Lunch With Dr. Augustin & Mari-Helen Hibaile

Margaret Hull writes: (see photos in later Photo Album entry)

I want to tell you about two things: our meal yesterday noon with the Hibaile family, and the church service this morning. Many of you are acquainted with Dr. Augustin Hibaile who took his doctorate at Grace Seminary, and his wife Marie-Helene. They have both visited the States various times. Dr. Hibaile has a ministry, CIDEL, teaching Christian ethics and leadership to government officials, which includes Ministers all the way down to the police officer on the street. He is also a part-time professor at the Bangui University where he teaches ethics and leadership.

Marie-Helene is involved in many things; she is the mother of eight children, the oldest one currently a student at a university in Morocco, down to four-year-old Jeffery. Their firstborn died, and this along with many of life’s experiences has prepared this couple to be counselors to those with family problems.

When we arrived at their house for lunch, Marie-Helene was not yet home. She was teaching a class to a group of women on how to relate to their husbands; her 19 year old daughter had in the meantime prepared the meal.

Dr. Hibaile mentioned that he and Marie-Helene had recently been called to counsel a neighboring couple who were actually in a fist fight. The couple later remarked that they had never received this kind of counsel before, and they subsequently have had three of four sessions with the Hibailes. The husband in this case is a Muslem and he had simply set the furniture outside the house and told his wife to get out.

Augustin said that this week the Prime Minister had stopped him as he was leaving a government building and remarked that Hibaile had not visited him recently. He had seen Augustin going in to visit other government officials but why not him? So they set a time and Hbaile had an hour-long visit with the Prime Minister, who told him that he wants to build this government on Christian principles.

There is still a long ways to go, but at least there has been a beginning. And possibly we have Dr. Hibaile to thank for this.

Sorry, this is already too long, so we’ll talk about the rest some other time.