Greetings from Burkina Faso! Exciting times are coming! We are down to our last day of Jula study (Monday)! I am very pleased with how the class has gone and am happy with the level of Jula language we have attained. It has come much quicker and easier than the first African language I attempted to learn (Bisa). Thanks for your prayers concerning that.
Even more exciting news: Our summer ministry begins this coming week. On Tuesday and Wednesday (May 30th and 31st) we will receive our first batch of summer volunteers (14 of them). Then on June 2nd, a team of six more arrive. It would be fairly difficult and time consuming to tell you all that we will be doing with these volunteers this summer. I would, however, like to tell you what I’ll be up to for the next six weeks or so. Once the first group arrives I will be assisting in their orientation and will help get them to their villages. The second group (the group of six) is the first group I will be working alongside. That team is a sports ministry team from the International Sports Federation. I will be accompanying them to the village of Karankasso-Vigue. There we will be working with the Vigue (Vee-gay) people group for just over a week. The Vigue are an ethnic group of only about 8,000 people, and there are no known Christians among them. They are strongly Islamic and animistic. Ministering among them will be a challenge. However, David and Tami have visited this village and found the chief to be very welcoming. He even mentioned that if we built a church he would send his children. Please pray that God would build not merely a building but a community of believers among the Vigue. After the ISF team leaves (on June 14th), I will travel around to visit some of our other teams in their various villages. On June 21st, we say goodbye to another group of volunteers just before yet another group arrives. I will then take a few member of this new group (college students) back to Karankasso-Vigue. Thus, I will have an extended period of ministry among the Vigue people with two different groups this summer. I would appreciate your prayers for me, these two teams, and the Vigue people.
And as I mentioned, this is only a small part of our teams’ summer ministry. Other groups will be in other villages ministering among four other people groups: Northern Toussian, Northern Lyele, Senufo Senara, and Tiefo. All this requires a lot of planning and preparation which has been on-going for a while and will not stop until the end of the summer (actually around July 12th for us). We and the volunteers will need patience, endurance, wisdom, guidance, and health, all of which God can supply. Besides engaging these unengaged people groups with the Gospel, we hope that their ministry in Burkina will have a lasting effect of the lives of these volunteers.
Praise God for:
* the completion of a very productive month of Jula language learning.
* bringing so many volunteers to aid us in the task of the Great Commission.
Please pray for:
* God to open up a door for the Word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ (Col. 4:3).
* the Word of the Lord to spread rapidly and be glorified (2 Thess. 3:1) among these people groups.
* patience, endurance, wisdom, guidance, and health for us and the volunteers.
* our understanding of Jula to continue to grow as we use it in life and ministry.
Thanks again for your support of our ministry through prayer. God bless!
May 29, 2006
May 15, 2006
Burkina newsletter #6
Greetings from Bobo, B.F.! The past few weeks have been devoted mostly to Jula language study. We are studying six days per week with an average of five or six hours of class per day. That does not include the daily homework and tasks the teachers give us to complete. And I thought I had finally finished with school in December! Nonetheless, we are blessed to have two excellent teachers. The endeavor is somewhat grueling, but I feel we are learning very quickly. That’s good since we only have a couple weeks of class left. We will by no means be fluent in the language, but we will know a whole lot more than the average white person (“tubabu” is what they call us in Jula). All that to say I am very happy with how our language study is going. Just to let yet know we are indeed learning something, my favorite word: “belebeleba” (meaning: very fat). My favorite phrase learned in class (altering the letters we don’t have in English): “Mogo doow bi tagama i na fo tonkono” (meaning: some people walk like a duck).
In between class and homework, we are also planning for the big summer ahead. We have approximately 30 summer volunteers coming in five different groups (they begin arriving at the end of this month). Among these groups we have a sports ministry team, a church group, and a lot of individual college students who will comprise the other teams. It looks like we will send the teams out to work with seven different people groups. The four of us (David, Tami, Jessica, and I) are responsible for planning the meals, transportation, “housing” (maybe the word is “huting” or “camping accommodations”), orientation, and much more while the volunteers are here. This is obviously a large task and one that needs to be strengthened by prayer.
Lastly, I have not spent a great deal of time at my house in Bobo, but in the time I have been there, there are two young men who have visited me regularly. Bouba is 15 and lives next door. Souleyman (Muslim version of Solomon) is 21 and lives around the corner. They are both Muslims from Muslim families. God has given me the opportunity and ability (despite my weak French skills) to discuss the differences in our religions, and thus I have shared the Gospel with each of them. They each have read some of the Gideon New Testaments they were given at school (Thank God for the Gideons!), and each admit to finding the Scriptures intriguing. I hope you will join me in praying for them and their families. Pray that God will give me the opportunities, boldness, and ability to share the Gospel with them and others.
Praise God for:
* wonderful language teachers and our ability to learn at a good pace.
* opportunities and the ability to share the Gospel in another culture and language.
* so many people willing to give of their summer vacation to come serve God in Burkina Faso.
Please pray for:
* the last two weeks of formal Jula study (as well as the informal study that will continue as long as we are here).
* our planning and preparation for the summer of ministry with volunteers.
* opportunities, boldness, and the ability to share the Gospel.
* Bouba and Souleyman, that God would work in their hearts and draw them to Himself, using whatever means necessary (even if that means me).
Thanks so much for your support and prayers. I would love to hear what’s going on in your lives (particularly before the busy summer comes when I will be on the internet much less frequently). Take care and God bless!
In between class and homework, we are also planning for the big summer ahead. We have approximately 30 summer volunteers coming in five different groups (they begin arriving at the end of this month). Among these groups we have a sports ministry team, a church group, and a lot of individual college students who will comprise the other teams. It looks like we will send the teams out to work with seven different people groups. The four of us (David, Tami, Jessica, and I) are responsible for planning the meals, transportation, “housing” (maybe the word is “huting” or “camping accommodations”), orientation, and much more while the volunteers are here. This is obviously a large task and one that needs to be strengthened by prayer.
Lastly, I have not spent a great deal of time at my house in Bobo, but in the time I have been there, there are two young men who have visited me regularly. Bouba is 15 and lives next door. Souleyman (Muslim version of Solomon) is 21 and lives around the corner. They are both Muslims from Muslim families. God has given me the opportunity and ability (despite my weak French skills) to discuss the differences in our religions, and thus I have shared the Gospel with each of them. They each have read some of the Gideon New Testaments they were given at school (Thank God for the Gideons!), and each admit to finding the Scriptures intriguing. I hope you will join me in praying for them and their families. Pray that God will give me the opportunities, boldness, and ability to share the Gospel with them and others.
Praise God for:
* wonderful language teachers and our ability to learn at a good pace.
* opportunities and the ability to share the Gospel in another culture and language.
* so many people willing to give of their summer vacation to come serve God in Burkina Faso.
Please pray for:
* the last two weeks of formal Jula study (as well as the informal study that will continue as long as we are here).
* our planning and preparation for the summer of ministry with volunteers.
* opportunities, boldness, and the ability to share the Gospel.
* Bouba and Souleyman, that God would work in their hearts and draw them to Himself, using whatever means necessary (even if that means me).
Thanks so much for your support and prayers. I would love to hear what’s going on in your lives (particularly before the busy summer comes when I will be on the internet much less frequently). Take care and God bless!
May 8, 2006
Ponderings from a nail-clipping
I stepped outside to clip my fingernails, just to not have to worry where the scraps fell. I was greeted by the sound of a neighbor lady, this is certain without even seeing the person, pounding some grain (more than likely) with the traditional mortar and pestle. The same sort which probably has been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Then comes the insect-like trill of what we would consider an old-timey sewing machine (the kind with the manual foot pedal) from another neighbor. This individual, again I could almost say it without seeing his face, although I know who he is, is a man. Interestingly, here the profession of tailor is almost exclusively a masculine occupation. Then another sound, the growl of a moto (a scrawny version of a motocycle) comes closer and closer until it passes my house. Other fainter sounds in the distance I suspect to be the commotion of a crowd and perhaps the murmurings of a TV set. I’m done with the manicure. I decide the porch needs to be swept. It of course has needed to be swept for a while, but I can endure more dust than my mom or most women. Still I do try to keep my house a couple steps above that of a college student.
Anyway, this is one of the moments when I pause to think of this interesting place in which I live. It is such a blend of epochs. The mortar and pestle have long been replaced in our culture by mills and machines and factories that do the work for us then neatly package the product and ship it to our local grocery store for our convenience. That’s not to mention the fact that most of us know nothing of the work required to actually grow the grains and vegetable and other items that we simply place in the shopping cart. Thank God for the farmers! And those farmers in Breckinridge County and throughout the developed world should thank God for the plows and combines and tractors and other machines that they are blessed to use. As for the sewing machine across the street, it might fetch a pretty penny in the States, but not for its usefulness, but because it would make a nice antique to display in someone’s living room. Then there are the motos and TV sets and other items of modernity for our ease, comfort, and leisure. But of course we are not talking about plasma TVs and TiVo and satellites with thousands of channels. Nonetheless, more and more, these sorts of things are becoming attainable here for the “wealthy.” I use the quotes because “wealthy,” of course, is a relative term; the people with the TVs and motos are often the same who pound the grain with the mortar and pestle. I must also think of my two years in Torla, a small village (they say about 3000 people) which to my knowledge and recollection had a total of two TVs and about five motos. The village folk are still far behind most here in metropolitan Bobo in terms of amenities and possessions Well, these are simply some random thoughts. My original purpose was simply to try to give a little description of one short minute of nail clipping. What I have achieved, I do not know.
Anyway, this is one of the moments when I pause to think of this interesting place in which I live. It is such a blend of epochs. The mortar and pestle have long been replaced in our culture by mills and machines and factories that do the work for us then neatly package the product and ship it to our local grocery store for our convenience. That’s not to mention the fact that most of us know nothing of the work required to actually grow the grains and vegetable and other items that we simply place in the shopping cart. Thank God for the farmers! And those farmers in Breckinridge County and throughout the developed world should thank God for the plows and combines and tractors and other machines that they are blessed to use. As for the sewing machine across the street, it might fetch a pretty penny in the States, but not for its usefulness, but because it would make a nice antique to display in someone’s living room. Then there are the motos and TV sets and other items of modernity for our ease, comfort, and leisure. But of course we are not talking about plasma TVs and TiVo and satellites with thousands of channels. Nonetheless, more and more, these sorts of things are becoming attainable here for the “wealthy.” I use the quotes because “wealthy,” of course, is a relative term; the people with the TVs and motos are often the same who pound the grain with the mortar and pestle. I must also think of my two years in Torla, a small village (they say about 3000 people) which to my knowledge and recollection had a total of two TVs and about five motos. The village folk are still far behind most here in metropolitan Bobo in terms of amenities and possessions Well, these are simply some random thoughts. My original purpose was simply to try to give a little description of one short minute of nail clipping. What I have achieved, I do not know.
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