My experience with someone helping us in the house came from my childhood, as my parents were busy in ministry and language learning from the start and they always trained someone to clean and eventually prepare food for the family. Where we lived in Baramba, we were really "in the bush" - no big town nearby and you were allowed only one trip a month to your center to buy supplies. So living was very basic and the village was very dusty. So it was there my mom trained her first house help, which was only the beginning of a long list of house helpers she trained during their many years in Africa.
I remember one funny incident from those earlier years. Her helper was sweeping the floor, using one of those stiff-straw-put-together-and-tied native brooms You bent low when you used one. This fellow whom my mom had trained was sweeping the dust and dirt from the cement floor in our house and he came upon a small button that someone had dropped. He picked it up, looked it over, then swept underneath where he had found it - and carefully put the button back just as he had found it! Being from a bush village, he had probably seen stranger things than that in his white patron's house!!
Mother was a good trainer of house help. She herself made wonderful bread from scratch and that was one of the first things she taught her worker. There was no bakery in our village so no French bread available. Her helper taught other helpers through the years, and new missionaries often went to her help for their new house help to learn to make good bread. That is where Yusufu learned to make the good bread we had when you were children - from someone Mom had trained!
It is really amazing what these men (or girls) learned when they worked for one of us, coming as they did from a basic village lifestyle and had to learn our complicated tubabu ways! We were fortunate to have the same person (Yusufu) work for us for many many years. You kids all grew up with him. I could give him instructions in the early morning before I took off for class or the office and come home to a clean house, beautifully cooked meal and the wash on the line. What a treasure he was!
We had another house person who was not such a treasure. He was very much a tigi type - or "in charge person". He had worked for other people in the city of Ouagadougou and was actually listed as a cook. But he did agree to do housework as well. It was Christmas time that year and friends from Pennsylvania were visiting in Ouaga, so we invited them and the Luthers over for a big Christmas dinner. I had the table set, but no cook in sight. He was going to prepare the whole meal. One thing he starred in was preparing beautiful vegetable salad platters for a first course and I had planned to start with that. But no cook appeared! I finally hustled around in the kitchen and got the meal started while Dad went to the cook's house to see if he was sick or what had happened. He found him dead drunk! He was in no condition to even leave his room. let alone cook the Christmas day feast I had planned! That week Dad took him to the office in charge of house help in the city, but he turned around and insisted we had to pay back pay (which was all a lie - but we complied just to get rid of the guy)! A few weeks later we were robbed at night - a thief came in and stole all my lovely silver pieces on our buffet in the dining room, plus a hand painted lamp! What a loss when we got up that morning...we always suspected that he had something to do with that theft, but there was no way to prove it!
The man who replaced him was a Bobo, a Christian, and I never saw a more silent house worker. You never knew he was around. I spent hours in my office at the back of the house working on translation and lessons that year. I could never even hear him as he worked - he didn't bang, he didn't sing, he didn't have visiting friends to chat with. All was silence! But if he needed to ask me something, he would come quietly back to my office, and turn on the light switch - the light suddenly going on would distract me from my work, and there he was with his question! He was a faithful worker for us.
Some new missionaries did not want to have someone helping them in the house - they felt their privacy was being violated! I guess super private people ought to go somewhere else than West Africa. It is not a private life there! When we returned to Africa, the year after we retired, we went to San Pedro to work for a year in the Alliance guest house there. And we inherited someone else's house help. The inside helper was great and we worked very well together. he was a Christian, from the Alliance church, and he served us well our whole year there. The yard person was also a great guy - not a Christian and from a fisherman tribe down the coast, but he too was a great worker. We were blessed with good help that year.
The outside man was a real hero when a band of robbers came into the yard one night and proceeded to steal everything they could find. They jumped over the wall. When they tried to get into Dad's outside office, the guard prohibited them and so they beat him and tied him up while they broke into the office, took a large sum of money and also equipment and made off with it all. They also broke into the room of missionaries from another mission who were staying in our guest house. They wakened to these thugs entering their room, bright flashlights in their eyes! It was a terrible experience. They were new people from Togo and we later heard they just could not make it in Africa after that terrible start. Our car had been parked out back and the guard told the thieves we were not home so they did not even try to get into our room - we slept right through it all. Only to be wakened by the wounded guard after they had left. After that Dad had to build the surrounding wall higher on that Alliance guest compounr overlooking the ocean far below!
We always found that our house helpers allowed us to be fulltime in ministry and we tried to treat them all with courtesy and friendliness. We looked on them as "helpers" rather than "servants". And now we look forward to seeing some of those faithful people who worked for us on our Africa visit next week!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Saturday, February 4, 2012
MAKING LEMONADE OUT OF LEMONS..............................
Maybe you have heard the expression, "When life hands you lemons, make them into lemonade". In other words when bad things happen to you, things that might sour you on life, try to transform that sour exprerience into something sweet and refreshing. When I think of our family, I think of all of us as having had a good life, a profitable life. But when I stopped to think recently of each of your experiences in life until now, I realized there were many difficult things that happened - the lemons of life. And yet in each case you have been resilient and resourceful - you have turned the lemons of life into sweet, refreshing lemonade.
Cheryl and Darrell, in the beginning of your marriage you were so happy to be expecting a child - a little baby girl. But that child did not mature fully, she was born before her time. I think she might have lived a few hours even, but then with much sorrow you saw her life end and buried her there in New Jersey. This was one of those lemon experiences. But you did not allow it to sour you - you went on to finish your home service and went to Lebanon and started a new life there. Again you were expecting, a boy this time, and he was born amid the worst bombing session of the war in Beirut. You never gave up through that war season but moved to J'Bail in the north and even there the war found you. I well remember visiting the small, dark tunnel room that was your bunker when the bombs came there too. You had to leave the port there in an open boat, Cheryl with Rachel and later Darrell with the boys, amidst the shelling. You were all sent back to the States, and who would have blamed you for giving up at that point, but instead you persevered, and have become the pioneers and apostles for the Lord in the Middle East and now in North Africa. Your stories of hard and even dangerous situations could fill a couple of books, but you didn't give up - you made lemonade and have been a refreshing presence in the Arab world. We look forward to being with you soon in Tunis - another world for you to conquer!
Steve and Debbi, you too have had your share of lemon experiences. You were stationed in the most primitive situation of any worker in recent years in Burkina. But you made an oasis for your family and for others in that red stone house, complete with its insects and snakes, etc. And you pioneered the work among the large Dafing tribe, learning their unwritten language. Today there is a church and pastors in their area, thanks to your making a life and ministry out of a very difficult situation.
When Daniel was a teenager and needed his parents near him in the States, again you had to leave your work and make a new life for yourself. You had to drop your calling to Africa, take secular jobs of teaching and office work and make a life for your family in this country. That was a hard situation, but you endured and God rewarded you with a new and different ministry in Africa. You started out among an indigenous people in the bush country and now work among the very high classes in the capital city. God has given you both so many gifts, and through hard times and good times you have used those gifts and accepted the difficult situations - those lemons of life. You too have brought refreshing to many people in West Africa, in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.
Joel and Elin, after your up and down friendship and courtship in college and seminary, God led you to marry and begin ministry together in Côte d'Ivoire. In both Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal, God has led you to break into the upper class of people in those countries with the Gospel. It always amazed us to visit you and to meet so many interesting people - your friends, many of whom eventually came to Christ. Then along came the "lemons"of your life, schogren's disease. This has been a disability often in your daily life, Elin, and you had to have special treatment in the US. But again you have persevered and learned to live with your disability and minister to the people God brings into your lives. We admire you for that. The contacts he has given you and continues to give to you as a couple are amazing. You continue to make lemonade out of the lemons of sickness that are a part of your life.
John, you started out as an amazing child with such a positive attitude. We knew God had something special for you in your journey. He brought Jennie into your life, and as you started life together you had some hard times. Not much money, the failure of the hotel in Puerto Rico. I remember you and Jennie returning to Georgia from PR and you were staying with us for a few days. You were in the bedroom and Jennie said, "Mom and Dad, please go and talk to John - he feels like he is a failure." And we reassured you and loved you both through that situation and rejoiced to see you come out of that whole diffcult period of your life - your lemons - and make a good life here. During those long weeks of cancer with Jennie, that was certainly a season of being handed lemons. And again God brought you - and all of us - through that time of sorrowing. We still miss Jennie, but rejoice that she is with Jesus. You have had other rough times as well, and yet through all of them you have brought joy and refreshing to many people. And continue to do so.
Mark, our shy little son has become a successful business man, a good husband and an outstanding father and we are proud of you too. You could not have done it all alone - God gave you Katy, our lovely resourceful daughter-in-law, whom we admire tremendously. Your worked your way through college, going to school nights and working days. And for a long time you worked in a Brazilian company. We remember your taking us to visit the company where you showed us where you began in the big warehouse....and then proudly took us to your own office, with your own desk. But it was not long before you realized that you would never advance further in that company as you were not Brazilian! And so you took the "lemons" of that experience and planned your way out. And you joined your current company, being promoted all the way to head office. What a journey! You had to move, even though you both loved Georgia. And again, you have adjusted and made a good life far from what you had always known as home in your married life. Again making lemons into lemonade!
Dad and I have had a happy, fulfilling life and still do. You children and your children and those children's children are all a delight to us. And yet we too have had some "lemon" experiences in our lives occasionally. Dad had several years of being field director in both Mali and Burkina and also in Burkina alone. The last year he was director in Bobo, when the vote came for the director, Dad could not get the majority he needed. Actually, Dad held that title lightly, but was willing to serve if he was voted in. Finally after a couple more rounds and no majority (I think it was two thirds) he withdrew his name. Some complained, but we both felt it the right way to go. (We later found out that the reason some would not vote for him is they did not like the young men who worked for him) Dad has always discipled young boys and men and continued to do this in the office and this was evidently not appreciated by some. But again this became a liberating experience for us. We no longer had the burdens of the office and the demands of everyone. We had more time for ministry among the people and that is what we really liked. We lived in Bobo one more year and then moved to Ouaga where we participated in the planting of that first Ouaga church. And so the "lemon experience" of the conference vote became a blessing in disguise and our lives were a refreshing drink for many.
It has been such a delight to us through the years to see you all developing in the right way and being a blessing to so many. Our prayer is that your lives - and ours - may be a refreshing drink to many around us who need it.
Cheryl and Darrell, in the beginning of your marriage you were so happy to be expecting a child - a little baby girl. But that child did not mature fully, she was born before her time. I think she might have lived a few hours even, but then with much sorrow you saw her life end and buried her there in New Jersey. This was one of those lemon experiences. But you did not allow it to sour you - you went on to finish your home service and went to Lebanon and started a new life there. Again you were expecting, a boy this time, and he was born amid the worst bombing session of the war in Beirut. You never gave up through that war season but moved to J'Bail in the north and even there the war found you. I well remember visiting the small, dark tunnel room that was your bunker when the bombs came there too. You had to leave the port there in an open boat, Cheryl with Rachel and later Darrell with the boys, amidst the shelling. You were all sent back to the States, and who would have blamed you for giving up at that point, but instead you persevered, and have become the pioneers and apostles for the Lord in the Middle East and now in North Africa. Your stories of hard and even dangerous situations could fill a couple of books, but you didn't give up - you made lemonade and have been a refreshing presence in the Arab world. We look forward to being with you soon in Tunis - another world for you to conquer!
Steve and Debbi, you too have had your share of lemon experiences. You were stationed in the most primitive situation of any worker in recent years in Burkina. But you made an oasis for your family and for others in that red stone house, complete with its insects and snakes, etc. And you pioneered the work among the large Dafing tribe, learning their unwritten language. Today there is a church and pastors in their area, thanks to your making a life and ministry out of a very difficult situation.
When Daniel was a teenager and needed his parents near him in the States, again you had to leave your work and make a new life for yourself. You had to drop your calling to Africa, take secular jobs of teaching and office work and make a life for your family in this country. That was a hard situation, but you endured and God rewarded you with a new and different ministry in Africa. You started out among an indigenous people in the bush country and now work among the very high classes in the capital city. God has given you both so many gifts, and through hard times and good times you have used those gifts and accepted the difficult situations - those lemons of life. You too have brought refreshing to many people in West Africa, in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.
Joel and Elin, after your up and down friendship and courtship in college and seminary, God led you to marry and begin ministry together in Côte d'Ivoire. In both Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal, God has led you to break into the upper class of people in those countries with the Gospel. It always amazed us to visit you and to meet so many interesting people - your friends, many of whom eventually came to Christ. Then along came the "lemons"of your life, schogren's disease. This has been a disability often in your daily life, Elin, and you had to have special treatment in the US. But again you have persevered and learned to live with your disability and minister to the people God brings into your lives. We admire you for that. The contacts he has given you and continues to give to you as a couple are amazing. You continue to make lemonade out of the lemons of sickness that are a part of your life.
John, you started out as an amazing child with such a positive attitude. We knew God had something special for you in your journey. He brought Jennie into your life, and as you started life together you had some hard times. Not much money, the failure of the hotel in Puerto Rico. I remember you and Jennie returning to Georgia from PR and you were staying with us for a few days. You were in the bedroom and Jennie said, "Mom and Dad, please go and talk to John - he feels like he is a failure." And we reassured you and loved you both through that situation and rejoiced to see you come out of that whole diffcult period of your life - your lemons - and make a good life here. During those long weeks of cancer with Jennie, that was certainly a season of being handed lemons. And again God brought you - and all of us - through that time of sorrowing. We still miss Jennie, but rejoice that she is with Jesus. You have had other rough times as well, and yet through all of them you have brought joy and refreshing to many people. And continue to do so.
Mark, our shy little son has become a successful business man, a good husband and an outstanding father and we are proud of you too. You could not have done it all alone - God gave you Katy, our lovely resourceful daughter-in-law, whom we admire tremendously. Your worked your way through college, going to school nights and working days. And for a long time you worked in a Brazilian company. We remember your taking us to visit the company where you showed us where you began in the big warehouse....and then proudly took us to your own office, with your own desk. But it was not long before you realized that you would never advance further in that company as you were not Brazilian! And so you took the "lemons" of that experience and planned your way out. And you joined your current company, being promoted all the way to head office. What a journey! You had to move, even though you both loved Georgia. And again, you have adjusted and made a good life far from what you had always known as home in your married life. Again making lemons into lemonade!
Dad and I have had a happy, fulfilling life and still do. You children and your children and those children's children are all a delight to us. And yet we too have had some "lemon" experiences in our lives occasionally. Dad had several years of being field director in both Mali and Burkina and also in Burkina alone. The last year he was director in Bobo, when the vote came for the director, Dad could not get the majority he needed. Actually, Dad held that title lightly, but was willing to serve if he was voted in. Finally after a couple more rounds and no majority (I think it was two thirds) he withdrew his name. Some complained, but we both felt it the right way to go. (We later found out that the reason some would not vote for him is they did not like the young men who worked for him) Dad has always discipled young boys and men and continued to do this in the office and this was evidently not appreciated by some. But again this became a liberating experience for us. We no longer had the burdens of the office and the demands of everyone. We had more time for ministry among the people and that is what we really liked. We lived in Bobo one more year and then moved to Ouaga where we participated in the planting of that first Ouaga church. And so the "lemon experience" of the conference vote became a blessing in disguise and our lives were a refreshing drink for many.
It has been such a delight to us through the years to see you all developing in the right way and being a blessing to so many. Our prayer is that your lives - and ours - may be a refreshing drink to many around us who need it.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Staying in touch ...............................................................
Perhaps you sometimes get tired of my writing to you all so often, but I have lived my earlier life through a time when it was not possible to keep in touch with people. If we were living in the same place, we would be communicating, and so often I feel like just writing you a few lines in order to stay in touch.
Communications have changed so drastically during my lifetime. I know I have told you that my mother never heard of the death of her parents until weeks after they occured, and the news was brought by a note sent to Koutiala and carried by Malien runner who went to get our mail every couple of weeks. She mourned alone there in that Malien village of Baramba, no possiblility of trips to the States in those days! What a contrast to today when we have SKYPE and phone calls and quick mail delivery and email and Facebook! It is not hard to stay in touch, and yet I often talk to older folks in our community here, who really have very little contact with their kids who live overseas or even in this country. They are just not communicators. I am so thankful for every communication we receive from each of you, so keep them coming. It seems to me a tragedy when families grow so far apart from each other, simply through lack of communication of any kind.
Prayer has always been a kind of communication in our family also, and how thankful we are for that. Every morning Dad and I pray for every single member of our family by name, as we pray together. Often at night, if I am wakeful, I resort to praying for you - and sometimes fall asleep in the middle of the list! You learned to pray when you were very small, and this is a great link of communication for all of us.
My only communication with my parents during the years they were in Africa and I in College in the U.S., was a once a week air letter from them. I always knew that that letter would be in my mailbox one day each week. There was not a lot of news for them to write about and it was always a family joke with my brother and sister and me, that Mom would usually have a couple of menus of meals she had cooked for Dad that week. After all, she had to fill up that space with something! The letter was always just one thin air sheet, typed on one side - that was all that could be sent for the airmail rate. And it was the sum total of the news I had from them during four years - that weekly letter. I too wrote to them and I doubt if my news was much more interesting. My life was lived very much apart from my parents my four years at Houghton College, but we did have that once a week link between us which helped us to know each other a bit. Sometimes I wish I had kept some of those old letters - but what with moving so much in my lifetime, things like that never got saved.
Phone calls were few and far between when you kids were in the States and we overseas. Again, the cost was prohibitive. But when one of you did call, we basked in the good feeling of that phone call for days afterwards! Now that we are living here in the States - and you all are living all over the US and the world - we cherish every phone call, SKYPE call, email and FB entry. We appreciate all of you so much and love the way all of you are committed to "keeping in touch".
Amazing really, considering the many years we have lived apart from each other, how close we all are as a family. We know families here who seldom hear from their kids - even here in the US. And yet a week seldom goes by that we do not have some kind of communication from each of you. We try to keep up our end of that communication also. Communication is the cement that hold families together, it seems to me.
During these years as a family, some communications stand out over others: Cheryl' s unexpected appendectomy, the birth of a new grandchild, Nathan's birth in the midst of bursting bombs in Lebanon, Elin getting engaged to Joel, John's call in the night that Jennie had gone on ahead to Heaven, Mark calling to invite us for Christmas in CT, your conference call recently telling us about the trip you had together planned for us this month in Africa! You are all such thoughtful people and we love and appreciate you so much. Thanks to each of you for keeping in touch!
Communications have changed so drastically during my lifetime. I know I have told you that my mother never heard of the death of her parents until weeks after they occured, and the news was brought by a note sent to Koutiala and carried by Malien runner who went to get our mail every couple of weeks. She mourned alone there in that Malien village of Baramba, no possiblility of trips to the States in those days! What a contrast to today when we have SKYPE and phone calls and quick mail delivery and email and Facebook! It is not hard to stay in touch, and yet I often talk to older folks in our community here, who really have very little contact with their kids who live overseas or even in this country. They are just not communicators. I am so thankful for every communication we receive from each of you, so keep them coming. It seems to me a tragedy when families grow so far apart from each other, simply through lack of communication of any kind.
Prayer has always been a kind of communication in our family also, and how thankful we are for that. Every morning Dad and I pray for every single member of our family by name, as we pray together. Often at night, if I am wakeful, I resort to praying for you - and sometimes fall asleep in the middle of the list! You learned to pray when you were very small, and this is a great link of communication for all of us.
My only communication with my parents during the years they were in Africa and I in College in the U.S., was a once a week air letter from them. I always knew that that letter would be in my mailbox one day each week. There was not a lot of news for them to write about and it was always a family joke with my brother and sister and me, that Mom would usually have a couple of menus of meals she had cooked for Dad that week. After all, she had to fill up that space with something! The letter was always just one thin air sheet, typed on one side - that was all that could be sent for the airmail rate. And it was the sum total of the news I had from them during four years - that weekly letter. I too wrote to them and I doubt if my news was much more interesting. My life was lived very much apart from my parents my four years at Houghton College, but we did have that once a week link between us which helped us to know each other a bit. Sometimes I wish I had kept some of those old letters - but what with moving so much in my lifetime, things like that never got saved.
Phone calls were few and far between when you kids were in the States and we overseas. Again, the cost was prohibitive. But when one of you did call, we basked in the good feeling of that phone call for days afterwards! Now that we are living here in the States - and you all are living all over the US and the world - we cherish every phone call, SKYPE call, email and FB entry. We appreciate all of you so much and love the way all of you are committed to "keeping in touch".
Amazing really, considering the many years we have lived apart from each other, how close we all are as a family. We know families here who seldom hear from their kids - even here in the US. And yet a week seldom goes by that we do not have some kind of communication from each of you. We try to keep up our end of that communication also. Communication is the cement that hold families together, it seems to me.
During these years as a family, some communications stand out over others: Cheryl' s unexpected appendectomy, the birth of a new grandchild, Nathan's birth in the midst of bursting bombs in Lebanon, Elin getting engaged to Joel, John's call in the night that Jennie had gone on ahead to Heaven, Mark calling to invite us for Christmas in CT, your conference call recently telling us about the trip you had together planned for us this month in Africa! You are all such thoughtful people and we love and appreciate you so much. Thanks to each of you for keeping in touch!
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