The Inadequacy List--November Newsletter

The first time a Burkinabe asked me, “Are you French or Swiss?”, I thought my French-speaking capabilities had received a huge compliment.  But this question was followed often enough by, “You mean they don’t speak French in the U.S.?” that I realized this was not the case.  In fact, after my intern/teammate Heidi (who is from Switzerland, but not the French-speaking part) moved in, the neighbors told me Heidi should speak for me because her accent is better.  They also thought they were giving me a compliment when they listed all the ways Heidi and I look like twins (same height, skin tone, etc), and then added, “The only difference is that you’re fatter than her.”

It wasn’t like I needed any help from other people to feel inadequate; I’d been compiling my own list of reasons I wasn’t cut out to be a missionary.  1)  I don’t ask other missionaries for their recipes because they usually start with something like, “First, grow your own beans…”  2) My first manual driving lesson involved a lot of my mechanic making apologetic waving gestures to a large percentage of the two million inhabitants of Ouagadougou stuck behind me, honking their horns because I’d killed the engine yet again when the light turned green.  3)  My first moto (moped) driving lesson made me wonder: given that people who are afraid (i.e. unbalanced people who start swerving towards the oncoming lane of traffic) tend to grip whatever they’re holding, why on earth did the person who invented mopeds make the handlebars control the speed of the moped?  4) I ordinarily detest how difficult it is to express myself and teach in French, until I am studying Moore (a tribal language), which resembles baby jibberish so much more than “real” words that it makes me grateful for French.

It’s easy to ask God what on earth He was thinking.  Why did He call me here, instead of having an African person who already knows the language teach the Good News Club^® in our neighborhood?  In fact, given the number of donkeys around (which are used for plowing fields or pulling carts, but which are also often just standing in the middle of busy roads), I’m pretty sure He could have reused his talking donkey idea and it would speak better French than me.  But the Bible does say that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness, which I guess means that every time I speak French, He has a whole lot of room for perfection.

And this is true: I’m pretty sure the neighbors are just as astounded as I am that the people in my teacher training classes and the kids in my club actually nod along to what I’m saying and enthusiastically yell out the main truth I taught them the previous week, because when I’m teaching, my French is way better than it is in normal life, thanks completely to God.

So, since the Bible also says for this reason we should delight in our weaknesses, I know that each time I kill the engine on my car, resort to cereal for dinner, confuse the same words in Moore that I used to confuse in French, or even just have a neighbor who calls me fat, it is only all the more evident how much I need God for everything I do.

 

Praise God for:

· Bringing Heidi to work with CEF for a year.  She is also living with me and has quickly become an amazing friend.  We call each other Heido and Chelso and have named my SUV that is the same color green as the taxis here Taxo.

· Over 50 children who come to our neighborhood Good News Club.  Many of them come from Muslim families.

Please pray for:

· Open doors to have Good News Clubs in schools.  Public schools are not open to this, but since Christian schools are known as the best schools, many Muslim and other non-Christian children attend them.

· The first teacher training that I will be organizing myself.  There are already many people who have expressed interest in having the 30-hour training.

 

Fun Facts

• Just being a white female in Burkina Faso means I get frequent marriage proposals.  One day I was walking home when a lady I’d never seen before said, “Hello.  My nephew is ready for his fourth wife.  Are you ready?”
• Apparently when you start going down an unmarked one way street and get stopped by a police officer, the question “Can I pay the fine here?” actually means “Can I bribe you not to give me a ticket?”
• Burkina Faso has such a relationship-oriented culture that the phrase “It’s been two days,” means “Wow, it’s been forever since I’ve seen you.”

To get a quick one-minute glimpse of a Good News Club, check out the video at http://youtu.be/eaBZf2BTYXs