I considered putting a picture of manure in this letter. A nasty, fly-covered mass left by something evidently large. As I’ve discovered in the two weeks since I arrived in Burkina Faso, practically every block here has one of these disgusting piles, and each is a cause for celebration.
Now before you decide that I’ve contracted some kind of weird African disease that went straight to my brain, let me explain. A rainstorm one night kept me sequestered in my house, far from thrilled to be here. I missed my family and U.S. friends and, though I was making friends here, had not met any other missionaries or anyone who could understand the transitional process I’m in. I’d been speaking French with the neighbors, but the accents and vocabulary here are so different from what I learned in Quebec, that I sometimes couldn’t tell when they were speaking French or a tribal language. My national director had told me to take a whole month to settle in (I was beginning to realize how long it takes just to pay for electricity), followed by three months of African French lessons before I could actually start ministry, and I was feeling like the closest I came to actually being a missionary was buying furniture in a foreign country. To top it off, I was craving Chicken McNuggets enough to empathize with recovering drug addicts.
And then I began reading in Philippians. The King James version says this, “I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ” (3:8b). I hadn’t exactly been considering my own losses as dung. No one sits around on a rainy night wishing they had more dung. No one agonizes over whether or not they should flush the toilet. No one who is promised the greatest treasure in the whole earth in exchange for their bowel movements rejects the offer. In fact, they “flush their toilet” with rejoicing in order to win Christ. To be sure, I rate you--my friends, family, and supporters—far over a dirty diaper, but going with Jesus wherever He leads is so amazing that nothing else can compare any more than dung can.
So now every time I see one of those piles in the middle of the road, I picture myself joyfully flushing Chicken McNuggets down the toilet. Which probably makes the Africans wonder if I contracted some kind of weird American disease that went straight to my brain.
Praise God for:
· giving me His words: with just 45 minutes to prepare, I taught in French for the first time in a course for children’s workers called Teaching Children Effectively, and I think the students understood. I taught another three classes after that.
· a Burkinabe family who work with another mission organization and who have kind of adopted me. The Tandambas live just three blocks away and have helped me buy everything I need for the house, transported me around the city, and just spent time with me.
Please pray that:
· I will find a good program for my three months of language study and improve my African-style French to be able to communicate God’s love.
· I will be able to buy a good car (and learn how to drive it: all the cars here are manual).
· God would continue to provide opportunities to share the Gospel with children and that He would provide wisdom in forming partnerships to reach even more children.
