Cooking Club Bible Study

I'm not really sure how the conversation started, but then again, I guess that doesn't really matter. What I do know is that this teenage girl was sitting on the couch across from me, and we were trying to make conversation while we waited for the other girls to arrive. 

We had already asked and answered all the common questions: how has your week been, what did you do, how is your family, when does school start back up, and all that jazz. I suppose it was when we were talking about the upcoming holiday on the 15th of August. That's what really started the conversation. 

"What exactly is the holiday about?" I asked because I honestly didn't know. 

"You don't know? Oh, well, we Catholics celebrate the ascension of Mary. I guess you Protestants don't celebrate that." 

"No, we don't," was all I managed to say. 

"But you like to pray?" She asked me. 

"Very much," I answered. She had actually already asked me this before, when I invited her to my house on this day for the kickoff of the teen girls' summer Bible study. 

"So how many times a day do you pray?" She continued, and I was confused because it felt like we were now talking about Islam. 

I explained that I honestly don't know how many times a day I pray because I pray so often. "Prayer to me isn't about a set of rules that I have to follow. Prayer is natural, like talking to a friend. We can pray anywhere, anytime, and we know God hears us." That being said, I also explained my first-thing-in-the-morning habit of prayer, Bible study, and meditation, which is not something required, but something I just do out of joy and desire. 

Somewhere in there I must have mentioned "knowing God" because then she asked me, "How does one know God?" 

I smiled and asked her a question in return, "How do I get to know you? By talking to you, listening to you, spending time with you, sharing experiences with you, trusting you. It's the same with God." I wondered if it sounded crazy to her, to talk about God like a friend to love instead of a distant deity to please. 

A knock at the door finished the conversation, and soon the other girls arrived, and we officially started our Bible study. Even though I enjoyed getting to encourage the five girls to read God's Word over the course of the summer as we study it together week by week, and even though I enjoyed giving them some tools to help them learn how to study and apply God's Word to their lives, I think the most important conversation might have happened unofficially, before Bible study actually started, with no notes, in a way that I hadn't planned at all. Just two gals sitting on the couch talking about knowing God. 

After Bible study, Emily and I made the girls hamburgers and French fries. When they saw the raw ground beef, they asked what it was because they had never seen it before. And when the burgers were served, I had to show them how to eat it all together because they wanted to take the buns off and eat the bread first. No one wanted to try ketchup, but as soon as one brave girl tried it and said it was good, "sweet" even, then everyone wanted to taste it too. I seasoned the fries with Tony's, which the girls call "American pepper", and it was such a hit that they now want to put it on every food they eat, which I think is the point of Tony's seasoning anyway. By the end, they were joking about how they had all been in America that evening because they had eaten hamburgers. 

The next week we were back in Burkina Faso as the girls took me to the market and taught me how to pick out certain leaves to make their favorite traditional sauce called djo-djo. While the sauce was boiling and the tô (something similar to corn meal mush) was cooling, we studied Ephesians 1 together and talked about all the spiritual blessings we have in Christ. 

Next week, we will be back in America because the girls have requested pizza. I wonder what they will think about all that cheese! One of my Burkinabé teammates asked me once about the food Americans eat that resembles soap. It took me a while to figure out what in the world he was talking about. Cheese. I've never thought about cheese looking like soap before until I saw the big orange bars of soap that they use here, and then it kind of made sense. 

I love having our house full of teen girls. I love hearing them sing praises, especially when they know the song well enough to overpower the sound of the strumming guitar. I love hearing them share what verses of Scripture speak to them and what it means for their lives. I love hearing them laugh as they try to stuff burgers in their mouths or when I try to chop leaves as fast as they do or attempt to stir tô as smoothly and rhythmically as they do. We make fools of ourselves, we laugh at ourselves, we giggle at our differences and rejoice at what we share in common - life and faith. It's a little piece of heaven.