See Something More

"Where are all the children?" I asked when we arrived to the site of the kids' camp. We were late, so I thought everyone would be waiting for us to start, by instead, only a small number of children had gathered under the shade of a tree.  "They will come," I was told with confidence.  I have found this to be a very common and normal occurrence here in Africa. Since time is basically irrelevant, people wait for an event to actually start before they come. And somehow, once things get rolling, the word spreads. And the people come.  So when he said "they will come," even though it seemed unlikely, I thought about all the times I've heard the same response and how every time, they are right.  So we started worshipping, and the kids started coming. We started out with about about a dozen and ended up with around two hundred. Some kids crossed a river to come. Some rode their bikes over thirty kilometers on dirt roads. Some walked all ...

I ran my fingers along the rough surface of the bricks as I walked alongside the wall. A line of people preceded me, almost six hundred people to be exact, and I was one of the last ones to take my place in the line and walk around the wall while praying a prayer of dedication and blessing.  "Over 25,000 bricks were used to construct this wall," Geoffrey explained to the church on this Sunday morning. Each one of those 25,000 bricks is unique because it was hand cut from the local laterite rock quarries. "As you walk around the wall, think of each brick as a person." A person impacted by the church and the ministries of the church that will take place on this property.  The brick wall encloses the rather large church property, which currently includes the church hangar and will be the future site of the infant rescue center, a teaching and formation center, a diagnostic medical clinic, offices, agricultural and development projects, and more. It will be a h...

I haven't used a toilet or a shower in six weeks now. Don't worry, I've washed, I just use a bucket and water that I've drawn from the well, just like everyone else in my African family. My diet has consisted mainly of tô (congealed substance made of millet flour) and leaf sauces with an occasional delicacy of rice, beans, fish, or peanut sauce. I've slept on a mattress on the ground under a mosquito net, waking daily with the sun to start daily life with Africa.  It's funny how little I miss and how much I've gained from this experience of living with an African family. I'm finally learning about real Africa life. Seeing how hard they work. Hearing parts of their stories that I've never heard. Watching how they live and interact. It's true what you hear about Africa - people love to live in community. You are never alone, and people never want to be. Everything is shared between neighbors, family, and friends...from possessions to food to m...

The building isn't built yet; in fact, the temporary hanger isn't even finished. Piles of gravel and sand and leftover construction materials surrounded the meeting place, but that didn't stop the people from coming. Around 90 people - a fairly equal mix of men, women, children, young, and old - came on this first Sunday to celebrate the opening of the church here in our city.  It just goes to show you that the church isn't the building anyway; it's the people. And just as our church building is still under construction, so also is the Lord building his church here in Burkina Faso.  The original church planting team of missionaries started planting churches among the dagara people thirteen years ago, and they intentionally focused their efforts in the villages, and rightly so for the villages had not been evangelized. Now that there is a large number of operating churches in the villages, the time came to plant a central church in our city for a couple of r...

The pictures hung on the wall in a row all in black and white, motionless yet seeming to come to life. I looked at their weathered faces that at first glance seemed emotionless, yet the longer you looked, the more emotion you saw. Each face reflected a story of profound strength, hard work, and resilience in suffering.  There were three rooms in the dagara museum - one told the story of women, one told the story of men, and one told the story of religion. Each room exhibited objects, photographs, and descriptions that told a story that many in the world have never heard. Even our team of dagara people meandered slowly in and out of the exhibits, pausing, pondering, and learning the story of their own people.  When we stopped in front of a display of clay pots, one team member remarked that his very own mother possessed only pots like that, which she used to carry water from the well and to cook over an open fire. Another team member's father was a slave to the French,...

"How many people do you think will be there?" I asked Rebeca as we came near to the end of our road trip. She said she didn't know, so I offered a guess. "One thousand?" She laughed and said, "No, there could be as many as ten thousand. You are going to be amazed!" And she was right. When we pulled up to the public square of the capital city, the whole park was full of onlookers with standing room only.  We had arrived to the "crusade". To be entirely honest, this is not the kind of event I would normally attend in the United States. It was very charismatic and dramatic, like imagine what you've seen on television when a so called "prophet" touches people's foreheads and counts to three and then proclaims "Power!" and the people roll on the floor screaming and then get up healed. Yeah, that kind of stuff. But before you make any judgements, let me tell you something.  My African friends - the ones who love...

Everything about this Wednesday afternoon was normal. We played games at kids' club as normal. We sweat in the heat as normal. I saw my normal kids and was going about my normal routine. But something within me was not normal. I had a burden on my shoulders, and I knew why to a certain degree, but there was also an aspect of this weigh that I couldn't understand. It was as if I was carrying something partially unknown. Something was making me feel heavy, but I didn't know what.  That's when a little boy pulled on my shirt. "Tantie Ashli," he said, and I looked down to see him holding a carefully crafted birds nest. He reached his hand inside and pulled out a tiny baby bird, all black with beady little eyes.  A smile spread across my face and I held out both hands as he delicately placed the little bird inside my cupped palms. "It's a gift for you," he said, and my heart melted.  Because I knew it wasn't simply a gift from him. So...