They Will Come

"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 morning to arrive in the afternoon. But they came, just like the man said. 

They came with a bucket, a rolled up plastic mat, and a plate - all the essentials to bath, sleep, and eat at this weekend christian camp. They came with hungry bellies that got well-fed. They came with wounds that got bandaged. They came with voices that lifted the name of Jesus. They came with dusty, bare feet that danced to the rhythm of the djembe. 

They taught me to dance, too. At first, I just watched the pattern of their feet as they patted and scraped and scuffled the dirt underneath their hard souls, making patterns in the dirt like a snake when he slithers in the sand. The dust lifted and made a foggy cloud that settled on our clothes and feet. The balophone player tapped tirelessly the wooden keys with his mallets, the boys on the drums kept incredibly accurate and complicated synchronous time, and everyone else danced in a circle around them. 

I studied their dancing until I could sit still no longer, so I got up to join them. Plus Rebeca got up and got dancing, and when I saw the village girl come out of her, the smile on her face beckoned me to join her. They taught me to advance, back up, turn, and jump when they did, for all their dances are group dances, and each individual becomes a part of the whole. When you watch the dancing, you don't watch one person, but rather you watch the entire group as they sway and turn as one. I joined in and did my best to imitate, and although it felt awkward at first, their smiles encouraged me, and my feet started to catch the beat. 

We sang and danced until the sun rose high in the sky, from morning all the way to midday. By this point all the children had arrived, and my feet had become so dirty that they were as black as the Africans. We fed everyone a much deserved meal and began the program. 

Rebeca energized the children with her passionate way of engaging them, and then Stanislas presented the Word of God to them, telling them the story of the shepherd who left his ninety-nine sheep to find the one. He recounted the story of the prodigal son and shared the gospel. And the seed was planted in two hundred little hearts. We leave the rest to Jesus who is able to make the plants grow and produce fruit. 

After the teaching, we divided the kids into three groups to rotate through three activities. Since the theme of camp was "Jump for Jesus", we had a jump rope center, a singing and dance center (yes, they never get enough), and a games center. I was in charge of the games, which involved a sack race and a three legged race. Who knew that a sack race could be so much fun? And I thought it was interesting that, even after demonstrating how to walk in unison with the three legged race, the kids chose to jump together using their outer feet instead of walking in unison. But oh well, that too turned into a jumping activity, which fit just fine with the theme! 

After the organized games, the kids found a soccer ball and played their little hearts out until dark. I watched the moon rise as I ate my tô (a corn-flour based mush) and watched the Jesus film in dagara until my eyes became heavy. I went inside the school house, where plastic mats had been laid out to cover the entire floor, and you just picked a spot on the floor to curl up and sleep. I laid down beside Juliette, and her daughter snuggled up close to me, and I fell asleep praising God for how his love reaches the distant villages of west Africa. 

In forty-eight hours, I will be trying to fall asleep on a plane to the United States. When I do, my heart will wander back to this moment, where I prefer to be, where my heart is full, where I feel like God has called me to be, even created me to be. I will look at my clean feet sticking out of my $100 chacos, and I will miss my dusty feet in my $2 tapettes that I bought in the market. I will watch a movie on the little screen on the seat back in front of me, and I will think about the white sheet hanging from two trees, where two hundred black faces glow with eyes fixed on the projection of the Jesus film. They will offer me a meal, and I will wish I had leaf sauce with a morsel of fish instead of the fancy cous-cous salad with beef  or whatever. 

I will find myself caught between two worlds that I love - the United States, which will forever be my first home, and Burkina Faso, which has by the grace of God become a home to me because of the people here that I love. The wealth of the United States makes me comfortable and at ease, but the strength and resilience and faith in the poverty of Burkina Faso makes me rich in heart and faith. I'm a lucky girl to have a home and a family in two places, and I praise God for the chance to travel between the two worlds - the developed and the underdeveloped, the richest and the poorest - to serve Jesus as his little traveler and to be a front row witness to how he is working so faithfully around the world.