When we arrived in Africa, we were met by Grandpa Kennedy at the port in Abidjan. He had tried to get us rooms at the ONE HOTEL in Abidjan at that time, but all rooms were full. And so he arranged for us to sleep at the local Méthodist church on low camp cots! Our first night in Africa! Then we took the long trip north - the paved road stopped at Yamoussoukro I think, and it was rainy season so we had an interesting trip to Bobo. When we got to Bobo, Grandma was waiting for us with a hot American dinner and we had a fun reunion with her and African friends in Bobo who knew me from my teen age years.
Grandma had had our Santidougou house cleaned for us, and so we spent maybe a couple nights in Bobo - Grandpa took Dad to a local store and bought us beds. There was a bit of bare bone furniture in the Santidougou house so we were able to move out there almost immediately after our arrival. We bought a kerosene refrigerator, bought supplies and we were ready to set up housekeeping.
As in all West African situations, the village people were there as soon as we drove into the Santidougou yard to welcome us. I spoke Jula to my old friends as that was the language I spoke when I left there. But right away we set up a language study program so that we could begin to understand and speak Bobo. I would write out for each day's lesson what we needed to learn in Bobo, and write it out in Jula to give to Pierre who was our language helper. Then I would teach this to Dad, and so it went. I was through formal language study in a year and Dad took a bit longer obviously. But we were off and running!
What a dim beginning for a vision! We soon found out that there was corruption in the church and had to confort many uncomfortable situations. In those days the national church was not organized and so it was up to the missionary to take charge. What a difference today for new missionaries to be able to work with an organized and often educated church. But all of that was part of our vision for the Bobo people back then, that they would develop into an organized district church and we could work alongside.
My time from the beginning was mostly taken up with language work and then teaching programs. Dad's ministry was to the pastors, none of whom were ordained, and to the maybe four churches among our Bobo people. Dad prepared sermons in French which someone then interpreted for him into Bobo when he preached. I stayed at Santidougou with you girls, attending the local church on the mission compound where Pastor Pierre was pastor. He preached every Sunday the same sermon: Peter and John at the beautiful gate of the temple. He would vary his description from time to time but the theme was always the same and preached in Jula to be interpreted into Bobo.
Pastor Pierre and Roda had two sons from Roda's first marriage to a northern Bobo fing pastor who had died. A marriage was arranged between this widow and Pierre who was a Bible School student at Ntorosso. Dad loved working with young people and he perceived right away how brilliant young Tite was. Actually, his younger brother, Daouda, was also brilliant, but he put his intelligence to work in a life of crime eventually. A sad story.
As a foundation for our Santidougou district church, we knew we needed trained workers, and so we began to put money into sending more students to Ntorosso to study in Bambara (Jula). We would occasionally go to Mali and visit our students who were studying at the Bible School there. But Dad also had a vision for training French speaking young people. Actually, my parents had started training some young men in Mali at a French school there and we took up the torch of sending more students to train in French. We could see this would be the leadership of the future, even back then. Tite was one of the students who went to Somasso, Mali, to French school.
Dad also had a vision for establishing the church in more Bobo villages than the very few where we had groups of Christians. And so each Sunday he would take a group of Christians out to preach in new villages, as well as visiting the half dozen old churches that were small and struggling, with poorly trained leadership. All during this time we were applying ourselves to language study, trying to master the unwritten Bobo language.
My vision at that time was to put the Bobo language in written form and eventually have a New Testament. The whole Bible was a daunting task even for this visionary! As soon as we had learned the rudiments of the language, we began at the same time to turn out small booklets in Bobo as well as develop a primer system for learning to read in Bobo. All of this meant hours and hours of work for me in the office. I trained Yusufu little by little to take over the housework and then to make certain meals for us and he caught on quickly. He always looked on his work for us not just as a job to earn money, but he also felt he was helping in our work among his people. He freed me up to be almost fulltime in the office and classroom and we often talked about this together. He was such a faithful worker all our lives there and helped to facilitate our ministry, as well as being part of it.
As we progresed, the church asked if I would start a school for young women. The young Bobo Christians had a hard time getting wives as families would not give their wives to Christians. And thus started the girls' school, which was the first thing I was involved in each morning of the week. The young Bobo men would help a fellow Christian "steal" a girl from her village and bring her to Santidougou to be taught in the ways of the Lord. The girl had to be agreed to be engaged to a Christian and to come to school for a year, and thus began a ministry I had for many years. At the same time we had periodic short term schools when both Dad and I taught to train our young men in the Scriptures.
Dad figured the future of the church would be in French training and so he began to encourage young men to study in French. We helped some financially at a time when some of our fellow missionaries thought this was a waste of money. The criticism was that "these young people will learn French and then go off to get secular jobs and never train for the ministry". Ceertainly, some of them did but many others did not. And thus was born another vision of Dad's, Maranatha Institute in Bobo Dioulasso.
Since he had the vison for training pastoral candidates in French - and not many others could see the wisdom of this - Dad did a lot of the work, encouraged by Tite and others in the church. Dad was the one who built many of those first buildings. The first class was held in the youth center building on an adjoining piece of land. (Dad had built the youth building previously and thus helped to start the youth ministry in Bobo, which Uncle Dave later took up). Those were heavy days of work - by then Dad was also field director so we moved to Bobo. He did his office work and also oversaw the building of those first Maranatha buildings. Dad's concept of a visionary was not sitting in an armchair and neither was mine!
Our field had heard of TEE being a sharp tool in the training of leaders for the church and so we invited a world expert in Tee to come and give us a seminar. Several of us attended this seminar, and afterward we had a real vision to see this be put in place. We started the program in Jula and later added French courses as well. This was a vision that continued for me right up until the time we retired from Burkina. The program was linked to Maranatha and we had a production - storage - training center on the campus. Many church leaders were trained through this method, and I often travelled to other regions to train pastors to be TEE (PEDIM) facilitators. I also trained the leadership of the Bobo city churches so that they could teach in their churches as well.
Back in the district of Santidougou, I had encouraged young lay leaders to teach SS to the children of the church. We had six young men who became Sunday School teachers, and I wrote and provided materials for them. For lack of other materials, I used the flannelgraph lessons of Child Evangelism - a series of lessons lasting two years. Aunt Donna helped me as I cut out all the flannelgraph figures and we provided six series of these lessons. I wrote books for the teachers in Bobo and held regular seminars for them to show them how to teach children. And thus we were able to also teach the children in our Bobo churches. Something no other area was doing at that time. If I were doing this over today, I would use a more indigenous method of teaching for children!
We worked day and night during those years and today we can look at churches and leaders who are going forward because of the hard work, perseverance and vision of all of us. It takes a lifetime to build a church and we are thankful God allowed us to help in the building of the Bobo Madare church. Rollo and Joan and Peggy and Jetty joined us and we worked well together in those latter years. To God be the glory for what was accomplished among the Bobos!!
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