The Big Game

I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day and was telling her about a seminar we just attended on the Values of Traditional West African Culture.  She made a comment that stuck with me at the end – she said “I like when you tell me this because I keep asking myself what you guys have really been doing these last three months.”

That really hit me.  I realized that many people don’t understand what we’ve been doing these last few months and I thought it would be good to let people know.  Many of you are supporting us financially and want to let you know what God has been doing with that money.

As I thought about this, the first thing that came to mind was my high school basketball season.  Two months before our first game, we would get together for captains practice, then daily regular practices to be able to learn how to work together as a team, get (back) into shape, learn our drills and plays, and prepare for the first game.  When we went into the first game and were able to successfully work together, we never thought “man, why did we practice for two months?”, we realized that it took those two months of practice to prepare for the real thing.  It’s hard, but necessary.

It’s the same with what we’ve been doing the last few months.  We’ve been preparing ourselves in every way for the work we’ll be doing the next year and half.  Just a few things we’ve been up to:

•    Language training – 2 hours a day with a local college student here
•    Team building – getting to know our ‘support system’ and team members.  Learning how to work together and to build off each other’s ministries and the ministries of the former journeyrs
•    Self-care- we’ve learned a LOT about culture shock and just overload and how to take care of ourselves on the mission field.  Burnout is very common, so making sure we know how to deal with stress is key
•    Relationship building – with people on the campus we live on, families that other journeyer’s have stayed with, youth group/young adult group participation, and even relationships with women in the market (I have a lady I like to buy green onions and parsley from who wants me to take her back with me to the states, or a potato guy that always tells me that potatoes are 600CFA – way too much- but that he’ll give them to ME for 500CFA – the actual price).
•    Seminars – we’ve been able to do two seminars one on “Creation Care in West Africa” and one on “Values of Traditional West African Culture” bring us into a deeper understanding of Christianity in the context of West Africa.
•    Most importantly – culture training.  We’ve realized that if we would have just dove straight into host families, not only would we not be able to communicate, but would probably be highly offensive in areas that we wouldn’t even think about.  That’s a whole other blog on its own, but seriously, we would have not well represented the name of Christ without first taking 3 months to learn about this culture (which is where the seminar that we went to fits in perfectly.

Going back to the basketball analogy – we also had “scrimmage games.”  We stayed a week in Korhogo with a family there (we’re going back to visit them tonight).  There we were able to experience firsthand what family life will be like for a shorter period of time.


For our second scrimmage game, we will be living in Niakara with a “surrogate” host family for two weeks before we move onto the big game - what we've been practicing for -  Living with the pastor and his wife right next to the church (no excuse for missing anything at the church) and getting involved in ministries through the pastor and in the church.  All of the work we’ve been putting in until now (with language, culture, and ministry) have been building up to this, but we know that we’ll never be fully prepared for these next 9 months!

God has used these last few months to build us up quite a bit.  Not just physically, in language, or in culture learning, but in trust in Him.  It’s been a roller coaster of emotions – frustration, elation, home-sick-ness, culture shock…but it’s been good that we can hold on to Him in this wild ride.