Mark Amasa, the last but not the least of the PIERCE offspring!! We called you the child of "our old age" and that was years ago, so what does that made us now?? You and your lovely family have given us much joy in our lives and continue to do so. I have already written about your rather unusual birth at Ferké hospital. Your sister, Cheryl, was home from ICA at that time, and so you were "her" baby. Your big brother, John, had not yet gone to ICA and he was fascinated with this new little charater that had come to live with us. We had to watch it that he did not try to feed you part of his cookie or poke his fingers in the wrong place and unknowingly hurt you.
You came home with us to Santidougou, and lived there a while, but most of your childhood in Burkina was spent in Bobo-Dioulasso, whichwas your hometown. Mamou was your babysitter (she was - and is - a gem!) and your best friend in Bobo was Benjamin Tessugué, the pastor's son. He was a little older than you and you two were bosom buddies. We saw him in Mali in 2005, now a grown man with a family like you, and we recalled the good days you two had together as children. His mother declared you knew and understand Dogoso, as that was the only language they spoke in their home and you always understood. Mamou talked to you in Dafing so you understood that. We talked French and English, Jula and Bobo Madare in our house and you understood all of those. So you actually grew up in your pre-school years knowing something of six languages.
Your big brother, John, was brown, robust and knew no strangers. You in contrast had a pale complexion, wispy blond hair and were timid. You, Michael and Tawni were all born the same year and remained friends through to your growup years. The year you all were born, they housed our three families in that center (Kauffman) house for field conference. We would get up in the morning seeing Uncle Dave, sitting in shorts (only) and sleepily feeding little baby Michael in his arms. The three of you grew up together for the most part. Albrights lived in Koutiala, Mali, and I remember a Christmas when we and Kennedys went to Mali and celebrated an early Christmas with the Albrights. You kids were a little older then, and the big boys got the idea to have a show for us parents. You were hystereical, taking off on all our foibles! I remember one line where Jonathan (Uncle Dave) yelled out, "Margot hurry up in that shower - Milt and Nancy are going to be mad if we are late again! We lived close enough to Bobo at Santidougou to have fun visits back and forth with Kennedys. And we even occasionaly braved the Burkina-Mali (non paved roads to visit Albrights in Sanekui. We were so fortunate, and we also tried consciously to include others (in the mission) in our relationships, who were not so fortunate as we and missed their families. The Royles were also family with us as we lived together so many years, both in Santidougou and Bobo.
You seemed to get every disease that came along when you were a toddler. I remember one year at Santidougou when the town was full of meningitis, a deadly disease in Burkina. You and our yardman's little son were sitting together on our front terrace and sharing a tall plastic glass of ice tea! You would take a sip and offer it to him and he would take a sip and thus back and forth. The next day he started symptoms of meningitis and ended uphaving a fairly severe case, but survived. I watched you carefully during the incubation time but you never developed meningitis and we were thankful to God for sparing us that.
John always had a pack of friends, and you in contrast enjoyed having one good friend instead. You were so different in temperament but got along well. And it is a delight to us to see the two of you as adults enjoying each other. We are so proud of you!
You did well at ICA. You had complaints about the school, as most kids did, but you resrerved them to air to us when we got together. And thus you pretty much stayed out of trouble. I remember that one set of dormparents you had, she was persnickety and he was boisterous and told you cop stories. When I stopped there once, without Dad, for one of my Abidjan trips, I had bought a bag full of apples at Monoprix as you loved them and did not get them at school. I put them in the house frig in their bag - the houseparents were away on a long weekend and so there was no one to ask about using the frig. There were still some apples left in the bag when the dormparents came back from their time away. She demanded of me, "Are you the one who put apples in the frig without asking me?" And I assured her that I had, and she said it was a dorm rule that no one could put anything in that frig unless they asked her so she could also tell her husband because he would open the door and just eat whatever he thought would make a good snack! . So I suggested that it was impossible to tell her since she was several hundred kilometers away. I thought her logic a bit faulty when she told me that if her husband had been there, he would have eaten my apples! Wow, I felt sorry having to live with THAT lady, but I think you said the man's cop stories were fun and you just sort of ignored her as much as you could!
Sometime during your grade school years Grandma and Grandpa Kennedy lived there in Bouaé to replace some on furlough who did the youth work in the city. They regularly had all you kids out to eat at their apartment at the Bouaké mission. They loved those visits and so did all you kids - Pierces, Kennedys and Albrights.
You were president of your senior class (what happened to that shy little boy??) and by all reports did a great job. This was a forerunner of the great leader you have become as a geown man.
During those trips to Bouaké during those years, we usually stopped for a rest stop at the Ferké hospital. There I observed one of the cutest little girls
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