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I wish you had just been there. I am tempted to just write down every detail of the last three days that I spent with our national team on a team retreat, but I know it wouldn't really be that exciting for you. Because you just had to be there to understand just how wonderful it was.  I wish you had been there when we went to the waterfalls of Banfora and the Africans oohed and aahed at the beauty of God's creation in their own country that they had never seen before.  I wish you had been there as  we walked down the path to the falls and sang songs of God's majesty and marvelousness. We were kind of like a marching praise band. I wish you had been there to see them play the human knot  game...you know when you stand in a tight circle and grab each other hands and then have to untangle the knot you've made without letting go of your hands. I think it took them somewhere around an hour and a half to undo it, but we assured them it was possible, and they did it with mu...

"Come here," Geoffrey said gently. "Stand right here and close your eyes." Gertrude followed him to the spot and closed her eyes, waiting for her surprise. Gertrude is a neighbor of ours that lives just down the street. We met her through kids' club because some of the children that live around her come each week. When she fell severely ill one night, she came tapping on our door to ask for help. We payed for the medicine tha she needed - just some simple antibiotics, antiparasitics, and antidiarrheals, but I think it might have saved her life. After that experience, Gertrude insisted that she wanted to come to church with us, so we took her with us the next week to a village church in Zinkone several kilometers away. She loved it so much that she told us she was going to go back each week, even if it meant pedaling her bike there and back - a long journey in both directions that would take several hours, especially for a woman as small and frail as she is.  She...

I took my two warm crepes and prepared them just right. One with a thin spread of Nutella. One with lime and sugar. It's gonna be a great day, I said to myself and smiled. When the interns were here this summer, they joked with me because of how much I loved eating crepes. Whenever there were crepes for breakfast, I would light up and say, "It's gonna be a great day!" The phrase stuck, I guess, because I still uttered it to myself this morning when I sat down with my lovely, perfectly rolled-up crepes.  What made my breakfast even better was that I ate my crepes over an open Bible and received great and applicable encouragement from Colossians 1:11 in the Message.  "We pray that you'll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul - not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is a strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy."  As my time left for this first term in Burkina i...

It's not every day that you find yourself in the book of Lamentations. Psalms is a definite favorite. I love the gospel of John. One of my Old Testament favorites is the less commonly studied book of Nehemiah. But Lamentations? I doubt very many of you claim Lamentations as one of your favorite go-to books. If we were to examine our Bibles, how many fingerprints would we find on the pages of Lamentations?   Well, you sure would find my fresh fingerprints there this week. I have found there a measure of comfort and consolation that has poured over into my lap, and I can't wait to share it with you from Lamentations 3:17-26. My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; So I say, "My endurance has perished; So has my hope from the Lord." Remember my affliction and my wanderings, The wormwood and the gall!  My soul continually remembers it And is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind,  And therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord ne...

I am not going to lie, I was pretty excited to hop on the back of the moto with Rebeca and head out to the village to go check on a baby. Normally, if I want to do a "sortie" or an outing with  Rebecca and Juliette, I have to bring my car because there are too many of us to fit on a moto. But this time, with just me and Rebeca, I got to ride in my favorite spot: the back of a moto.  "Normally, you are my chauffeur in your car," Rebeca told me as I hopped on the back, "but this time I get to chauffeur you!" I happily accepted. I put on my helmet and she commented, "I would wear my helmet, but my meche (aka weave) is too big." I probably shouldn't have, but I laughed and made a mental note that no matter where they originate from, Africans love their hair.  We puttered out to the village where a premature baby weighing 800 grams (around 2 lbs) had been born on October 2. Rebeca had encouraged the family to bring the baby to our city fo...

You have probably heard me talk about our program for infants in distress here in Burkina Faso,  which provides orphans and infants in distress under the age of two with powdered milk, medical care, health and hygiene education, compassionate care, and the Word of God. An orphan by definition here in Burkina  is a child who has lost their mother, father, or both. An infant in distress is any child who has been abandoned or whose mother is unable to adequately nourish the baby due to illness, mental illness, or a milk problem. That's when we step in to provide the resources that these moms, caregivers, and families need to help their babies grow and thrive.  You may have heard about these precious babies, but today I want you to meet two of them. It's one thing to hear about the program, but it's another thing to see the faces of these little ones and their families, who are so dearly loved by the Lord and by us.  Meet baby Namwinsobon. His name means "God kn...

"It will be fun," Geoffrey told me, and I believed him. "It's like  the biggest back-to-school shopping ever." So I got in my car with my list in hand to find all the school supplies needed for the 25+ students in our scholars programs for orphans. It was the first day of freedom after the coup d'état, and I had a huge smile on my face as I was finally able to get out and about without anxiety.  It took a little while to get going. First I had to find gas and money, which you would think to be an easy task. I had to stop at multiple different gas stations and go out of my way to find one that was open and operating. Same thing with the banks. Except even when I found an open one, the ATM didn't work. When I finally found a working one, it only dispensed 40 bills at a time, which meant I had to swipe my card three times to get enough money out to buy the school supplies, adding an additional $15 fee to my day. An hour later, I was finally ready to drive  ...

"Today, I am going to tell you a story," I began. "It's a true story that comes from the Bible, and it is found in Mark chapter 10." All their little eyes were fixed on me, probably because my skin is white or my French sounds funny. "Today we are going to do something special," I continued. "After I finish telling the story, I am going to ask for some volunteers to tell the exact same story with as much detail as possible."  I learned this story telling method from a friend who does children's ministry in Ouagadougou. That's just one of the perks of being stranded in Ouaga because of a coup d'état: time spent with other missionaries and learning from them. I was excited to pass it on to our children's ministry in our city.  With chalk in hand, I narrated from memory the story of blind Bartimeus as I drew an image of his unique encounter with Jesus on the chalk board.  After I finished, four children recounted ...