Worth the Trouble

"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 my little self into the grand marché - in the middle of town, in the heat of the day, in the biggest market in Burkina Faso.

If you want a cultural experience in Burkina, go to the grand marché. It's crazy, loud, people everywhere, vendors in your face trying to sell you everything. Not to mention the heat. It stresses me out to even find a parking place. In the middle of all this, I had a hard time finding the exact store that Geoffrey told me to go to. Once I thought I might have found it, I gave my list to the man working there, and he told me to have a seat. 

I will spare you the details, but it was not the right store. It took him three hours to find the supplies and calculate the total. He wouldn't let me leave and return later because I had to watch him pull out every item, punch the numbers in his calculator, and calculate the price. At least he didn't want to cheat me.

Three hours later, when my shirt was soaked with sweat, he gave me the grand total - almost twice as high as my budget. I thought I was going to cause a fight when I told him I couldn't purchase the supplies. I returned to where I was staying late in the day, feeling like the day had been a total waste. I had no school supplies whatsoever. Only a sunburn and a defeated spirit. The grand marché had mastered me. 

This has to be way harder than its supposed to be. I thought to myself at the end of the day. I decided to try again the next day, and I was determined to succeed. 

I asked a friend where to find the cheapest school supply store, and I was smarter this time and insisted on leaving my list with them and instructing them to call me when they had totaled the price. Same song, second verse. The price was not right. 

Day three. I ask another friend, this time a Burkinabe, to help me find school supplies. He happens to have a friend with a school supply store. "I will get you a good price," he told me. So I sent him off with my list and he comes back at the end of the day with a better price, but still way too high. 

Day four. I find the guts to wander back into the grand marché, this time with a friend. We think we can find the original store I was looking for. We get caught in the middle of a rainstorm. No wait, a monsoon. Do they have those in the middle of the desert? I would believe it after seeing this. We got soaked and drove through streets that turned into rivers in less than 20 minutes. They finally gave me the price that I knew was reasonable, but it would have been disastrous to load everything in the car in the middle of that storm, so I promised to come back the next day. 

Day five. I pick up the school supplies and learn that they actually didn't have everything on my list. Thankfully, I have time that same day to go back to my Burkinabe friend's friend's store and get the rest. I hope you believe me when I say I literally sang praises aloud all the way home when I had all those school supplies in the back of my car.

It wasn't near as fun as Geoffrey told me it would be. In fact, I felt like I never wanted to go school supply shopping ever again! That is, until yesterday. 

Yesterday, all the students in the scholars program gathered under our hangar and surrounded a big table that was full of all their school supplies that I found for them. Valerie had planned this distribution and even created a special program, inviting several people (including me) to speak. In her introduction, she thanked me for going to the trouble to get the supplies in Ouaga. You have no idea, I thought to myself, but then I smiled when she called it a "labor of love." 

One by one, she called the students to the table to receive their school supplies. These items are absolutely necessary to have success in school, yet they are also something that these students would not be able to provide for themselves on their own. 

Something about that moment made something in my heart change. It was something about the joy of giving it all away that made all the hassle suddenly so incredibly worth it. 

I quickly typed in my French-English dictionary a phrase that I wanted to know how to say. It has become the phrase of the day, 

"Ca vaut la peine." It means "it's worth the trouble." 

I began to reflect on other moments of my day. I saw Monique, a young girl for whom I have been doing weekly dressing changes on her chronic leg ulcers. I missed last week's dressing change due to being stuck in Ouaga for the coup. When Monique came to the distribution to receive her school supplies, I was hoping to do a dressing change. Instead, she showed me how her legs were completely healed! Ca vaut la peine. 

That same morning, I took Pierre, a man with a severe leg wound, to get a dressing change at the local hospital. His wound is so terrible that I am tempted to think he will not survive. Taking him to do daily dressing changes seems to be a waste of time, especially when it takes hours every day to take him to hospital, wait for his turn, and then get him situated in his house again. Progress is slow, and it hurts to see him hurt day after day. Then I realize, it will be worth the pain. 

Every day, I see pain and I see joy. I see Moniques and I see Pierres. I have successes and failures in simple things like buying school supplies. I have successes and failures every single day in my efforts to learn language and communicate. Some things come easy and other things are way harder than they should be. 

But at the end of the day, it's worth the pain. I see the school supplies laid out on the table and Monique's smooth legs, and I know it's true. Then I look at Pierre and my own language blunders and I choose to believe it is going to be worth the pain.

Ca vaut la peine. It's a good phrase, but God says it better. "I will comfort those who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." (Isaiah 61:2-3)

"For we know that these light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." (2 Corinthians 4:17) 

The tears are worth receiving the gift of God's comfort, the ashes are worth discovering the beauty, and the troubles are worth the glory that will be revealed. One day, our trials will become our testimonies, and when that day arrives, we will say it was worth the pain.