Faceplant

It came on slowly.  We sat in in the boarding area in the Ouaga International Airport.  The big (for Africa) flat screen TV was playing French news that is always more wide-ranging and in-depth than we usually find in the US.  The news ranged from Syria, to Gaza; from the Ukraine to Libya.  It all looked so much bigger and richer than we had become accustomed to in Ouaga.

Six or so hours later we arrived at the Brussels airport.  It was like peeking behind the winning curtain on “Let’s Make a Deal.” There were more material goods crammed into the airport shops that we had seen during the past year in Burkina Faso.  It was almost unreal in the vastness and value of the offerings.  We caught ourselves staring in every direction, feeling like country bumpkins gawking in Times Square.  It was like a palace of dreams come true.  Even before I could think of a particular meal or gift, it was there in front of us pasted on a dozen shop windows.  I thought of our neighborhood kids in Ouaga—barefoot, unwashed, and begging for peanuts or water.  I couldn’t shake my head hard enough to empty the incongruity from my mind.

Thank God (literally and often) we arrived at Denver International Airport at night.  The airport was pretty much down for the night.  No crowds streaming down escalators; shops were electronically shuttered.  The trip home was muffled in darkness as our attention was on talking with Andy who was so kind and patient to greet us as we entered the arrival area.  It was unspeakably good to see the face of a warm Christian brother that gave us some root in the surging maelstrom of change between America and the fourth poorest country in the world.  Thanks Andy, you will never know how much of a blessing you were that night.

Now, four days on the clean ground of Denver, I still struggle with jet lag and something like culture lag.  I want to celebrate being in a country where the air smells good, I can drink from the tap, and we don’t have to soak our vegetables in laundry bleach.  Paradoxically, I am also very angry with America.  All around I see people who have so much, yet desire so much more.  I see people leave half-uneaten meals on plates in the restaurant.  I am bombarded by advertisements that tell me I can’t be happy, feel contented, or live rightly without cars, clothes, food, furniture, toys and other treasures that must always be the newest, most trendy, or fashionable.  Everywhere I see lots of stuff, but little substance.  I see people craving actualization and hardly if ever thinking of Jesus.

Here I sit, pontificating and sounding so self-righteous, but I am honestly not.  I blame myself as much as anyone.  I spent the first half century of my life thinking mostly of me and running over other’s toes.  I craved professional accomplishment, disposable income, and material comforts.  God helped me because I almost wasted my life. 

Now I carry water for Jesus and fight an ongoing battle against my egocentrism as well as against the ravages of other people's poverty.  I am tempted to pride because I do what I think I should be doing, but all I am doing is what God put before me as a lesson.  God gets the glory and I am blessed because he lets me carry His tools. Now like a chastened Scrooge, I want to throw open the window and greet Christmas with a shout.  I want to let the unsaved know that the boat is slowly sinking and they have choices to make.

It’s a lot different living in a hot, dusty, and dirt poor part of the world.  I live among people who treasure their faith, their friends, and their family.  I want to stand on a street corner and wake my neighbors to the fact that they are dying and will eternally fall never to see God again.  I want to tell the USA that there are so many people living here that are so poor that all they have is money.  They have a ton of 401k’s, health care, good accountants, a lot of stuff—more than they can even see because they are occupied with wanting more things, more vacations, more money and hardly have a thought for God.

My face hit the wall of divergent realities—realities as different as night and day.  People who have so much that they don’t treasure what has real value—Jesus Christ and eternal life through Him and Him only and people who have so little that they value what is really real—God, family, and friends.  When the end comes those who have had so much will be the truly poor and those who had so little will have known best what actually had the greatest value and will enjoy eternity truly free of all want.

I need to find a street corner.

(Don gets the blame for this rant.)

Unavoidable Consequences

They positively identified my friends remains a few days ago.  She had mysteriously disappeared as if she had been plucked off of the face of the earth with few, if any clues as to how or why.  She was a good, but not especially close friend.  We shared a church and a small circle of mutual friends.  We would chat and maybe work together to clean leaves from the church gutters or wash dishes after a church dinner.  Before she bought her condo, she asked me to inspect it.  That was the last time I saw her.

 She was a regular at every church function and seemed to especially enjoy doing things for other people.  I remember her sitting with one church member who was nearly 100 years old during a potluck.  Most of the others had managed to not see or visit with the centenarian.  My friend chatted, smiled, and as I recall, patted the old woman’s hand as they spoke.  My friend always seemed to be helping someone.  And then she was gone.

My friend and I never had “the conversation.”  Mostly, I assumed that being a church-going Christian she was saved—that she had an eternal relationship with God through the grace of His Son Jesus.  I also had yet to master “the conversation.” It was easier just to clutch my assumptions and hope for the best.  In the years since she disappeared, I have thought many times about never having asked her about her relationship with Jesus.

 Asking a person about their faith can be awkward; it’s easier not to ask and it gets easier over time.  In our society we often hear that we should avoid discussing religion or politics.  Religion is often claimed to be a personal matter and one best left alone.  In some circles, it’s not a fitting subject for “polite company”. Hogwash.

A lot of people, maybe most people are unaware or refuse to acknowledge that there are things we can do or not do in our earthly lives that have eternal consequences.  As a species, a society, and as individuals, we are so bound to the here-and-now and are so infrequently confronted by eternity that it can easily be concealed behind homework, shopping lists, and the big meeting next week at work.  Most people prefer to put eternity off to the last possible moment much like those who wait to file their income taxes hoping for a pre-midnight postmark.

Truth is that which is—things as they actually are.  Truth exists independent of our wills and cannot be changed.  Truth is often not what we would like or not what we would wish it to be.  As a practical matter, we cannot walk into just any bank and start helping ourselves to as much cash as we want, we can’t simply pick up all the items we want and walk out of a store without paying, and we can’t decide to drive as fast as we want down the highway or at least we can’t do these things without having to face consequences, often very serious consequences.

It is much like this with eternity.  As unfair as it may seem, we cannot believe whatever we want or behave as ever we’d like without having to face consequences—the most serious of consequences and consequences that will prove to be irreversible.  Physics, chemistry, and mathematics are replete with unalterable “laws” that are entirely inconvenient—you must obey gravity, you can’t turn jellybeans into gold, and any given mathematical equation will produce the same result no matter how often you perform it.

I never went out of my way to talk with my friend about eternal matters.  I never cared enough to ask her if she had ever chosen to confront eternal truths.  I never asked her about her relationship with Jesus.

I truly wish that I had.

Have you considered eternity? Are you sure of the consequences of what you have done or not done in this life?  Do you have an eternal relationship with God—the true God, the only God and His Son Jesus by whose grace we can enjoy eternity in His presence.

Please consider that what you do or don’t do during your earthly life can and will have eternal consequences and that truth—the real Truth determines what those consequences will be.    

 

Seeing Red (or Not)

After enduring countless cuts in water we finally got our proprietaire (landlord) to agree to install a chateau d’eau (water tank).  He agreed to provide the tower and to pay for the installation, if we bought the tank.  That was how the events of this morning came to be.

I decided to head downtown (au centre ville) to buy a 1000-litre tank at a place recommended by a coworker at SIL.  It was to be a straightforward affair.  Armed with Google Map printouts and my vastly more direction-enabled wife’s instructions I headed out alone to the moto-packed streets of lunch-hour traffic to buy our polytank.

I imagine that there resides in some dusty cabinet in some government official’s office a compendium of all of the laws, rules, and regulations governing traffic in Ouaga.  That is the only place they reside.  Once in traffic one quickly finds that custom, convention, and convenience trump any written code.  Motos drive in lanes reserved for motos and they drive on the streets swirling and flowing among cars like small fry around big fish.  Suddenly opening a car door at a red light can put you in immediate contact with a handful of bruised moto riders.  Left turns by cars and motos can occur on either side of one’s car.  Red lights are a suggestion and turns in one direction can easily begin in the opposite lane.  You get the idea.

A mere block away from the store where I was to buy the polytank I encountered a bevy of policemen who were excitedly gesturing for me to pull over to the right side of the road and the left side as well.  I chose the right side because the policeman on that side appeared to be having a better day judging by his expression.  Bad choice.  He was immediately joined by a second officer who demanded to see my papers.  I’ve seen enough black-and-white movies to know it’s never good when an official asks to see you papers…”pleeease.”

The two officers proceeded to offer me a litany of all the rules residing in the file cabinet that I had transgressed beginning with the red light I had passed (J’ai brulé une feu!).  I responded that the signal had no light lit.  No score.  One officer began to explain that my visite technique was expired.  I showed him that I had a copy of the results of the inspection and had had the necessary repairs made.  No score.  He told me that it would cost me dix mille CFA (10,000cfa or just over $20.00.)  The other officer continued to examine my papers.  The amount began to climb.

Discretion being the better part of valor I sunk to obvious squirming.  I offered to the offices an increasingly sad tale beginning with the fact that my wife will be very unhappy with me and may hit me when I tell her what happened.  I tossed in a couple of “Ooh la las” and talked more of how angry she would be.  I allowed my French comprehension to degrade and repeated “Qu’est-ce que je dois faire?” (What am I to do?) a few times.

In a sudden bolt of perception and while looking around to see that no one was watching, the policeman offered me a discounted fine.  I tried to hand him the money and he, while looking way down the street  instructed me to put the money on the seat.  He picked it up with some of the papers sitting on the seat, took the cash and handed me the papers.  He then encouraged me to move along.  I offered my hand with a relieved, “Bon jour” both of which he waved off and urged me to leave--now.

I spent the next 20-minutes or so looking for the store to buy our poly tank.  Using the Google Map printouts, I managed to make my way back to a familiar landmark to recommence my hunt for the polytank vendor.  The route on the map brought me back to the precise spot where I had just done my part to support Burkina’s economy.  The police officer with whom I delighted part of my morning was nowhere in sight, perhaps because he saw me coming or maybe he subsequently discovered that he did in fact have enough money to buy lunch. 

Maybe I should have asked him for a receipt.

Then again, maybe not.

We have our water tank.   

Yay!

Rocking Bears

Saturday Janet and I piled into our truck with three friends and seven “rocking bears” and headed out for an orphanage, “Les Ailes de Refuge,” (The Wings of Refuge) in the town of Yako, 70-miles from Ouaga.  There was a story behind the freshly-painted wooden bears riding in the back of our truck. They were completing a journey that began on the dusty, sunbaked streets of Ouaga well before we left for Yako.  The bears were actually coming full circle.

A wiry and well-tanned Kate Royal operates a small mission on a dusty, rough road in Ouaga.  Her mission is a refuge for boys from a hard life of begging on the street.  Besides refuge, Kate’s mission offers food (usually rice with some sauce, a bit of meat or fish and whatever else is available) steeped in the Gospel and the love of Jesus; a chance once more to play; to learn to speak French (more universally useful than Mooré, Jula, or Fulfulde); and to begin to learn a trade—carpentry—and maybe a way off of the streets.  The boys make small stools upon which many Burkinabé sit and more recently they crafted the very solid “rocking bears” that could easily grace the shelves of Toys R Us.

Shortly after arriving at the orphanage we carried the rocking bears to a rare shady spot next to one of the classrooms.  We set them on the ground, stood back and watched as a handful of toddlers slowly made their way cautiously to the unfamiliar objects.  Likely beckoned by the bear’s smiling painted faces, one-by-one each child reached out to touch a bear.  The most adventurous encouraged by volunteers climbed into a seat and almost immediately began to rock back-and-forth as smiles sprouted and giggles belied delight with the strange, new playthings. 

 

I watched one young, blind girl warily sweep her tiny fingertips across the bear’s freshly varnished and painted surface.  As if an image were slowly building in her mind’s eye a smile blossomed on her lips.  She felt her way to the seat and climbed onto her bear and headed off to where ever she imagined.  Next to her a stout young man with a joyously round face already upon his mount, twisted his small hand as if to rev the engine on a “moto” and “brrrrrrmmed” his way down an unseen road.

The bears made a round trip, but to a place they had never been before. The bears began their voyage at the hands of young men—many of them orphans themselves—back to the hands of other orphans.  With them, the bears carried the hopes of young craftsmen for a better life and the desire to help make a slightly better life for other orphans while demonstrating and sharing the love of Christ for some of “the least of these.”  We all learned a lesson that day; sometimes the biggest thing you can do is what you can do for the smallest. 

The Generator and Psalm 19

Since the electrical service in our part of Ouaga experiences frequent interruptions, we needed to install a generator.  We had been able to make do with flashlights, candles, and laptop batteries, but the frequency and duration of the power cuts were beginning to make normal life nearly impossible.  When the warm season arrives in late February or March with 100+ degree temperatures, sleep would be reduced to bathing in our own perspiration.  We needed a generator.

I instructed the guards in the operation of the generator and how to transfer our home from the grid to the generator.  Rather than simply throwing a switch, the transfer involves a short warm-up cycle for the generator, flipping a set of circuit breakers that protect the generator from faults and overloads, and moving the transfer switch from the “normal” to the “generator” position.

Last night I was blasted out of a movie-like dream by the sound of the generator starting.  It was the first time we have experienced a nighttime power cut with the generator.  After a few minutes, we realized the nearly deafening din of the generator inaptly labeled, “silent” would be more than we could reasonably expect our neighbors to endure.

I pulled on my pants and shoes and went outside to talk with our guard, Desirée.  I congratulated him for following the procedures and successfully starting the generator.  I made sure that he understood that we were both very pleased that he and the generator did exactly what was needed.  After waiting a few minutes more for the electrical supply to be restored, I turned to Desirée and explained that we could probably make it through a reasonably cool night without the generator.  Desirée shut down the generator and transferred the switch according to plan.  As the generator became silent and darkness fell like a pot lid, I looked up at the sky and was stunned.

For the first time since Janet and I arrived in Burkina Faso the Harmattan winds had died and the dust had mostly cleared—enough for hundreds if not thousands of stars to become visible—countless more than the usual handful visible through the airborne dust.  “C’est incroyable!” I gasped as Desirée tuned his glance toward the sky.  He said something in Mooré that I did not understand, but I could tell that he too was marveling at the stars.  “Il est comme Psaumes 19, …“Les cieux déclarent la Gloire de Dieu,” I offered.  Desirée smiled, but I suspected that he did not fully understand the context.  I suggested, “Desirée, lisez Psaume 19.” He opened his Mooré Bible as we trained our flashlights on its pages and he read the opening verses.  A smile came across his face as he looked back to the sky and exclaimed, “D’accord!  Les cieux declarant la gloire de Dieu.” 

There we stood staring into the sky in the moonless African night made even darker by the power cut and illuminated only by the countless stars as Desirée repeated, “La gloire de Dieu.”

LEARNING FRENCH

Learning French has been the most challenging and difficult objective in my life, so far.  The past two plus years have been a period of frustration, disappointment, and an ever-present sense that it may be time just to give up.  There comes a time when the millstone of discouragement hangs so heavy that there may be only one remaining thread between perseverance and defeat and even that last gossamer cord seems to be in the process of unraveling.  The thread that checked my surrender was simple, but very enduring; failure was not an option.  God had given me the task.  Without a working knowledge of French I could not advance on the path He had set before me.

 Saint Paul set down God’s words when wrote, “…suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  Maybe there was more, much more than French that God wanted me to learn before I made it to the mission field.  The days, weeks, months, and years of suffering through inscrutable grammar, confounding syntax, and physically impossible pronunciation may also have been the means to another end, or two.   

My experience with learning a new language may be very similar to our waiting upon our peripatetic crate of supplies.  The much-needed box filled with tools, utensils, equipment, clothing and furnishings has been forever arriving, but never really here.  I have been forced to repair everything including furniture, plumbing, electrical devices, laptops, doors, and even our truck with little more than my Victorinox pocket tool and a few simple hand tools and at times even a stone as a hammer.. 

I have had to improvise and make do with what I had on hand. I had to learn to do much more than I thought I could with much less than I thought that I needed.  I have had to learn to use what I have to the greatest possible utility.  It has been much like that with my French language skills.  My vocabulary toolbox is still very light and relatively empty.  Lacking the size and depth of vocabulary, I have been forced to combine and arrange my poverty of words to express thoughts and subjects that normally demand more a specific and specialized vocabulary. 

Much like using a tool for a purpose for which it was not intended, an increased reliance on imagination rather than competency has been a means to an end in both repairing things and expressing myself in a still-foreign language.  I have learned that it is not so much the breadth of the tool collection or the depth  of one’s vocabulary, but how one uses the resources at one’s disposal that determines how close we come to reaching our objectives—fixing a toaster or successfully expressing an idea.

There is still the rub that this works in but one direction when it comes to language.  I may devise linguistic work-arounds by using the few primary colors of my limited vocabulary to mix more complex hues and shades, but this skill is of little to no use when the flow in in the other direction.

I cannot comprehend words and terms that I do not know.  The time required to extract meaning by contextualizing unknown words is too great when listening to someone speaking.  Words are lost in the interim while searching mental registers for possible meanings to an unrecognized word. 

Comprehension is the other half of the equation.  There a few if any work-arounds to simply understanding the spoken word if the word is unknown.  A limited vocabulary is more constraining when receiving a message than when sending.  So two lessons attended my comprehension: first, endurance does indeed produce character (or some degree of language skill) and second, while there may be work-arounds and interim solutions, they are only transitional.  In the end only continued hard work and perseverance will accomplish the objective.  So as suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope, there is hope that one day I will reach my objective to speak good French well and that I will have learned a lesson or two in suffering through learning a new language.

In that day when I finally am able to speak and understand French adequate to the task it will be much like the day when I finally experience the joy of opening our wandering crate of tools designed for the task and need not hobble about making do with a limited inventory of either words or hand tools.  When learning a language or repairing something there are times when “good enough” isn’t.

The “Fou”

There is a man who lives mostly on the street to the side of our house.  He is “The Fou”—the crazy man.  It is not so much a pejorative term as it is simply descriptive, at least by neighborhood standards.  He spends a good part of his day digging large holes in the dirt road next to our home.  Some of the holes are deep enough to make my 4-wheel drive truck bottom out.  Once I even had to rock the truck back-and-forth before driving out of one of the deepest holes.  The holes can even be seen on Google Earth.

He doesn’t seem very happy most of the time.  Often, he will spend the better part of the day involved in what can only pass for an angry diatribe or possibly a heated dispute with some invisible adversary.   At times he sounds to be cursing something or someone.  Sometimes, the volume of his shouts and barks even rise above the blaring rap music from the man-high speaker in front of the small boutique across the street.  He scares the young children and is the subject of ridicule for the adolescents.  To most others he is just invisible.  He’s “The Fou”—the crazy one.  Invisible, tortured, and mostly forgotten.

I started waving to him on my bumpy rides to work in the morning.  As my truck jumped and jostled along the well-excavated road I would offer a furtive wave before throwing both hands back onto the steering wheel to keep from nose diving into something slightly smaller than a bomb crater.  Often he would wave back.  Other times he would just stare.  He would hardly do what I expected.  Of course, he was “The Fou.” 

One particularly dusty African morning as I rounded the corner while scanning the road for the most passable route, I spotted a rather large fire. “The Fou” was burning a pile of trash he had collected.  Trash burning is a fairly normal part of life’s routine in Ouaga as it is elsewhere.  The only problem was that the lowest branches of the trees around our home were beginning to brown and burn.  I stopped my truck and watched for a minute as "The Fou" piled small handfuls of trash on the fire.  Few people on the uncrowded street paid him much attention.  After all, he was “The Fou.”  He was mostly invisible, but at that time he was more than just visible to me.

I walked over to “The Fou” and told him that the fire was too big and was starting to burn the trees near our home.  A youngish woman from the home next to ours and where I suspected “The Fou” had some connection came out from behind the large steel gate.  In my painful French I explained that the fire was damaging the trees and that it was too close to our home.  I asked her to throw some water on the fire to extinguish it. 

 At that, “The Fou” began to urinate on the fire.  I appreciated his directness.  As the pile of trash hissed and steamed he then offered me what turned out to be a rather wet hand.  I thanked him for helping to extinguish the fire.   As I busily wiped my hand with a used tissue from my pocket, I noticed that half the neighborhood was standing outside of their gated walls regarding the nasara (white person) who was giving “The Fou” a bit of grief—probably more excitement than they had seen in a long while.  Most turned away possibly disappointed by the rather lukewarm confrontation.  I continued on my way to the Bible translation center where I worked.  “The Fou” returned to his digging.  All was right with the world, more or less.  I was determined to wash my hands as soon as possible.

Tonight I sat at the kitchen table to chat with Janet as she prepared another of her incredible culinary surprise meldings of American and Burkinabé cuisine, we could hear the bellows and screeches of “The Fou.”  He seemed tormented by whatever spirits chose to make him miserable.  Slowly it came to me.  Maybe his “issues” are spiritual.  In this country where evil need not masquerade as something more attuned to western sensibilities, dark spirits move more freely.  Maybe he is a modern day Gadarene in need of the Savior.

With Janet’s blessing I grabbed a bottle of Coke from the fridge and headed outside.  As I rounded the gate in our wall I was joined by our night guadian Desiré who watches out for us two old(er) nasara.  We slowly walked over to “The Fou” who was chattering away as he mined gravel from one of his calf-deep holes.  Désiré exchanged greetings and asked “The Fou” how he was.  “The Fou” responded that he was okay.  I offered “The Fou” a (dry) hand and asked, “Ça va bien?”  He responded, "'Ça va."  I handed him the Coke.  “A petit cadeau pour vous.”  I shook his (dry) hand once more and wished him a “Bon soir.” He responded with a nod and a nascient smile as Désiré and I returned to the gate.

“The Fou” remained unusually quiet for the remainder of the evening.  Janet and I wondered if he did indeed need more serious praying.  Jesus healed some people and cast demons out of others.  In a world where science rules, we may miss the root cause of many maladies.  We may be too engrossed in laboratory conditions to remember how things once were when the Bible was more current than today’s news.

As soon as we can, Janet and I will have our Burkinabé French tutor who is also a pastor to come and pray with us over “The Fou.”   

Please remember him in your prayers as well.  We will also try to learn his real name.