Promised Land

When the bus pulled up to the station, my heart started pounding hard. Maybe because this meant the actual goodbye was near. Maybe also because I’d never traveled alone by bus in west Africa. 

With ticket in hand, I pushed my way onto the bus with the other passengers in a total unnecessary hurried frenzy. Everyone acted as if there weren’t enough seats on the bus, and you would have thought the driver was about to take off, yet everyone found a seat and we waited a good ten minutes before departing, which made me wonder what in the world all the rush was about. 

Stanislas, Valerie, and Rebeca climbed up into the bus one last time to make sure I had a seat and to inform me where they had placed all my luggage below.  They take such good care of me. With final hugs and words of blessing, they climbed down and I drove away, wiping tears off my cheeks. 

Before me lay a five hour commute to the capital city, another bus ride the next day to Togo, a border crossing, and a taxi ride. By myself. With all my luggage. In a country where you never know what could go wrong with transportation. But something will go wrong. At best I might be broken down for a few hours. Or my luggage left at a bus station somewhere. How was I ever going to do it without them? 

I  was absolutely expecting something to go wrong, and I was geared up for anything. 

My Burkinabé friends always pray for people who are traveling, and they often pray for God to “wash the road” before the traveler. I know they must have been praying this for me, because I arrived to my new city the next day in the early afternoon having had not one single problem with the bus or at the border. 

Do you realize how miraculous this is?! I rejoiced in the confidence that God had indeed washed and prepared the road in front of me, which tells me that he has brought me here for a reason. 

The hospital here is absolutely leaps and bounds above any other hospital I’ve ever seen in west Africa. I was welcomed warmly by the team, oriented to the city and the hospital, given a bike to use as transport since I live about 2 km away (yes, think Call The Midwife: Africa Edition) and then put to work in the maternity right away. I remember a story of David in 1 Samuel 30. When his fortress was pillaged and his wives stolen, he cried out to the Lord, and God helped him recover every single thing that he had lost. Even though bedside nursing was taken away for me from a season, God has allowed me to recuperate every ounce of skill, knowledge, confidence, and competence after just a few days in this new hospital. 

This doesn’t mean it’s all easy. It’s always hard to be a new person in a new place. Just like I missed my US “home” when I moved to Burkina, I now miss my Burkina “home.” People are probably annoyed by how I compare everything Burkina, but I can’t help it. I must confess, I terribly miss Burkina Faso - the people, the ministry, the living with them and doing ministry alongside them, and sharing the closeness and intensity of African life. 

But I talked to Rebeca for an hour on the phone on Sunday, and she gave me Joshua 1 to encourage me. We are going to study it together though separate throughout this week. The part that stands out to me is this: Do not be afraid. Do not be dismayed. For God is with you wherever you go. 

At first I was afraid of traveling, but God has shown me I didn’t need to be afraid. Now I am slightly dismayed, but God promises that he will give us, like Joshua, every place where we put our feet, and that he will use us to lead his people to claim the promises he has made to them. I choose to believe that God has promised this land to these people, and that the Togolese must rise up to claim this land for Christ. Here I am, like one from the half tribe of Manasseh in Joshua 1. This is not my land, but I will fight with my Togolese brothers and sisters to win this place for Christ. 

But that doesn’t look at victorious as it sounds. It means spending some free time holding a newborn baby and telling the postpartum mother about how this child is a gift from God. It’s singing worship songs to my premature baby as I feed her. It’s testifying to how God brought me here to the Togolese nurses. It’s praying for my Muslim patients and seeing them not only as pregnant women but as blind souls, and believing that the love of God can give them sight and make them whole.

Please pray for me and with me every day that God will show us how to lead and walk in victory like Joshua, until his kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.