The Boring Middle Of It

“It is difficult to recall, much less recapture, the excitement of an adventure’s beginning when you find yourself in the boring middle of it.”  Donald Miller – Through Painted Deserts (p. 89)

Since the last couple blogs have been about projects or ministry things we are doing or trying to do, we thought it about time to give an update about how we are doing.  Life is very normal and can be boring now that we have been in Cote d’Ivoire for 7 months and in our host family for 4.  Just because life is normal doesn’t mean we have everything figured out or we don’t have difficulty language experiences anymore, it just means that we are accustomed to it and we still have to work on it.  I have said this to a couple of friends, life is just life after a while.  No matter where you are or who you are surrounded by, life is just life and  we struggle with wanting to please people or loving people for who they are and not who we want them to be.

What is even funnier is that even though life has settled down to the point where one might say occasionally that it is boring, the desire for excitement and change is no longer there.  Because the things that are exciting and make great stories are the same things that are uncomfortable if not painful to go through and being in Africa usually involve staying up all night, sleeping on a bus 1hr between the two places you call home and have wonderful beds, or getting exotic illnesses which surprisingly is comfortingly similar because you get to have sick days of laying in bed, reading, and watching movies J. 

So this is where we are, the boring middle of our adventure in Africa.  It is really not all that bad, it says we are past the point where every little thing is extremely difficult and communicating the smallest thing takes tons of work, and that we have somewhat adapted to the culture, living situation, and foods.  Another upside of things being boring is that it is great for relationships.  With not much going on we are able to spend plenty of time with our family, with people from church, exploring our town and all the wonderful foods, and in God’s Word personally and as a couple.

Just the other day Jess and I were talking about how things have settled down and it kind of feels like we are in the eye of the hurricane because we look around and it seems nothing is happening, but we remember we have just come through and know it will get crazy again.  Jess then mentioned a verse she read the day before and how appropriate it was for our situation.

I Samuel 12:16  “Now then, stand still and see this great thing the LORD is about to do before your eyes!”  24 “But be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you.”

So as we are in the boring middle of our adventure in Africa we look forward to the great things God is going to do and reflect on everything he has done for us.  I don’t think there is much more God wants than for us to be open to what he wants, and to praise him for what he has done in our lives.

Our First Project

We started our first project for the church of Niakara.  To explain a little - about 1/3 of the money that God gave us (through you guys!) goes to church projects - projects that the church needs, but may not be able to do financially on it's own. 



The "before" picture

We just started tearing down the building I call the barn (very traditional building made with dirt bricks and between the bricks holding them together topped off with a patchy thatched roof, it’s an older structure - see picture on the right) and rebuilding it with a proper cement brick and cement between bricks foundation then with dirt bricks and cement holding them together and hopefully more stucco finish, a nice metal roof and even a cement porch area with roof, it will look nice when it is done. 

After the first day

After working one day, we had torn down the old building salvaging quite a bit.  We saved most of the thatch roof (beams, bamboo support and hay) for an Hapatam (think low pole structure with thatch roof used for getting out of the sun and rain and to cook), since the dirt bricks weren’t cemented we used the dull side of a machete to separate the bricks and pile them up for use in the new building and we saved the wooden doors, windows, and frames for potential use in the new building.  It took the morning to do all that and dig trenches where the new walls would be placed.  The afternoon was devoted to mixing cement for the foundation of cement bricks which were made earlier in the week.  It was interesting to learn about masonry and get to help where I could.

The second day of work (two weeks later) was mostly building up the "house" with bricks.  We used some that were newly made and some that were from the old building.  By the end of the second day, it was mostly built, minus the windows, doors and roof.  We need to make some more bricks before we can finish off the building. 

Pastor asked me if I could do the wiring for the electricity in the building and I told him I could, so that will be something that I will be working on soon.  They also asked if I knew how to put the roofing on.  I'm not sure I completely know, but think I'll find out soon.



End of the second day



The church in Niakara really needed more space – space for Sunday School rooms, a place for visiting pastors, a place people can stay when there are conferences, weddings, festivals, and storage for instruments and things so that they’re not at risk of getting stolen or wet,  so that's what this building is going to be.  Believe it or not, about 50 women (plus children) stayed in this building during the womens conference.  Since it's now bigger (4 rooms instead of five), we'll be able to have places for more people when they come for conferences and other events.

We'll send out some pictures when the project is finished!

Ministry Update

Hello Everyone,


We can’t believe we’re now hitting our month and half mark with our family. Family life has been going wonderfully and it’s been interesting to find out that moving and getting settled into a new community/church is almost the same whether you’re in Africa or the United States. We’ve been trying to figure out the opportunities and needs of our church and community to see where God would want us to serve.

We wanted to have you join us in prayer and update you on some ministry opportunities that we see here in Niakara:

• English Clubs – each high school (and middle school) here has an English Club. Because English is part of their ACT/SAT –type test, it’s important that the students here know how to articulate themselves in English as well as French. In these English club, they mostly start with a topic (Polygamy, Birth Control, What is a lie?, Economics, Politics happening around the world) and talk about it in English. Both Steve and I think this is a good opportunity and opening for us to communicate Christ with these students – we need to get the permission from the school to do this, so pray for an opening to talk to the English teachers in the schools and for good reception.

• English Bible Studies – people here really want to learn to speak/write English, so an English Bible study would be a good way for people to do that (and hear the Word of God at the same time!)

• Church Involvement – we would like to get involved in the worship teams (both instrumental and vocal), but need to learn African instruments (Steve wants to learn Djimbe) and songs (we’ve been working with the youth on learning the songs). Since there’s not really “lessons” or a songbook, this is easier said than done. Steve’s having his guitar sent here this week, so that may be an opportunity too. Also we’re wanted to get involved in the Sunday School program – assisting at first, then teaching if there’s a need.

• Working with young people – Steve has started working at the moto shop of the president of the Juenesse (the youth/young adult group) two or three times a week. There he’s able to get to know other young people in the church and community. I have made it a goal to visit 2-3 young women every week. Young women here don’t really have time to hang out as the guys do, there’s too much housework to do, so I’ve decided to meet them where they’re at. Going and hanging out while they work, do laundry, or make food has been really good to get to know the town (where everyone lives) and also to improve my conversational French.

• Farming/Work – most people in the church (including the pastor) have a farm or garden that they tend. It’s a lot of work and they pretty much think we’re breakable, but as a service to the people in the church, we’re trying to convince them that we can actually work on these farms or in the garden. Pray for opportunities to serve in that way.

Well, that’s it – the things that we’ve been praying about and trying to figure out where God wants us here. There are also going to be other projects the church has for us (mostly building/construction work). Pray that God’s name would be given the glory in everything that we do!

Also, pray that we don’t just become BUSY. That’s so easy to do – pray that we’re intentional about each ministry and that God would close/open doors so that we’re doing what HE wants us to do, not just becoming busy!

Thanks!

Elephant Fun!

We got chased by an elephant yesterday.  Yep – it felt like one of those moments in a movie where there would be a freeze frame and a caption that read.  YEP, THIS IS MY LIFE.

Steve and I had a conversation a couple days ago that I had to think about as the elephant was angerly trotting after us.  Steve asked me if I felt like I was living someone else’s life.  I agreed, but asked him to elaborate.  He started talking about how we’re living a life almost identical to his parents, who were married shortly after graduation, his mom/I worked while the other finished up school, the left after that to spend some time doing overseas missions.  All we have to do is have a few kids and we’re on our way to following in the (older) Willman’s footsteps.

I told him I’d never really thought of that.  My feeling in many of my moments here is that I’m living the life of someone WAY more adventurous then I really am.  Sometimes I step back and think “I am not the type of person who quits a perfectly good job and spends my entire life savings to move to Africa and be chased by elephants…that is NOT ME!”  I read books about these people, I watch shows on these people, but it’s not me.  I’m perfectly content (and even excited) to go to an office for 8 hours a day and recruit high schoolers.  I love it.

But then I realize that I’m not living my life.  It’s not my life, and it’s not me who gets to decide.  That’s what happens when you follow a huge God.  He takes me, someone who is not adventurous and completely content, and shakes up my world and plops me into the middle of elephants and French speakers and babies on backs and traveling on motos and eating rice and sauce with my hands, and loving every moment of it.  He takes away my comfort, my pride and my securities and replaces it with His love, His joy, and His strength. 

So for me, being chased by an elephant is just another day, I guess, following this gigantic God of mine. 

I just want to challenge you.  How is God asking you to live a life way more adventurous then you really are?  That may mean standing up for what you believe in at work or school…it may mean doing something like picking up your life, your family, and moving halfway around the world, if that’s what He’s telling you, it may mean taking that “rainy day” money that you’ve been saving and giving it up for God.  It may not seem like you, you may be someone who plays it safe or whatever…so am I…but look where He brought me, and I’m loving and learning every minute of every day more about God and what He wants from me.

Do something crazy today for God and think of me – it’s His strength, not yours, so you have plenty of it!

Love you and miss you all!

OH – PS – the elephant story is hilarious – I guess I should tell it!  We were riding on top of the landcruiser in a nature preserve.  We ended up seeing a momma elephant and two babies.  I guess momma didn’t like how close we were getting to her family, so she started walking, then running after us making some obscene gestures (or I guess they would be if I was an elephant).  Once she started running after us, we hightailed it out of there.  We have it on video, but can’t upload it here.  You’ll just have to take my word on it for now!

*There will be pictures...eventually* Internet is not good right now!

Life in a Family after 2 weeks

Front of our house (former storage room)

So we’ve been here 2 weeks now, what can I tell you about it.  We are living with the pastor in the church courtyard, we have our own little apartment around the corner from the pastors house but still in the same building.  Our apartment used to be a storage room with a metal door and window but they built a wooden wall in the middle of the room separating our bedroom from the living room.  Each side is about 6ft by 10ft (whole room is 10ft by 12ft).  They built us a nice awning right outside our door and I believe they are going to make it into a cement porch at some point but it is nice to have a shaded area in front of our house to sit (I’m sitting there right now typing this).  Our shower/peeing room is right next to our room and the pooping hole is around the corner (back side from where the pastor lives). 

Pooping hole

Shower/Peeing room

 
As soon as we got here the young adults in the church took us in and have been showing us around town, taking us to work with them, and just hanging out with us in the church courtyard most days.  The pastor is in charge of 23 other churches in this area and I’m not sure if there are other pastors for those churches or not so he is quite busy with traveling, because of this one of the guys in the church has been our guide. 

Team visiting in courtyard

Our church building

The church courtyard is a pretty busy place, people visit quite often in the evenings after work and sometimes during the morning and day as well.  People are always passing through the courtyard on foot or bike and many women come to our well to get water every day.  We have learned some greetings in one of the local languages and everyone from the church comes up to us and greets us to watch us do our trick and then laugh whether we get it right or not.  

Heating the soldering iron
over a coal fire
(super hardcore)

The president of the young adults group took me to the motorcycle garage where he works and I got to see and assist in a complete dismount, change of the camshaft, and remount of the engine, quite exciting.  I have helped with electronics around the church including repairing two megaphones( one for the sanctuary and the other a portable one for evangelizations in the villages with no power), wiring lights into our shower/peeing room and replacing the florescent light with a normal one in the pastors living room, fixing power strips, rerouting a power outlet, and fixing microphone cables.  All the soldering was done with a soldering iron heated using charcoal, pretty awesome. 

Our family consists of the pastor, his wife, their son Apolos who is about 7, daughter Syntyche around 4 or 5, and three other girls who are probably nieces or something and they are like 15, 10, and 7, Chewa, can’t pronounce her name, and Safoura respectively.  They are quite a lively bunch and Sentyche is a very typical 5 year old who hangs on you and does annoying things when she’s not being fun and cute. 

The town, Niakara, is on the large side of town but still a town where you can walk from one side to the other in 10-15min.  We are on the northern side and it takes about 5 minutes of walking before you are in the middle of the bush.  People don’t even hide the fact that they stare at us for being white, they’ll even take pictures of us walking by and thinking we don’t know, it’s fun to say “photo” to them and let them know we caught them in the act.  Oh, and while our town has 3 or 4 cyber cafes with computers, printers, fax machines and even signs saying prices for the internet, we have absolutely no internet in this town at all which hasn’t been bad, just different.

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.

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.