlements we don't get to visit would nonetheless be able to hear the gospel in a way they can understand.

Please pray with us about this radio project. We already have the support of local pastors and missionaries and permission from the authorities in Djibo. I think the two main items to lay before God now are the finance (about £7000 set-up plus £50 a month running costs) and the personnel (radio requires a team, not an individual, and preferably some Fulani in there). I'm excited about the project, and will keep you in touch with how it progresses.

Did I mention that I'm going home for Easter? I will be in England between 17 April and 1 June.

Love as ever to you and your families. Alla beydu jam.

Steve