Home Visit

When I first moved to West Africa, one of my roles on the team was to spend time with our team’s ministry to orphans and infants in distress. My task was to observe, participate, and look for ways to make the program better. We Americans are always looking for ways to improve things, to make them more efficient and productive. 

One of the first things I noticed was that the women who run the day-to-day operations of the infants in distress program spent the vast majority of their time doing home visits. They would hop on their motos, drive out to distant villages, and visit the children and their families in their home environment. The purpose, from my understanding, was to ensure that the children’s home environments were safe and sanitary. The women would spend five minutes checking to see if the baby’s bottles were cleaned properly, give a brief hygiene lesson, and then spend forty-five extra minutes just talking with the family and eating peanuts provided as a hospitality gift. Because of the distance of these villages, sometimes the women would be out all day and only see two or three kids. There had to be a better way to do this without wasting so much time and gas, I thought. This was the first part of the program that needed to be fixed, if you asked me. 

I could not have been more wrong. 

The longer I lived in Africa and the more time I spent with these women in their homes and in their lives, the more I learned something incredible about African culture. Something that my productivity-driven American eyes could not see at first. 

About six months into my time in Africa, I had been to most of my African friend’s homes at one time or another. All except one. I wondered secretly why she had never invited me, and so I kept waiting for her invitation. One day, she timidly approached me, as if she wanted to tell me something important but was afraid of hurting my feelings. “Ashli,” she said quietly, “why have you never come to my house?” 

Here I was in my American mindset, waiting for an invitation. There she was, in her African mindset, waiting for me to take the initiative to visit her in her home. 

I learned an invaluable lesson about Africa culture that day. Don’t ever wait for an invitation. The kindest thing you can do to an African is to show up at their house. 

You bring them honor by entering into their space. You show them that you value them by taking the time to come to their home, to sit on their porch, to accept their hospitality. And boy, do they love to show hospitality. Sometimes it is peanuts they just harvested from their garden, or a piece of toasted corn on the cob, fresh from the fields. It may be a glass of well water, a cold soda bought from the closest boutique, or a steaming bowl of dolo just brewed. 

Once I grasped this part of African culture, a whole new world of opportunity, friendship, and ministry opened up to me. I started spending my days in the courtyards of Africans. Then something amazing happened. When you start to share space with people, you start to share life. And when you start to share life, you get to share Christ. Ministry happens during home visits. 

The same was true of the infants in distress program. The very thing that I was so quick to want to fix or even get rid of entirely — home visits — was actually the very backbone of the entire program. Visiting those babies — the ones who had been orphaned and abandoned — showed them immeasurable value and love. Those were the kids who had been cast to the side, and yet those were the exact ones that we had come to see. We gave of our time and spent our valuable gas money to visit these children, which says to them, You matter. You are worth something. And it says to their families and caregivers, What you are doing for these children is hard, but we see it, and we honor you for it, and walk beside you in it. We are cheering for you. What you are doing matters. And when we sat there in their courtyards and ate their peanuts, we accepted their hospitality and showed them, You have something to offer to this hurting world. And in the middle of those moments, we shared Jesus with them. 

I thought about that this Christmas, and I remembered these stories right alongside the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. You know what the birth of Jesus was? One big home visit. Jesus came here. He entered our world; he came into our space. He came a long way and gave up a whole lot to come be with us in our corner, to visit us in our mess. He came to show us how much he loves us, how much he values us. And he came because he knows the best ministry happens within the home. It was in sitting with us, doing life with us, and conversing with us that he really taught us what God is like and how we should live in obedience to him. 

Thank you, Jesus, for coming to us. Let us welcome you with the warmest hospitality that we can muster. It may seem like peanuts, but please accept the gift of our hospitality, our homes, our lives, our service, and our very selves. Whatever is fresh from the field today, it is yours. Thank you for coming to our world, now please make your home in our hearts.