The saying goes that Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.... and even when we are living and working for the Lord, some of those troubles dog our footsteps. Because of sin, we have to suffer - and during a lifetime of overseas ministry, we have had our share. However, since Dad and I both tend to be "half full glass people" (in contrast to half-empty glass people), we have been able to weather many storms and come out (without too many scars) on the other side. The very nature of world missions contributes to encountering conflict and we need to learn how to avoid it if possible - and deal with it if it occurs!
Just this week we participated in a panel for the missions department students at TFC. The subject was CONFLICT on the mission field and how to deal with it. I came across a helpful little book recently, and its basic premise is that there are hot country peoples and cold country peoples in the world. The cold country people are task oriented and the hot country people are relationally oriented. The ordinary cross cultural worker from the USA (a cold country), for example, is very task oriented. He is trained for that, and he is suddenly confronted with people in another country who are totally relationally oriented. If we think back to some conflicts we have been confronted with, we can see how these opposing views work against each other! Becoming relational in an African or Mid-Eastern society is so important, as all of you can attest to. Some international workers struggle with conflicts all their lives because they never understand this concept.
Conflicts are of many kinds: involving language or culture, with the local national church, with co-workers, both local and international; also the conflict of ideas and orientation (local vs American) and (in missions) even conflict with the home board. As international workers, we should not be surprised by conflicts we face - the NT is full of conflicts and we are constantly admonished by Scripture on how to deal with them the way the Lord intends.
After we left the USA - to embark on a lifetime of work overseas - our first time of testing came when we arrived in Paris and saw where we were expected to live. I have described it to you before - one very small room with two double beds for the four of us to sleep, study, play and what have you? The kitchen which we could see through a basement window was filthy - every plate of food arrived at our table in the dining room with a ring of grease around the edge. Soon both you girls had diahrrea and there were only cloth diapers in those days. Poor Dad - he could not understand a word being said around him and we had to also be studying French fulltime. I am sure he must have had some times when he wondered why he had ever signed up to be a missionary! We were in that living situation for two months, and then moved into a small apartment and things were better after that. At least we survived!
We arrived at Santidougou, working with the leaders of the three local churches in that district. The people had appointed church leaders and they had services and we joined them in worship and in learning the local language. Former missionaries had worked in Jula instead of learning the local language, and so the church had made up their own rules and lived by them and the "white people" did not know the difference. As we began to learn the language and ask questions and understand things, we found the church was full of crooked leaders: people with more than one wife, even the main leader of the churches had two wives (one was his church wife so we only saw her!) and there was a great deal of beer drinking, as native beer is part of the old Bobo culture. This all began to come out, and the fat was in the fire - as they say! One young pastor had only one official wife himself (and he was the president of the group of pastors). But he also helped train young girls to be Christian wives for our young men - and part of that training, it seems, was to personally instruct them sexually! This went along all right until one young fiancé found out that his fiancée was pregnant by the pastor, and he raised a palaver on the eve of the wedding. Dad helped them to decide that that wedding should not take place. And it took a while to straighten out thatr conflict!
Part of that whole palaver was a convocation by the director of the mission, and all the pastors and church leaders were present with us in the Santidougou church. The pregnant girl was also there and they called me to take her into a hut and examine her to make sure she was pregnant! Now I ask you.... I knew when I was pregnant myself - but sure did not know about her since my language was not strong then. But when I pulled up her skirts and checked her out, she was already several months along and so it was not hard to know she was pg! We landed up in the midst of that conflict - and this was the incident that made the church ask if I would have an engaged girls' school at Santidougou. This worked out better than giving these young girls to one pastor and his wife to disciple!
We went through many bouts of sickness also, and those were times of testing. Dad very frequently had malaria when we were new missionaries. He also had bouts of gout which were very painful and one time he even had to walk with crutches for a while! He was delivered from that and has not had gout in many years now. That is a very painful disease. Sickness in Africa comes with visitors - "the white man (or woman) is sick? We must go and visit them for their sickness!" What you really would like is to left to your misery in solitude! But what you had was a stream of sympathetic visitors, greeting you with the Bobo greetings and then sitting on the floor chatting with each other. A real social occasion for everybody - but you! Debbi had those awful burns and so did I. Cheryl's little black puppy bit her playfully and soon afterwards turned totally rabid! We all had to have shots - 18 or 21 of them depending on our weight. John, you were only about four and you hated going in every day to the dispensary to get those shots in your tummy! I had hepatitis so badly, someone packed a suitcase for me as they thought I should be evacuated to the States. But instead I stayed right there and laid flat all day and all night until I finally got back to my normal color again!
Personnel conflicts and testings are harder to bear sometimes than physical plagues. I will save that for next time...... In every situation - whether physical or other - God has made a way of escape and we came out on the other side stronger and wiser.....
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
TRAVEL and COMMUNICATION...............................................
My head whirls with the va et vient of the international workers in our world today. I hear So and So from "East Overshoes" is in Seattle speaking in some big church - and I am thinking I have been praying for those people as they just arrived back in Papua - or wherever! And then I go to church and see people from other parts of the globe whom we just farewelled last year, and here they are back again like a " bad penny" returning! But things have changed...... travel is easier and sometimes cheaper than it used to be. People are allowed to be more connected to their families and can get permission to go to weddings and funerals and graduations and so on and on. These changes are certainly not all bad. I had to learn to know my folks all over again after not seeing them for four of my changing teenage years. We were able to make it for some of your weddings, and that was a treat. But the down side is that it is hard enough for new people to learn a new culture and language, and if there are too many interruptions in that process, it is telling on the ministry on the field. But the present system is sure not going to change and we are glad for any visits we have with our kids, even as other parents are. And we are certainly looking forward to being with most of you overseas in a few months.
We were talking about travel and communication the other day together, and I decided to go back through the years and ruminate on the way things were, how they developed and the way they are today. I was reminded of this today when the SKYPE rang, I waited for the phone to pick it up (Dad was out visiting an ex-prisoner) and the voice I heard was a young man whom we had befriended and mentored years ago, who now lives in Ouaga. We had a nice long chat! And inside I mourned the fact that you kids all grew up not having that kind of privilege - to talk with us regularly and we with you.
Occasionally we would receive a phone call - but it was always because someone was engaged or getting married or had had surgery or some other momentous debate - because phone calls were so expensive.
To go way back in antiquity, I remember when I was a little kid and we had friends who had a "rumble seat" in their car. You probably never saw one. But for me that was a treat when those friends would take me for a ride in their rumble seat! As I grew up in Africa, most of our missionaries had pickup trucks. We kids used to ride in the back, surrounded by stacks of luggage and gas bottles and all covered with red dust at the end of the journey. At night my Dad would occasionally take some of us kids out hunting for deer with a searchlight, and we would stand up in the back of the pickup bracing ourselves against the cab, looking for animals. And that was fun!
Phone calls during your childhood and teen age years in Africa were reserved for sickness or death or some big event that was going to happen. When you had an emergency appendectomy, Cheryl, we got a phone call from the hospital and Aunt Evelyn and You talked to us briefly. The year you and Jennie got married, John, I had been teaching down in the Republic of Guinea, and when Dad met me at the airport, he gave me the news and said you were calling back so you could tell me your plans also. That was when you had a job in Puerto Rico and had to advance the date of your wedding which we had planned to attend.
Air letters were only supposed to take ten days to two weeks to arrive from America, but sometimes they were longer than that, and that is how we got your news. It was always a BIG DAY for us when one of those blue airmail letters was in our mailbag! There were not even air letters when I was in college, and my parents always wrote one page typed each week, typed on the thinnest paper they could find and sent by air to me in college. Postage was very expensive in those days also. But every week I received one of those air letters, regular as clockwork - for four years! No phone calls that I ever remember....
Today we have the blessing of faster mail, FB and emails, cheap phone calls and even seeing each other on SKYPE as we talk! What a communication revolution! Those old telegrams we used to get were sometimes really funny as the spelling would get mixed up with the transfer of language! But a letter from the U.S. took three weeks to arrive, so in case of an urgent message, a telegram was sent.
The only paved roads in our part of West Africa during those early years were the ones in large cities. Everything else was dirt in the dry season and mud in the rainy season. Do you remember the rain barriers?? You could never plan your hours of travel during rainy season. If there was the least suspicion of rain in the sky, the rain barrier would go up and no car or truck could travel on that dirt road until a little while after the rain ceased. So in making a long trip, this had to be taken account of - to have extra food and water to drink in case of rain stops.
In France we travelled by metro, and our metro stop in Paris was two long flights of stairs down into the ground! So when we went anywhere with you two heavy girls, we had to each carry one child and a stroller down into the metro stop and then at the destination climb up two long flights of steps to see daylight again. Needless to say, we only made those family trips that way when we had to. However, we did buy a VW Kombi in France and then we were all set. Arnolds, Bowers and we could all get into our bus on a Saturday and travel around the area seeing the sights. It sure made language study more interesting!
We took that Kombi on to Africa and used it our first term. For a time we also had a Jeep as the Kombi could not pull the heavy house trailer we used for teaching out in the villages, and so we used the Jeep for that.
Motor bikes or Yamaha dames made running around town easy. Dad and you kids all road those. I had never ridden a motorbike and was kind of afraid of them for fear I would slip in the sandy roads. But toward the end of our time in Burkina, I had been asked by a group in Sarafalao neighborhood in Bobo to help them start a church there. I attended and taught and helped in every way I could. But I had no car for a while as Dad would be in the bush on Sundays. So I finally learned to ride a motorbike so I could help out with that church plant! And I kind of enjoyed it. But really I liked my little Toyota the best of all our cars and I drove that to work at the translation office every day the last couple of years.
From childhoof I remember the washboard roads and the ferrys we had to cross in RCI and Guinea. But those were mostly a thing of the past as you kids were growing up.
We were not allowed to go to the States for anything in those days - even death of a family member. But later on we did get permission to go for weddings, using the month we had for vacation allowed us each year to make the trip. So things began to loosen up. And now I am not sure you have to get permission to go anywhere. We've come a long ways, Baby!!
We were talking about travel and communication the other day together, and I decided to go back through the years and ruminate on the way things were, how they developed and the way they are today. I was reminded of this today when the SKYPE rang, I waited for the phone to pick it up (Dad was out visiting an ex-prisoner) and the voice I heard was a young man whom we had befriended and mentored years ago, who now lives in Ouaga. We had a nice long chat! And inside I mourned the fact that you kids all grew up not having that kind of privilege - to talk with us regularly and we with you.
Occasionally we would receive a phone call - but it was always because someone was engaged or getting married or had had surgery or some other momentous debate - because phone calls were so expensive.
To go way back in antiquity, I remember when I was a little kid and we had friends who had a "rumble seat" in their car. You probably never saw one. But for me that was a treat when those friends would take me for a ride in their rumble seat! As I grew up in Africa, most of our missionaries had pickup trucks. We kids used to ride in the back, surrounded by stacks of luggage and gas bottles and all covered with red dust at the end of the journey. At night my Dad would occasionally take some of us kids out hunting for deer with a searchlight, and we would stand up in the back of the pickup bracing ourselves against the cab, looking for animals. And that was fun!
Phone calls during your childhood and teen age years in Africa were reserved for sickness or death or some big event that was going to happen. When you had an emergency appendectomy, Cheryl, we got a phone call from the hospital and Aunt Evelyn and You talked to us briefly. The year you and Jennie got married, John, I had been teaching down in the Republic of Guinea, and when Dad met me at the airport, he gave me the news and said you were calling back so you could tell me your plans also. That was when you had a job in Puerto Rico and had to advance the date of your wedding which we had planned to attend.
Air letters were only supposed to take ten days to two weeks to arrive from America, but sometimes they were longer than that, and that is how we got your news. It was always a BIG DAY for us when one of those blue airmail letters was in our mailbag! There were not even air letters when I was in college, and my parents always wrote one page typed each week, typed on the thinnest paper they could find and sent by air to me in college. Postage was very expensive in those days also. But every week I received one of those air letters, regular as clockwork - for four years! No phone calls that I ever remember....
Today we have the blessing of faster mail, FB and emails, cheap phone calls and even seeing each other on SKYPE as we talk! What a communication revolution! Those old telegrams we used to get were sometimes really funny as the spelling would get mixed up with the transfer of language! But a letter from the U.S. took three weeks to arrive, so in case of an urgent message, a telegram was sent.
The only paved roads in our part of West Africa during those early years were the ones in large cities. Everything else was dirt in the dry season and mud in the rainy season. Do you remember the rain barriers?? You could never plan your hours of travel during rainy season. If there was the least suspicion of rain in the sky, the rain barrier would go up and no car or truck could travel on that dirt road until a little while after the rain ceased. So in making a long trip, this had to be taken account of - to have extra food and water to drink in case of rain stops.
In France we travelled by metro, and our metro stop in Paris was two long flights of stairs down into the ground! So when we went anywhere with you two heavy girls, we had to each carry one child and a stroller down into the metro stop and then at the destination climb up two long flights of steps to see daylight again. Needless to say, we only made those family trips that way when we had to. However, we did buy a VW Kombi in France and then we were all set. Arnolds, Bowers and we could all get into our bus on a Saturday and travel around the area seeing the sights. It sure made language study more interesting!
We took that Kombi on to Africa and used it our first term. For a time we also had a Jeep as the Kombi could not pull the heavy house trailer we used for teaching out in the villages, and so we used the Jeep for that.
Motor bikes or Yamaha dames made running around town easy. Dad and you kids all road those. I had never ridden a motorbike and was kind of afraid of them for fear I would slip in the sandy roads. But toward the end of our time in Burkina, I had been asked by a group in Sarafalao neighborhood in Bobo to help them start a church there. I attended and taught and helped in every way I could. But I had no car for a while as Dad would be in the bush on Sundays. So I finally learned to ride a motorbike so I could help out with that church plant! And I kind of enjoyed it. But really I liked my little Toyota the best of all our cars and I drove that to work at the translation office every day the last couple of years.
From childhoof I remember the washboard roads and the ferrys we had to cross in RCI and Guinea. But those were mostly a thing of the past as you kids were growing up.
We were not allowed to go to the States for anything in those days - even death of a family member. But later on we did get permission to go for weddings, using the month we had for vacation allowed us each year to make the trip. So things began to loosen up. And now I am not sure you have to get permission to go anywhere. We've come a long ways, Baby!!
Thursday, November 3, 2011
TRAINING OTHERS......................................................
We were always sorry that we could not have worked under the Richard Johansons for a training period with them. They were at heart trainers of others. Of course, they were long gone and living in Florida by the time we got to the field. But vestiges of all their training and teaching they left behind. Unfortunately, they had loaded all their important language and teaching materials and books into a big trunk and took it with them on the ship they sailed on to leave Africa because of the approach of the Second World War. That boat sank - they were rescued, but all of their materials and treasures sank to the bottom of the sea, never to be recovered! Such was missions in those early war days!
So when we arrived, we had to start in from zero. A few other missionaries (including Grandpa and Grandma) occupied the mission station during those years after the war, but one by one they left - for retirement in the U.S. or to minister in other areas. And so we had to start at zero in many ways.
Teaching and training others is such an important function in life - wherever you live. All fathers and mothers should train their children, and we did our best with all of you. Parents train by example as well as words. We train through encouraging our children and showing them where they need to avoid pitfalls, through accepting them for who they are, occasionally correcting them and most of all loving them. We meet so many people in our lives here in the States who have no real love in their lives, and usually they are shattered people, living in an unwelcoming society.
Dad and I see you, our now grown children, training your children in the way they should go, and it delights our hearts. We are also surrounded with a level of society which lives without parental training or proper mentoring - and the results are awful. The Scripture tells us that we are to train our children in the way that they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from that. What a great promise!
Going into the situation that we did as new missionaries, we had a lot of training to do. Yusufu told me once that he had never been able to go far in school, but that he had had an education living with us and learning from us. He was just a gangly bush teenager when he came to work for us. He knew nothing and so we started with basics. Sweeping the floor. I had told him to pick up everything and sweep underneath and then put the item back in place. I saw him one day carefully pick up a dropped button, sweep underneath and then put it back again! He certainly learned that lesson well! Bit by bit, he learned to take care of the house and then to cook also. We lived in the bush and could not buy anything so everything had to be made from scratch including our bread. That was one thing I was not good at, making bread. And so Jessie Nehlsen's cook taught Yusufu, and as you can remember he made the best rolls and bread and raised doughnuts in the mission. Many other cooks learned from him also! And that is the kind of teaching we are admonished to do - teach others so that they in turn may teach others also.
Dad was so good at discipling young men in our tribe. He could see possibilities in people and would take them under his wing for a period of time until they could fly on their own. He did this with our young pastors. When they were just boys, Dad took an interest in them and then we sent them on to Bible School. And this training continued until now we have a great many Bobo Madare pastors. This is the way he trained Tite, when he was just a young boy. He was so bright and such a good student. Dad started to teach him English and we helped him get into the right schools. Dad also helped to train him to rein in his temper, as he had a quick temper. Today he is such a blessing to many throughout the world. But it started with basic training many years ago!
We had to work in local languages - French, Bobo, Jula - in order to train people with whom we lived and were involved. Teaching has always been my love and my calling, and so from the first I was involved in various levels of teaching - from children to young people to adults to pastoral training and finally to graduate study. I was blessed to be involved in various forms of teaching: actual teaching classes in French, Jula or Bobo; I also had input in training national teachers in these languages. I taught children and young people and adults. I taught women and men. It was a delight to prepare printed materials for these students in the various languages and then to teach others to teach, thus fulfilling God's Scriptural command - Teach faithful ones, who in turn will teach others. What a blessing for me.
In addition to writing and teaching from books, I was also able to teach by participating in the work of the church. I helped one church to form a Christian Ed committe - something they had never heard of. At their request, I was a member of that committee for a time to be a model of how it should run. I learned so much during those years - the local people taught me much.
As we all do, I made mistakes. I was pushed to supply Sunday School lessons for our six SS teachers in our district, and so I used a Child Evangelism flannelgraph series. This was exporting something to the church that was not transferrable. If I had it to do over again, I would have started with some basic local illustrations and items which could be better understood locally. I did develop some object lessons later, using local objects available right in their villages, and these worked well. It was my privilege for some years to teach CE at Maranatha Institute to young men and women coming from many areas of Burkina, Ivory Coast and Mali. Those were good years.
Dad was such a great model for the pastors in training and for young men in our area, He went to the bush with them, taught in our dining room at night, using a dull kerosene lamp in the middle of the table. Dad was an evangelist and he took young men with him and train them while doing it. He taught by example and by words and lessons. Everyone loved him.
In the latter years of our ministry in West Africa, when Dad was field director, I took on the task of training new missionaries. I had developed a whole cirriculum for that with lessons taught and recommended books on hand that would help them to learn culture and the ways people learn, etc; how to dress appropriately and act in an African context.
The year we went to Mali, I had the privilege of training our large group of new missionaries there also, using some of these same materials which I had used with our Burkina and Côte d'Ivoire missionaries. We had some great interaction and fun times together in all of these session in all three countries.
In latter years I got involved in TEE and then became Africa director for TEE and travelled extensively in Africa - West Africa, Congo, Gabon - to train others in TEE. Those were interesting, busy and good days! I learned a lot myself.
It was also a delight to me to be a member of the international board of the FATEAC in Abidjan, serving with pastors and teachers from all of our African countires in which we had work. Some of my teaching involved getting better training, and on one occasion I even travelled to Nigeria with an African counterpart. That was a unique experience!
I had the opportunity to serve with CPE and CEFCA in Ivory Coast, and was privileged to know many educators and Christian leaders from many African countires. What a blessing! I taught also for the Baptists in Ivory Coast, Burkina, Mali and Togo. So my teaching life in West Africa was such a blessing to me - I learned much and hopefully taught others some things that they have adapted in their ministry.
So when we arrived, we had to start in from zero. A few other missionaries (including Grandpa and Grandma) occupied the mission station during those years after the war, but one by one they left - for retirement in the U.S. or to minister in other areas. And so we had to start at zero in many ways.
Teaching and training others is such an important function in life - wherever you live. All fathers and mothers should train their children, and we did our best with all of you. Parents train by example as well as words. We train through encouraging our children and showing them where they need to avoid pitfalls, through accepting them for who they are, occasionally correcting them and most of all loving them. We meet so many people in our lives here in the States who have no real love in their lives, and usually they are shattered people, living in an unwelcoming society.
Dad and I see you, our now grown children, training your children in the way they should go, and it delights our hearts. We are also surrounded with a level of society which lives without parental training or proper mentoring - and the results are awful. The Scripture tells us that we are to train our children in the way that they should go and when they are old, they will not depart from that. What a great promise!
Going into the situation that we did as new missionaries, we had a lot of training to do. Yusufu told me once that he had never been able to go far in school, but that he had had an education living with us and learning from us. He was just a gangly bush teenager when he came to work for us. He knew nothing and so we started with basics. Sweeping the floor. I had told him to pick up everything and sweep underneath and then put the item back in place. I saw him one day carefully pick up a dropped button, sweep underneath and then put it back again! He certainly learned that lesson well! Bit by bit, he learned to take care of the house and then to cook also. We lived in the bush and could not buy anything so everything had to be made from scratch including our bread. That was one thing I was not good at, making bread. And so Jessie Nehlsen's cook taught Yusufu, and as you can remember he made the best rolls and bread and raised doughnuts in the mission. Many other cooks learned from him also! And that is the kind of teaching we are admonished to do - teach others so that they in turn may teach others also.
Dad was so good at discipling young men in our tribe. He could see possibilities in people and would take them under his wing for a period of time until they could fly on their own. He did this with our young pastors. When they were just boys, Dad took an interest in them and then we sent them on to Bible School. And this training continued until now we have a great many Bobo Madare pastors. This is the way he trained Tite, when he was just a young boy. He was so bright and such a good student. Dad started to teach him English and we helped him get into the right schools. Dad also helped to train him to rein in his temper, as he had a quick temper. Today he is such a blessing to many throughout the world. But it started with basic training many years ago!
We had to work in local languages - French, Bobo, Jula - in order to train people with whom we lived and were involved. Teaching has always been my love and my calling, and so from the first I was involved in various levels of teaching - from children to young people to adults to pastoral training and finally to graduate study. I was blessed to be involved in various forms of teaching: actual teaching classes in French, Jula or Bobo; I also had input in training national teachers in these languages. I taught children and young people and adults. I taught women and men. It was a delight to prepare printed materials for these students in the various languages and then to teach others to teach, thus fulfilling God's Scriptural command - Teach faithful ones, who in turn will teach others. What a blessing for me.
In addition to writing and teaching from books, I was also able to teach by participating in the work of the church. I helped one church to form a Christian Ed committe - something they had never heard of. At their request, I was a member of that committee for a time to be a model of how it should run. I learned so much during those years - the local people taught me much.
As we all do, I made mistakes. I was pushed to supply Sunday School lessons for our six SS teachers in our district, and so I used a Child Evangelism flannelgraph series. This was exporting something to the church that was not transferrable. If I had it to do over again, I would have started with some basic local illustrations and items which could be better understood locally. I did develop some object lessons later, using local objects available right in their villages, and these worked well. It was my privilege for some years to teach CE at Maranatha Institute to young men and women coming from many areas of Burkina, Ivory Coast and Mali. Those were good years.
Dad was such a great model for the pastors in training and for young men in our area, He went to the bush with them, taught in our dining room at night, using a dull kerosene lamp in the middle of the table. Dad was an evangelist and he took young men with him and train them while doing it. He taught by example and by words and lessons. Everyone loved him.
In the latter years of our ministry in West Africa, when Dad was field director, I took on the task of training new missionaries. I had developed a whole cirriculum for that with lessons taught and recommended books on hand that would help them to learn culture and the ways people learn, etc; how to dress appropriately and act in an African context.
The year we went to Mali, I had the privilege of training our large group of new missionaries there also, using some of these same materials which I had used with our Burkina and Côte d'Ivoire missionaries. We had some great interaction and fun times together in all of these session in all three countries.
In latter years I got involved in TEE and then became Africa director for TEE and travelled extensively in Africa - West Africa, Congo, Gabon - to train others in TEE. Those were interesting, busy and good days! I learned a lot myself.
It was also a delight to me to be a member of the international board of the FATEAC in Abidjan, serving with pastors and teachers from all of our African countires in which we had work. Some of my teaching involved getting better training, and on one occasion I even travelled to Nigeria with an African counterpart. That was a unique experience!
I had the opportunity to serve with CPE and CEFCA in Ivory Coast, and was privileged to know many educators and Christian leaders from many African countires. What a blessing! I taught also for the Baptists in Ivory Coast, Burkina, Mali and Togo. So my teaching life in West Africa was such a blessing to me - I learned much and hopefully taught others some things that they have adapted in their ministry.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
VISION, Cont'd .........................................................................
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!!
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!!
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
VISION - AND HARD WORK!! .......................................................
The Christian and Missionary Alliance was born of a vision - the vision of a Presbyterian pastor who left his formal church setting and established a ministry for Christ that would eventually circle the globe! I am sure some people in those days questioned his actions...others probably thought what he was doing would amount to nothing (people cannot readily understand another person's vision)... and there were those who no longer associated with him because he left a fashionable church in order to minister to the "down and outers" of that period, as well as reaching out to the whole world. But the vision was of God and there were those who joined him, thankfully, so that today we have a viable Alliance witness in many countries of the world, as well as in the United States.
Recently during our visit in Nyack, we were amazed to see the vision of those leading the College and Seminary. The outreach back into Manhattan (where it all started!) is a thrilling chapter in the history of the college. God's work, whether here in North America or in the "uttermost parts" of the world, needs people of vision even today!
The work of the Alliance in West Africa also started with people of vision. Robert S. Roseberry and his wife (whom he called "Madame") were some of the first pioneers, along with the Ryan brothers. They opened up this new area of Africa to the Gospel. I remember them well from my girlhood. They were strong men with strong wills, but very kindly people as well. They loved children and we kids were all close to them and liked it when they visited our parents' work. The name "Roseberry" was a little too hard for a West African to pronounce and so they called him "Loosebelly", never dreaming what that meant in English!
When we arrived in West Africa in 1959, God's vision of what He was going to do in that part of the world had already begun to manifest itself. The Dogon people and the Bwa people groups were turning to Christ in large numbers. Missionaries in those two large people groups of West Africa learned the local language, thus identifying themselves with their people and in both cases they had multiple staffs to help in the work of evangelism and then training among these peoples.
However, such was not the case in the work among our people, then called the Black Bobo (or Bobo fing in Jula). This people group was looked on as being very backward, by both the colonial rulers and the missionary staff. They had very strong fetish worship, very few of their number were educated in French. In my youth the people wore very little clothes. The men wore a handmade jockstrap and the women wore large bunches of leaves fore and aft, tied together around the hips with strong vines. They also pierced the skin below the bottom lip of every baby girl born, put a small stick in to stretch it and kept making the stick larger as the skin stretched. And finally when the girl arrived at puberty she got a round white smooth stone to put into the hole. Years later when the government made a ruling that they could no longer scar their children (each Bobo - male and female - had three gashes given them on each cheek to mark them as belonging to the Bobo tribe) nor could the women wear their lip stones, it was difficult for the women to drink water as it would always partially trickle out the permanent hole in the skin below their bottom lip. So the Bobo people were looked on as a wild, uncivilized bunch!
The Richard Johansons worked among these people, learned their language, saw a few people want to "walk the Jesus road", started short term Bible Schools, and even started the translation of the Bible for these people. They had a vision for the Bobos and they began to see that vision come to life - but their ministry was interrupted (and later terminated) because of World War II and then sickness which prevented their return. You remember that all their language materials sank to the bottom of the ocean when their ship was torpedoed on their way to the U.S.!!
By the time we arrived in 1959, there were very few believers left and just a few stray pieces of literature that had been produced by the Johansons. The reasons for this were 1) the departure of the Johansons who had a vision for these people and 2) the Second World War which totally interrupted this fledgling work. When the Richard Johansons, living in Florida, heard that we were going to work with the Bobo people, they were overjoyed and always maintained contact with us until their death. When we were appointed to this tribe, we started right at the bottom. There was no vision on the part of anyone for a large group of Bobos coming to Christ. There was no vision for the Bobo Madare people - where there is no vision, the Bible tells us, the people perish!
The world is not full of visionaries. But interestingly enough, Dad and I were both visionaries, in different ways! Dad always has a vision to see the church established, to envision what a person can be when he comes to Christ. He has always had a vision to see people saved and mature in Christ. I, on the other hand, have a vision for seeing people maturing in Christ and helping to provide the programs and teaching methods for that to happen. We had already had a vision of what God could do during our home service. Dad picked out a small city in central Vermont, Rutland, and felt God leading us there to start a church in an area where the Christian and Missionary Alliance was unknown. God affirmed our vision as He helped us to plant that church which still stands today.
Amd so we went to work in accordance with the vision God had given to us (and the assignment of the mission) with the goal of seeing a healthy church grow in this unreached people group. We never dreamed what God would accomplish in that area, and today we marvel as we hear of the ongoing of His work among our beloved Bobos.
So we had come to Africa as workers, with one vision: to see a great church raised up among the Bobo people. This, by the way, was a last minute field assignment as we had been assigned to the girls' school in Mali, and at the last minute the field changed our stationing and asked us to work with the Bobo people. We got this assignment just before we left France on a ship headed for Africa. And the change was certainly of the Lord. (to be continued)
Recently during our visit in Nyack, we were amazed to see the vision of those leading the College and Seminary. The outreach back into Manhattan (where it all started!) is a thrilling chapter in the history of the college. God's work, whether here in North America or in the "uttermost parts" of the world, needs people of vision even today!
The work of the Alliance in West Africa also started with people of vision. Robert S. Roseberry and his wife (whom he called "Madame") were some of the first pioneers, along with the Ryan brothers. They opened up this new area of Africa to the Gospel. I remember them well from my girlhood. They were strong men with strong wills, but very kindly people as well. They loved children and we kids were all close to them and liked it when they visited our parents' work. The name "Roseberry" was a little too hard for a West African to pronounce and so they called him "Loosebelly", never dreaming what that meant in English!
When we arrived in West Africa in 1959, God's vision of what He was going to do in that part of the world had already begun to manifest itself. The Dogon people and the Bwa people groups were turning to Christ in large numbers. Missionaries in those two large people groups of West Africa learned the local language, thus identifying themselves with their people and in both cases they had multiple staffs to help in the work of evangelism and then training among these peoples.
However, such was not the case in the work among our people, then called the Black Bobo (or Bobo fing in Jula). This people group was looked on as being very backward, by both the colonial rulers and the missionary staff. They had very strong fetish worship, very few of their number were educated in French. In my youth the people wore very little clothes. The men wore a handmade jockstrap and the women wore large bunches of leaves fore and aft, tied together around the hips with strong vines. They also pierced the skin below the bottom lip of every baby girl born, put a small stick in to stretch it and kept making the stick larger as the skin stretched. And finally when the girl arrived at puberty she got a round white smooth stone to put into the hole. Years later when the government made a ruling that they could no longer scar their children (each Bobo - male and female - had three gashes given them on each cheek to mark them as belonging to the Bobo tribe) nor could the women wear their lip stones, it was difficult for the women to drink water as it would always partially trickle out the permanent hole in the skin below their bottom lip. So the Bobo people were looked on as a wild, uncivilized bunch!
The Richard Johansons worked among these people, learned their language, saw a few people want to "walk the Jesus road", started short term Bible Schools, and even started the translation of the Bible for these people. They had a vision for the Bobos and they began to see that vision come to life - but their ministry was interrupted (and later terminated) because of World War II and then sickness which prevented their return. You remember that all their language materials sank to the bottom of the ocean when their ship was torpedoed on their way to the U.S.!!
By the time we arrived in 1959, there were very few believers left and just a few stray pieces of literature that had been produced by the Johansons. The reasons for this were 1) the departure of the Johansons who had a vision for these people and 2) the Second World War which totally interrupted this fledgling work. When the Richard Johansons, living in Florida, heard that we were going to work with the Bobo people, they were overjoyed and always maintained contact with us until their death. When we were appointed to this tribe, we started right at the bottom. There was no vision on the part of anyone for a large group of Bobos coming to Christ. There was no vision for the Bobo Madare people - where there is no vision, the Bible tells us, the people perish!
The world is not full of visionaries. But interestingly enough, Dad and I were both visionaries, in different ways! Dad always has a vision to see the church established, to envision what a person can be when he comes to Christ. He has always had a vision to see people saved and mature in Christ. I, on the other hand, have a vision for seeing people maturing in Christ and helping to provide the programs and teaching methods for that to happen. We had already had a vision of what God could do during our home service. Dad picked out a small city in central Vermont, Rutland, and felt God leading us there to start a church in an area where the Christian and Missionary Alliance was unknown. God affirmed our vision as He helped us to plant that church which still stands today.
Amd so we went to work in accordance with the vision God had given to us (and the assignment of the mission) with the goal of seeing a healthy church grow in this unreached people group. We never dreamed what God would accomplish in that area, and today we marvel as we hear of the ongoing of His work among our beloved Bobos.
So we had come to Africa as workers, with one vision: to see a great church raised up among the Bobo people. This, by the way, was a last minute field assignment as we had been assigned to the girls' school in Mali, and at the last minute the field changed our stationing and asked us to work with the Bobo people. We got this assignment just before we left France on a ship headed for Africa. And the change was certainly of the Lord. (to be continued)
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
SIDA!! .................................................................................
The latter years of our life in Burkina were punctuated by the world plague, SIDA (AIDS). Dad had treated every disease imaginable during his years as village doctor. Only one case of cancer that we remember, a young teenager who had cancer of the jaw. His old father brought him regularly on the back of his broken down bicycle and Dad treated the sores in his mouth. The child finally died. . Other than that one case, we did not see cancer patients. But there were plenty of other dieases: tuberculosis, all the ordinary measles and mumps and chicken pox, tons of malaria in all stages, pneumonia, and the list goes on and on. Dad did what he knew how to do, asked other regular nurses for help in some instances and used up thousands of rolls of bandages, prepared by the women in the States, to cover the salve and sulfa powder he put on the horrible ulcers that were so prevalent in our area.
We have written about the young man, a pastor's son from Burkina, who was dying in an Abidjan hospital and we sent home on the train to die in peace. That was probably the first case of SIDA we recognized. But the government health authoriities were very aware of this scourge and were trying to inform school authorities of the danger to young people indulging in sexual encounters with various partners, etc. I was asked at one point by the Alliance school authorities to give some teaching to the junior high age kids from our area of town, so I prepared some lessons and held the classes in a Maranatha Institute classoom. Robert Sanou also organized a team with our nurses to go to schools around town and into the bush to inform and educate young people of the dangers of SIDA.
About the same time, I had had an encounter with the Minister of Health in the country, and during a mission conference session in Ouagadougou he came at our invitation to speak to us as missionaries about the spreading disease and what to do. I can still remember his one statement: "You missionaries are the technicians of the soul!" He knew that a change of heart and lifestyle was the only way to stem the terrible tide of SIDA and he encouraged us to help in this battle.
We had so many sad experiences with friends who did not heed the warnings about promiscuous sexual activity, and ended up with SIDA. One sad case was the son of old Moïse Traoré, an elderly well known Bwa Alliance pastor. He sent word to our house one day that he wanted to talk to Dad and could he come to his home? He wanted me to come too as he could not express himself in French so wanted to talk in Jula and have me translate for Dad. So I was witness to the whole scene. His son was a high school graduate and had also graduated from Bible School, he was a young pastor at that time. Old Moïse asked his son to sit in on the session, as we sat in a dusky little mud plastered room on little stools. Some years before when Dad was field director Moïse had laid Dad out in lavendar about some situation concerning the Mission. He had lived with the conviction of what he had done and said at that time for many years, and he wanted to confess and make things right now as an old man. He wanted his son to be a witness to his sin and the confession and forgiveness of that sin. Dad readily forgave him, they prayed and hugged and the son was witness to it all.
The sad part of the story is that the son went on to be a pastor, but did not walk in the ways of his father. He pastored in Ouagadougou and we kept hearing that he was ill and could not get over his sickness. As he was on his deathbed we heard that the disease he had was SIDA, because of the immoral sexual contacts he had had. What a waste of a life that should have been lived for God. These kinds of situations were what was hard for us in our ministry in Africa.
A young Mossi boy worked as a yardman for Tim Albright, and so the year we took over their house and CAMA work during their furlough, we got to know Pierre very well. He was a bright, fun person and a good worker - he lived in a little house in our yard so we knew him well. Later he went on to Bible School and trained to be a pastor. He had a church in Ouagadougou. But again, he succumbed to AIDS and died, still a young man.
Job, Pastor Simeon's son, was such a pathetic case. I went to visit him at Santidougou a couple times, but Dad went regularly. He would take him little food items that he craved and gave him a comfortable mattress to rest on as he was a bed ridden case. Again, he became nothing but skin and bones and finally succumbed to the dread disease.
Another case was the daughter of church elder, Gédéon, in Bobo, a family I had known since I was a child. Monique was a beautiful girl, got involved with an older man - not a Christian. Lived in Ouaga with this man and finally came home very sick. I was at home alone (Dad was in the bush preaching) when Monique was brought to my door with two of her brothers - they were holding her up on a bike. Her skin was almost too hot to touch, she was skin and bones, her eyes white in their sockets. I quickly got her and the others into my little car and took off for the guard pharmacy, it was a Sunday. They gave her transfusions and sent us home. I arranged for the male nurse to go to their yard again to give her more transfusions, but it was too late for her - she too died a painful death.
Eli Sanou's brother, Samson, was a tall fine looking young man, well educated. His Dad had worked for my parents when I was a teenager and his mother was my girlhood friend so I knew the family well. Samson went off to Ouaga to work in a job there. Like many, he fell into sexual promiscuity and he also died of SIDA.
In our later years of ministry in Burkina, we lived in the city and we had local TV in our home. One evening we were watching the news and there was a young singer on the screen. He was an African, a Sanou, and he had the most beautiful voice, singing ballad type songs. I can still see him on that screen - they had him poling a boat down the Seine River in Paris as he sang his ballad. He finally came back to Burkina, married and had a child. His wife was a beautiful, educated woman. They were actually relatives of Pastor Prosper Sanou. Dad heard that this young man, Sintala Sanou, was very ill and he wanted to go and pray for him, asking Prosper to take him there. Dad said it was the most awful sight to see this young man (he was actually a Burkina Army officer) now lying on a grass mat on a mud floor wrapped in a scanty cloth - burning to the touch and his eyes rolled back in his head. Again - SIDA! He had a military funeral which Dad attended and the wife and daughter sponsored a musical event in a public garden in Bobo which Dad attended also. Some time later the beautiful wife died - with the inevitable SIDA.
We had a very dear friend, Soungalo Paul, who first came to study at Maranatha after he was saved and felt called to Christian ministry. He married a good friend of mine, a Mossi young woman, and the two of them went off to Aibidjan to study at the FATEAC. His level of education was much too high for Maranatha, and they seemed like such a promising couple for ministry. We visited them in Abidjan - the Bobo students and we always got together down there and had long conversations about the church at home, etc. Towards the end of their schooling, during summer vacation, Paul became very sick. Dad took him to a doctor and after examination they discovered that he had some kind of a blood disease. They checked him for AIDS but it was not that. We were going to Ouaga for a few days to be with you folks, Clousers, and stayed out at the SIL guest house. Since we were going to be away, we arranged for Paul and Sita, his wife, to come and stay in our home while we were gone. I stocked the frig with nourishing food and we thought this would help him to recover a bit during the several days we were gone. Paul became very sick and since my little car was in the garage Yakuba, Paul's friend and ours, called us in Ouaga and asked if they could take him in our car to the doctor. So we agreed and they did that.
One morning we had an early knock at our SIL room door - it was Steve, and he came with the terrible news that Paul had just died! Well, we packed up immediately and took off for home. What a sad situation. We were in the midst of mourning for days with people coming and going. I will never forget that funeral. Paul's body was swathed in white cloth in an open casket, and Yabuba Hema stood right beside the casket looking at him the whole service. They had been such close friends. Paul had a marvelous conversion story, having been brought up to manhood as a Muslim, he was also well educated. But he heard the Gospel and became a follower of Christ. We all had such hopes for his future in the ministry. But God's ways are not always our ways, and we had to be content to say " Goodbye" to our dear friend as he went to be with His Saviour in a place where there is no sickness or death.
So we had many times of sadness in connection with SIDA. No doubt the young population in Burkina has been decimated by this dread disease, as has happened in many countries of the world.
We have written about the young man, a pastor's son from Burkina, who was dying in an Abidjan hospital and we sent home on the train to die in peace. That was probably the first case of SIDA we recognized. But the government health authoriities were very aware of this scourge and were trying to inform school authorities of the danger to young people indulging in sexual encounters with various partners, etc. I was asked at one point by the Alliance school authorities to give some teaching to the junior high age kids from our area of town, so I prepared some lessons and held the classes in a Maranatha Institute classoom. Robert Sanou also organized a team with our nurses to go to schools around town and into the bush to inform and educate young people of the dangers of SIDA.
About the same time, I had had an encounter with the Minister of Health in the country, and during a mission conference session in Ouagadougou he came at our invitation to speak to us as missionaries about the spreading disease and what to do. I can still remember his one statement: "You missionaries are the technicians of the soul!" He knew that a change of heart and lifestyle was the only way to stem the terrible tide of SIDA and he encouraged us to help in this battle.
We had so many sad experiences with friends who did not heed the warnings about promiscuous sexual activity, and ended up with SIDA. One sad case was the son of old Moïse Traoré, an elderly well known Bwa Alliance pastor. He sent word to our house one day that he wanted to talk to Dad and could he come to his home? He wanted me to come too as he could not express himself in French so wanted to talk in Jula and have me translate for Dad. So I was witness to the whole scene. His son was a high school graduate and had also graduated from Bible School, he was a young pastor at that time. Old Moïse asked his son to sit in on the session, as we sat in a dusky little mud plastered room on little stools. Some years before when Dad was field director Moïse had laid Dad out in lavendar about some situation concerning the Mission. He had lived with the conviction of what he had done and said at that time for many years, and he wanted to confess and make things right now as an old man. He wanted his son to be a witness to his sin and the confession and forgiveness of that sin. Dad readily forgave him, they prayed and hugged and the son was witness to it all.
The sad part of the story is that the son went on to be a pastor, but did not walk in the ways of his father. He pastored in Ouagadougou and we kept hearing that he was ill and could not get over his sickness. As he was on his deathbed we heard that the disease he had was SIDA, because of the immoral sexual contacts he had had. What a waste of a life that should have been lived for God. These kinds of situations were what was hard for us in our ministry in Africa.
A young Mossi boy worked as a yardman for Tim Albright, and so the year we took over their house and CAMA work during their furlough, we got to know Pierre very well. He was a bright, fun person and a good worker - he lived in a little house in our yard so we knew him well. Later he went on to Bible School and trained to be a pastor. He had a church in Ouagadougou. But again, he succumbed to AIDS and died, still a young man.
Job, Pastor Simeon's son, was such a pathetic case. I went to visit him at Santidougou a couple times, but Dad went regularly. He would take him little food items that he craved and gave him a comfortable mattress to rest on as he was a bed ridden case. Again, he became nothing but skin and bones and finally succumbed to the dread disease.
Another case was the daughter of church elder, Gédéon, in Bobo, a family I had known since I was a child. Monique was a beautiful girl, got involved with an older man - not a Christian. Lived in Ouaga with this man and finally came home very sick. I was at home alone (Dad was in the bush preaching) when Monique was brought to my door with two of her brothers - they were holding her up on a bike. Her skin was almost too hot to touch, she was skin and bones, her eyes white in their sockets. I quickly got her and the others into my little car and took off for the guard pharmacy, it was a Sunday. They gave her transfusions and sent us home. I arranged for the male nurse to go to their yard again to give her more transfusions, but it was too late for her - she too died a painful death.
Eli Sanou's brother, Samson, was a tall fine looking young man, well educated. His Dad had worked for my parents when I was a teenager and his mother was my girlhood friend so I knew the family well. Samson went off to Ouaga to work in a job there. Like many, he fell into sexual promiscuity and he also died of SIDA.
In our later years of ministry in Burkina, we lived in the city and we had local TV in our home. One evening we were watching the news and there was a young singer on the screen. He was an African, a Sanou, and he had the most beautiful voice, singing ballad type songs. I can still see him on that screen - they had him poling a boat down the Seine River in Paris as he sang his ballad. He finally came back to Burkina, married and had a child. His wife was a beautiful, educated woman. They were actually relatives of Pastor Prosper Sanou. Dad heard that this young man, Sintala Sanou, was very ill and he wanted to go and pray for him, asking Prosper to take him there. Dad said it was the most awful sight to see this young man (he was actually a Burkina Army officer) now lying on a grass mat on a mud floor wrapped in a scanty cloth - burning to the touch and his eyes rolled back in his head. Again - SIDA! He had a military funeral which Dad attended and the wife and daughter sponsored a musical event in a public garden in Bobo which Dad attended also. Some time later the beautiful wife died - with the inevitable SIDA.
We had a very dear friend, Soungalo Paul, who first came to study at Maranatha after he was saved and felt called to Christian ministry. He married a good friend of mine, a Mossi young woman, and the two of them went off to Aibidjan to study at the FATEAC. His level of education was much too high for Maranatha, and they seemed like such a promising couple for ministry. We visited them in Abidjan - the Bobo students and we always got together down there and had long conversations about the church at home, etc. Towards the end of their schooling, during summer vacation, Paul became very sick. Dad took him to a doctor and after examination they discovered that he had some kind of a blood disease. They checked him for AIDS but it was not that. We were going to Ouaga for a few days to be with you folks, Clousers, and stayed out at the SIL guest house. Since we were going to be away, we arranged for Paul and Sita, his wife, to come and stay in our home while we were gone. I stocked the frig with nourishing food and we thought this would help him to recover a bit during the several days we were gone. Paul became very sick and since my little car was in the garage Yakuba, Paul's friend and ours, called us in Ouaga and asked if they could take him in our car to the doctor. So we agreed and they did that.
One morning we had an early knock at our SIL room door - it was Steve, and he came with the terrible news that Paul had just died! Well, we packed up immediately and took off for home. What a sad situation. We were in the midst of mourning for days with people coming and going. I will never forget that funeral. Paul's body was swathed in white cloth in an open casket, and Yabuba Hema stood right beside the casket looking at him the whole service. They had been such close friends. Paul had a marvelous conversion story, having been brought up to manhood as a Muslim, he was also well educated. But he heard the Gospel and became a follower of Christ. We all had such hopes for his future in the ministry. But God's ways are not always our ways, and we had to be content to say " Goodbye" to our dear friend as he went to be with His Saviour in a place where there is no sickness or death.
So we had many times of sadness in connection with SIDA. No doubt the young population in Burkina has been decimated by this dread disease, as has happened in many countries of the world.
Monday, October 24, 2011
THIS AND THAT ................................................................
Dad and I were just talking this afternoon and reminding each other of some of our experiences with strange situations through the years. So I thought I would share a few of those with you today.
I thing you kids were all away at school when I had the little orphaned baby to take care of at Santidougou. The mother had died when the baby was only a couple days old, the father was not able to handle the situation and neither was anyone in the family. So I offered to take care of the baby. We fixed up a little bed for her with lots of soft baby blankets so the wee little one would feel secure. I hunted out diapers and baby clothes I had from you girls, and took care of her at our house until a solution could be found for her. Our yardman and his wife had not had any children and wanted a baby and so it was finally arranged that they "adopt" the baby - nothing official, except in the eyes of the church and the community. The baby was actually from Dafinso from a Christian family there. And so I lost my baby - but watched her grow up in the yard next to ours.
We had to deal with a lot of deception when we went to live with the Bobos, although we were not saware of it at that time. But we found out many things later on as we learned the language. No missionary had spoken the local language in Santidougou for years - since the departure of the Richard Johansons during the Second World War - and so everything went through translation, and the missionaries were basically told in Jula what the local people wanted them to hear.
When we first arrived, there was Yusufu, the lay preacher. He had featured in a field book of testimonies written by missionaries, and he was a kind little man from Kuruna, with a wife about his age. He preached often in the church and the district. After we had been there a few years, we found out that he had a second wife - one for church and one who stayed home in his town of Kuruna! And had his children! So he lost face, and went with the Apostolics who came into the area about that same time.
Then there was Daouda from the village. I had known him as a teenager and liked his wife. They did not have any children, but finally a baby was born! Everyone was very happy - in fact, they brought the baby to the church to be dedicated. Later we found out that actually it was not his wife we knew who gave birth to the baby, but another wife whom he had taken on the side. But the first wife brought the baby to the church as her own to be dedicated. Only the missionaries - us! - were in ignorance!
Paul worked for my parents when I was a teenager at Santidougou. My mom taught him to cook and he made the best bread around! Plus cooked regular meals for us. He was from the town of Leguema but lived at Santidougou because of his work with us. When we first went to Santidougou, Grandma had taken on Yusufu as a houseboy and taught him a few things about cleaning the house. But she suggested we also take Paul on as cook since we were in language study and needed to spend our time in that. He had deteriorated greatly since my mom had had him. His clothes were always unkempt and he had also become a big man in the village. So he would come to work in the morning, get the fire started in the outside kitchen and set water to boiling for doing the dishes. But soon after he would be off to the village or across the road to take care of all his own affairs. I would try to talk to him, but by then he had become a big man in the village and felt that he was in charge not us - even though we paid him a salary to be there to work. One thing he was still great at - he made the best bread you ever tasted. So I had him teach Yusufu how to make that bread recipe. We finally had to tell him that his affairs were too many for him to be working for us and dismissed him. He was not happy, but it was for the best. He too took a second wife who could have children for him, as he and his first wife had had to adopt two children from other tribes as she could not have children.
Yusufu the lay preacher and Paul and some other dissidents got connected with another group which never was very strong, but they did have regular church meetings also, and I think they are still in existence, the Apostolic Church.
There was another Alliance preacher, Michel from Sekwona, and when it was found out that he smoked a pipe, he too left the Alliance and joined the Apostolics. And so the Apostolic church grew, thanks to the Alliance dissidents! In later years the Apostolics grew quite large in Ouaga and they also sent missionaries to our area to work. To my knowledge they are a recognized church there in the Protestant community of Burkina.
Another strange thing that happened back when Dad was first field director and we were living in Bobo. The Boni family from the Bwa tribe were a very well known political family and were Protestants in name at least. There was a Boni son, kind of a playboy, and during an incident in a local night club in Bobo (the 421 Club) this young man was shot and killed. They came to the mission to arrange a funeral for him and to find a pastor to preach the funeral sermon! Wow - that was a big responsibility for a young missionary. So Dad quickly got togerther a message (which he still remembers) - a real Gospel message as he had all those unbelievers there as a captive audience - and he took care of the funeral and gave his message that day. The Bobo church was packed out with dignitaries as the Bonis were very popular people in the government of Burkina (Upper Volta at that time). The father was even talked about as being a candidate for president of the country.
When we talk together, discussing all of the interesting experiences of our lives past, we are grateful for the Lord's leading in so many unexpected ways. God gave us wisdom even as young missionaries when we walked into difficult situations. And now God is giving us different and new (to us) ministries right here where we live in this insignifcant little town of Toccoa. Thanks to all of you, our children, we can also look forward to a great visit to our origins in Boboland! God is good - all the time....
I thing you kids were all away at school when I had the little orphaned baby to take care of at Santidougou. The mother had died when the baby was only a couple days old, the father was not able to handle the situation and neither was anyone in the family. So I offered to take care of the baby. We fixed up a little bed for her with lots of soft baby blankets so the wee little one would feel secure. I hunted out diapers and baby clothes I had from you girls, and took care of her at our house until a solution could be found for her. Our yardman and his wife had not had any children and wanted a baby and so it was finally arranged that they "adopt" the baby - nothing official, except in the eyes of the church and the community. The baby was actually from Dafinso from a Christian family there. And so I lost my baby - but watched her grow up in the yard next to ours.
We had to deal with a lot of deception when we went to live with the Bobos, although we were not saware of it at that time. But we found out many things later on as we learned the language. No missionary had spoken the local language in Santidougou for years - since the departure of the Richard Johansons during the Second World War - and so everything went through translation, and the missionaries were basically told in Jula what the local people wanted them to hear.
When we first arrived, there was Yusufu, the lay preacher. He had featured in a field book of testimonies written by missionaries, and he was a kind little man from Kuruna, with a wife about his age. He preached often in the church and the district. After we had been there a few years, we found out that he had a second wife - one for church and one who stayed home in his town of Kuruna! And had his children! So he lost face, and went with the Apostolics who came into the area about that same time.
Then there was Daouda from the village. I had known him as a teenager and liked his wife. They did not have any children, but finally a baby was born! Everyone was very happy - in fact, they brought the baby to the church to be dedicated. Later we found out that actually it was not his wife we knew who gave birth to the baby, but another wife whom he had taken on the side. But the first wife brought the baby to the church as her own to be dedicated. Only the missionaries - us! - were in ignorance!
Paul worked for my parents when I was a teenager at Santidougou. My mom taught him to cook and he made the best bread around! Plus cooked regular meals for us. He was from the town of Leguema but lived at Santidougou because of his work with us. When we first went to Santidougou, Grandma had taken on Yusufu as a houseboy and taught him a few things about cleaning the house. But she suggested we also take Paul on as cook since we were in language study and needed to spend our time in that. He had deteriorated greatly since my mom had had him. His clothes were always unkempt and he had also become a big man in the village. So he would come to work in the morning, get the fire started in the outside kitchen and set water to boiling for doing the dishes. But soon after he would be off to the village or across the road to take care of all his own affairs. I would try to talk to him, but by then he had become a big man in the village and felt that he was in charge not us - even though we paid him a salary to be there to work. One thing he was still great at - he made the best bread you ever tasted. So I had him teach Yusufu how to make that bread recipe. We finally had to tell him that his affairs were too many for him to be working for us and dismissed him. He was not happy, but it was for the best. He too took a second wife who could have children for him, as he and his first wife had had to adopt two children from other tribes as she could not have children.
Yusufu the lay preacher and Paul and some other dissidents got connected with another group which never was very strong, but they did have regular church meetings also, and I think they are still in existence, the Apostolic Church.
There was another Alliance preacher, Michel from Sekwona, and when it was found out that he smoked a pipe, he too left the Alliance and joined the Apostolics. And so the Apostolic church grew, thanks to the Alliance dissidents! In later years the Apostolics grew quite large in Ouaga and they also sent missionaries to our area to work. To my knowledge they are a recognized church there in the Protestant community of Burkina.
Another strange thing that happened back when Dad was first field director and we were living in Bobo. The Boni family from the Bwa tribe were a very well known political family and were Protestants in name at least. There was a Boni son, kind of a playboy, and during an incident in a local night club in Bobo (the 421 Club) this young man was shot and killed. They came to the mission to arrange a funeral for him and to find a pastor to preach the funeral sermon! Wow - that was a big responsibility for a young missionary. So Dad quickly got togerther a message (which he still remembers) - a real Gospel message as he had all those unbelievers there as a captive audience - and he took care of the funeral and gave his message that day. The Bobo church was packed out with dignitaries as the Bonis were very popular people in the government of Burkina (Upper Volta at that time). The father was even talked about as being a candidate for president of the country.
When we talk together, discussing all of the interesting experiences of our lives past, we are grateful for the Lord's leading in so many unexpected ways. God gave us wisdom even as young missionaries when we walked into difficult situations. And now God is giving us different and new (to us) ministries right here where we live in this insignifcant little town of Toccoa. Thanks to all of you, our children, we can also look forward to a great visit to our origins in Boboland! God is good - all the time....
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