The Kingdom of Heaven Is In Relationships

I am finally getting the schedule down. You might be wondering what a day in the life looks like in Yako, Burkina Faso. For me, it starts at 5:50 am.  

I wake up, roll out of bed into my tennis shoes, and head to the soccer field with my ipod. For the next hour, I run, walk, and worship. I come back to the house, get out my bottle of water that I put in the freezer before my run, and turn on the giant swamp cooler fan in the living room. My sweat turns cold as I chug my partially frozen water and stretch in front of the fan. It is one of the sweetest moments of my day.

 

I shower and then take my Bible and “Mere Christianity” out to my hammock. By 8:00, everyone else is waking up, so I go back in the house and hang out until we are ready to go see the babies.

 

As soon as we walk through the door, I hear the pitter patter of little feet on the pavement, and I look down to see three or four children all looking up at me with their arms raised, saying with their eyes, “Pick me! Pick me!” I give them each a turn. Steve loves to be tickled, and he will laugh every time. Awa thinks it is really funny when I puff out my cheeks. She pops them by pinching me with her tiny fingers, and then she puffs out her cheeks so I can pop hers. Mandina loves to be held upside down, and I will wear myself out swinging her up and down just to see that smile.  

Around 9:00, Joci, the nurse, arrives, and I help her take temperatures and pass out medications. Snack time is pretty close to 10:30, and then lunch is at 12:00. After all the kids are seated for lunch, we go back to the house and pull out leftovers or make PB&J.  

12:00-3:00 is a sieste, so we rest. Sometimes we play guitars, sometimes we watch a movie, and sometimes I just read and nap in my hammock.  

At 3:00, we go say hi to the kids again and play some more. Emily and I have tried to pick one or two children a day to pull away from all the others for some one-on-one attention and play time. They don’t get that very much. They are always clamouring for our attention, craving our love and affection, sometimes to the point of fighting and tears.

 

At 4:00 we may go into town for some veggies or eggs for dinner. Sometimes we just get a chilled Fanta from the corner store. It’s the simple pleasures. There is nothing better than a fresh-out-of-the-back-of-the-freezer Fanta when its 115 degrees outside and you have had nothing to drink but water for the past four days.

 

Around 5:00 we start cooking dinner. We use what we can find here in Yako, which is basically rice, pasta, and produce from the market (tomatoes, onions, potatoes zucchini, cucumber, mangos, and bananas are the only things in season). Occasionally, we will bake a dessert or something…from scratch of course. I am beginning to feel like a worthy housewife.  I can cook a whole meal from scratch. I can hand wash the dishes and my clothes. I feed the chickens and goats. And I really love it.

 

After dinner we say goodnight to the kids. I go around to each of their cribs and give them a little pat. They usually cry when we leave, and it makes me wonder if we shouldn’t have come to tuck them in. But then again, who else will? I don’t want them to miss out on that special part of childhood.  

We spend the rest of the evening in the house together, either talking or watching a movie, or worshipping to the steady strumming of guitars. “Missionary midnight” as Ruth calls it, is around 9:00, which is fine by me since I will get up at 5:50 again the next morning.  

But sometimes, when it rains, I stay up a little later, listening to the rain pound on the tin roof so hard that you cannot carry on a conversation without wearing yourself out. But that’s okay, because I would rather just listen to the storm than talk all the way through it. The electricity always goes out when it rains like that, so I usually wait for the storm to pass and the electricity to come back on so that I can fall asleep with the fan on. It is impossible to sleep without a fan, and sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and pour water on myself just so I can cool down enough to go back to sleep.

If you asked me a week ago how I felt about this routine, I would have expressed frustration. I am used to having a specific project for the day, a goal to accomplish. I like to have work set out for me, and it is not that way here. We have a lot of down time, and we do a lot of just hanging out with orphans. I used to ask Ruth, “What’s the plan for today?” But I quickly learned to quit asking because there never is one. I used to ask several times a day, “Anything I can do right now to help you?” But I quit that, too, because she hardly ever has something to tell me specifically.

Ask me today how I feel about this routine, and I will tell you that I love every moment of it. I love having nothing to do except let a baby fall asleep in my lap. I love sitting in front of the fan during our three-hour sieste and just enjoying the cool breeze. I love waking up early in the morning and high-fiving kids as I jog around the field and they walk to school.

What made the change? I realized something that changed my perspective entirely. I used to think mission work was about having projects and working hard until you finish them. You know, build a house, paint a church, sing at a nursing home. Feel good about what you accomplished at the end of the day. And there is a time and place for that, and it brings me great joy.

But now I am also seeing that the kingdom of heaven is in relationships, not organizations. It is found in people, not projects. Mission work is not about waking up every day with a to-do list, but about waking up every day with an open heart and open eyes, ready to love and serve in whatever comes your way.

Not having a specific task every day forces me to be in constant communication with God. I find myself always talking to Him and asking Him, “Okay, Lord, what do you want me to see right now? Where are you right now? What are you asking me to do right now in this moment?”

This is life on mission. Not projects, not checklists, not starting every day with a special designated task. Just open eyes and hearts as you go about whatever you are doing, whether that is going to work, going to work out, going to school, or maybe even going to an African orphanage. Wherever you live and in whatever you do, live life on mission by staying in constant communication with God, always asking where He is working and seeking to join Him there, and remembering that the kingdom of heaven is in relationships.