Praying for Peanuts

As many of you know, we moved in with our host families on March 7^th – we were supposed to live with a “surrogate” family for a bit while they were preparing our place with the pastor and his family.  When we got to the church, we found that our place was prepared and we could move right in with our real host family – praise God!

It’s been quite the whirlwind since then.  Living at a church is everything you would expect it to be.  People always dropping by, the youth are almost constantly here (morning, noon, and night) and you have no excuse NOT to go to all of the meetings at the church.  It’s also guaranteed that you’ll go to all the weddings, funerals, and conferences held at the church.  It’s a wonderful spot to be when you’re trying to meet people and build relationships.

Anyway, I could go on all day about our new home, new family and new friends, but I’d like to share how God has been working in my life these last few weeks.

Two people who are living at Ecole Baptist right now, Devin and Eric, stopped by to visit.  At one point Devin jokingly said “so…what’s your FAVORITE thing about your family?”  I realized at that point that I really didn’t know the family that well.  We were contently with the youth or the young adults that we haven’t really spent time with our family.

I was praying that night that God would give me an opportunity to get to know our mom a little better.  The next morning was the normal routine.  I was trying to help out and “work” and mom and one of the girls here were trying to make me stop working because I was going to “tire myself out.” (Like I’ve never done dishes before in my life J).  Anyway, one of the girls pulled out the peanut de-sheller (I’m sure there’s a better name, but that’s what I call it).  It’s a contraption that deshells peanuts much more quickly than doing it by hand. 

Chewa working on the peanuts

 Chewa (one of the helpers here) and I sat and deshelled peanuts.  She doesn’t speak French and I don’t speak Centipho, but every once and a while she would destressed-ly call out “Tante” (which is what you call your elders – like Auntie) and then she would hold out her hands, palm up.  She would look at my hands, which were getting red.  “Ca va” I would say and keep going.  We went on like that for three hours.  Well, I thought, at least I did a little work today.

The next day, we were done shelling, but now had to go through and pick out all the peanuts that weren’t “good and proper” and the shells and…well, I can’t really get into all of that.  What I can say is that God gave me about 12 uninterrupted hours over the next 3 days while we got the peanuts ready to be sold.  I was able to talk with mom about pretty much everything – her family, the JourneyCorp program, my family, the church, my interests, my ministries, school, African culture, American culture…and God even gave me the French words to say most of the time! 

Syntiche and Mom (right) and I working on peanuts

God taught me two things that week – one, He answers prayers in mysterious ways, and two, I will never eat another peanut without first praying for the hands that touched it.  It’s a long hard process – so when you eat peanuts, please think about us and pray for us and our family.

I know this is getting long, but I thought I would let you know a little about our family – the pastor and his wife a probably in their mid-late thirties (were married in 2004) and he has been pastoring in Niakara since 2001.  They have two kids and one on the way, Syntiche (4-5years old) – who runs around everywhere looking for “Tonton Steve” and Apollos (7 years old) who has had the chicken pocks since we’ve been here, but it starting to feel better and come around to us. 

Sorry it’s been a while – we don’t’ have internet in our town, so we’ll continue to write blogs and post them when we can!  Thanks so much for your prayers.