MY CRAZY MOTHER

My sister and I were sure our widowed mother wasn’t crazy, but I think that there were times she wanted us to think so.  She couldn’t resist keeping us wondering.


My mom was left with a nine-year-old daughter who had been pummeled by a one-two of spina bifida and polio and who required a ridiculous number of surgeries even before graduating from high school.  A two-year-old rambunctious and strong-willed son balanced the other end of her yoke.  Maybe that’s why she always a seemed a bit “different.’


Besides the usual “clean up your room” and “please don’t start fires in the house,” mom always did the excruciatingly unexpected.  When I was about four or five, mom dropped the hammer on me for dropping toys on the floor.  One day she sat me down with “that look” on her face that said I may not be sitting down again for a while.


“Look, I work all day to put food on the table and to keep a roof over our heads,” said Mom.  “Your Nana keeps an eye on you and your sister every day to make sure that you both eat and that you don’t burn the house down.”  (Oh, oh, she found the burned spot on the floor beneath the hassock.)  I don’t have the time or energy to always pick up after you.  If you don’t put your toys away, we’ll figure out a better solution.”


A few weeks later, with toys still on the floor, one of our neighbor’s husband carried in an old wood army footlocker and put it my room. I liked army stuff and thought this to be pretty cool.  Mom came in and sat me down on the footlocker.  She snapped a small padlock on the hasp.  She looked me in the eye and said,

 “Every toy that you leave on the floor goes into the footlocker and remains there ensconced for two weeks.  If it winds up on the floor again, it will stay in the footlocker until just before Christmas.  We will take the footlocker to the Ottilie Orphan Home and you will give one toy to each orphan until all of your toys have been given away.”

I knew that Mom could be stern, but not THAT crazy.  I remained a recidivist. The memory of an unlearned lesson quickly vaporized.
  

A couple of weeks before Christmas Mom and I drove up to the Ottilie Orphan Home in “Becky,” our pea green 1939 Dodge sedan with a footlocker sticking out of the trunk.  Even then, I held out hope that this was just some drama meant to teach me a lesson.  It was not.  In all-too-few minutes I was raining tears as I clutched each toy before hesitantly handing it to a child who clasped the toy to his or her chest and said a very appreciative “Thank you!”


The next day, Mom helped me to write a letter to Santa.  I asked for a small, rideable delivery truck, a panda bear, and a wind-up roller coaster.  Mom walked me to the post office to mail the letter.  A few days before Christmas, a big box with a North Pole return address was delivered to our house.  Inside were wrapped packages addressed to my sister and me. They remained unopened until Christmas Day.


Sixty-plus years later, inside a yellowing photo album in our basement is a picture of a very smiley five-year-old riding a small truck and clutching a very fat panda bear.  Mom always stuck to her story that she had nothing to do with the package that came by truck.  She said that she was struggling to make a Christmas for my sister and me.  Money was tight and she was working two jobs.  There was little left for presents.  On Christmas day, she was a lot more surprised than I was when we opened those gifts plus a letter from Santa wising us all a very, merry Christmas.

When I went to my room that night to go to sleep, the footlocker was gone and I was clutching my new bear.  I still wonder about Mom to this day.

Roping Toilets

I have shared before that it is customary that just before we leave the US for Burkina, after we arrive, or before we leave Burkina for the US, or just after we arrive things fall apart. In my case it has most often been something with a toilet.

I have become so adept at quickly repairing toilets that I am reminded of a calf roper launching after a calf released from its chute only to be wrestled to the ground with its hooves bound by a rope in what the wrangler hopes is record time. I even raise both hands in victory as I flush the repaired toilet for the first time. I brought a wrangler’s hat with us to Burkina this time so I can more closely resemble my missional avatar.

This time it was an electrical connection in the main circuit breaker adjacent to the meter—it smoked and cut off the current last evening. I was not inclined to work on the problem in the dark, so we ran the generator until midnight. I “pre-cooled” the bedroom as much as possible before we hopped into bed and tried to fall asleep before the room heated to ambient. It worked, almost. When the room temperature rose above 85-degrees I awoke as if a large metal platter had fallen onto a concrete floor. I spent the remainder of the night repeating my prayers until the sun laser-beamed through a slit in the curtains screaming that the night was over.

The circuit breaker reset this morning, although I measured its temperature to be over 160-degrees with my IR thermometer. I have a call into Daouda, our very friendly and capable Burkinabé electrician. We are using as little electricity in hopes of keeping our electrical load as low as possible. While I wait for Daouda, I can see if the voltage regulator for the refrigerator can be repaired and then find the source of the short circuit in the living room lights. Later I can replace the burned-out spotlight and exterior light fixtures. Once I get the two dead batteries in the trucks recharged.

The toilets, so far, are okay.

Daouda has arrived. It will be a good day.

The Oasis of Hope Women’s Sewing Project Update

Their smiles say it all.  The joy of new-found hope and the love of Jesus in the faces of our most recent women’s sewing project graduates.

It seems like a small thing--learning to sew clothes, shoulder bags, small, stuffed animals, and more.  Bringing hope and the love of Jesus to women marginalized by widowhood, divorce, or abandonment are the products of small steps.  The first step is when a woman so painfully shy that she can only look at the ground arrives and tentatively knocks on the Oasis door.

Greeted by smiling faces and encouraging voices she soon feels the affection of women who just weeks or months before were in the very same place as she.  People listen to her heart and her story.  She shares her hurt and hopelessness and someone listens.  The soft touch of another who has shared similar pain assures her that she has found a place of hope.  The love of Jesus begins to bathe her in the light of expectation where the shadows of despair begin to fade.

Soon her smile and sparkle begin to show as helpful hands show her how to sew a straight line or to make a hem.  Hope takes root.  Fellowship, prayer, Scripture, and song fill the air and her heart as she begins to raise her eyes and take hold of hope that will last.

It is now her turn to open the door for a woman who can only look at the ground. 

Small steps.

Into Africa

I am sitting at a makeshift desk in 100-degree heat in a town whose name I could not pronounce a few years ago.  I have a tablet pc, a smartphone, and a power pack to keep them both charged. 



It is a scene that reminds me of one in a lot of films about Africa.  Usually such a scene occurs on a safari with someone in a pith helmet pecking away at an old Underwood.  In this case, I am sitting in an oasis, the Oasis of Hope in Lorem Ipsum. Instead of being surrounded by lions, and tigers, and hyenas, I am surrounded by babies and small children and their mothers.  A couple of men are finishing the new chicken coop.  It’s all so stereotypically African with a twist.  And it’s hot and getting hotter but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.



The chicken coop has been long in coming.  It was supposed to be full of hens laying eggs by Christmas.  It’s now almost Easter and the chickens may be here before May.  Their eggs will feed the mothers who come to the Oasis for baby formula because they cannot nurse or to family members when the mother or both parents are missing.  A malnourished woman can’t nurse properly.  The added nutrition from a few eggs per month can make the difference.  Leaves from the nutritious Moringa trees raised here add even more nutrients to mom’s diet.  Babies feed better, gain weight, and grow better, and may even make it past their fifth birthday.



I’m drinking a Coke, it’s warm.  So is everything else.  Besides money, food, health care and honest government, one thing in short supply here in Africa is shade.  The sun has moved to my workspace and I can feel the heat rising from the desk.  Soon my tablet with give me a red box warning that it is shutting down because it is too hot.  I need to find more shade.

Feeding wizened babies and their nearly as skinny mothers is good and it makes many good feelings.  So does distributing small bags of rice and beans or small plastic sacs of drinking water to the many in need.  Taking desperately ill babies and adults to local clinics, pediatric hospitals, or radiology specialists is also good for a serotonin uptake. Holding a cooing baby once the size of a rolled pair of socks is an even bigger rush.  But, as the song goes, it’s all just “dust in the wind.”



If sending well-fed babies to Hell was the best I could hope for, I’d go live someplace a good deal cooler and find something much more amusing to do.  But there is more I can hope for and do.



Unlike postmodern Europe and North America, Africa hasn’t tired of faith in God.  In fact, I have found much hunger for who God is.  Here where peoples’ continued existence can depend on the next rain, God has a more welcome and visible hand.  Here, most people are not “too smart” to still believe in the Eternal God of the universe.  Here is a growing population who know that they need Jesus and seek him with all of their hearts.  They know God is the one who brings the next rain. 



I’m getting older and already past retirement age.  Dragging around 25-kilo sacks of rice or beans, hauling 20-kilo containers of water, and experiencing sun so intense that you really can cook on a car hood is not the object of my life.  What gets me out of bed in the morning is the hope and experience of sharing, sometimes just a little of the love of Jesus Christ with someone who is living on the razor’s edge of existence and who is taking each day a foot, a morsel, or a minute at a time now and for the innumerable tomorrow’s to come.



The heat, dust, and mosquitos fade into non-existence on even the faintest hope that one day a simple seed that God has allowed me to plant will become that slightly familiar smiling face who greets me with an outstretched hand and a small sack of drinking water in the life to come.

NOT A MIRAGE

The word “oasis” draws a picture of someone crawling over the scorched sand towards shade and cool water quivering in the distance.  That image is repeated daily at the Oasis of Hope mission.  Trees and vegetation planted during the rainy season have exploded, spreading a swath of green on the baked, ruddy soil of West Africa.

Women bearing bundled babies arrive as yellow beams pierce the dust of the morning air.  They each gladly give their charges into the hands of people who weigh, measure, and assess their child’s health and nutrition.  Babies once on the brink are brought back by good food and caring hands at the “Oasis.”

Women marginalized by culture or circumstance learn to make soap to sell or practice sewing straight seams to avoid a life of begging, or worse.  They drink cool water in shaded breezes as they chat and laugh as is central to the African culture.  They rest in the sound of a bubbling fountain at the Oasis.

We thank God for gracing us with Becky Schroeder from St. Louis who with a heart as big as the sunrise lives to rescue and embrace frail children in need of advanced care.  We celebrate the welcome arrival of Jacqueline van Ingen from Holland who is returning to her roots as a previous “missionary kid” to translate, partner with local churches, plan devotionals, and to simply share the love of Jesus.

The “Oasis” is not a mirage. It is the cool, living water of Jesus.

Mission 2.0

After more than seven months for three surgeries in the US to repair my back, we’re packing up to return to a much changed country on an equally changing mission.  At this moment, we are feeding more babies and orphans than we had planned (25) and spending more money on formula than we had budgeted.  When you’re the last resort and maybe the only safety net, turning any severely malnourished baby away when there is no other hope is not an option.



Blandine and sewing

Blandine, our single, windowed mom who loves teaching other women   to sew and to make soap is sharing her heart for Jesus with a growing circle of widows and other marginalized women. These women are learning to support themselves and their families.  Our nutritious Moringa trees once barely up to my knees are now higher than any of the buildings in the Oasis and seem to pierce the sky.  The office, classrooms, and formula storage shed are waiting to be painted and for furniture and shelving.  Soon after we arrive the sign reading, “L’Oasis d’Espoir” (The Oasis of Hope) will go up and the doors will open.




Soap

Soon there will be hens cackling and laying in our poultry pen and soap and sewn items will be for sale in our on-site boutique. Women arriving to pick up their twice monthly supply of baby formula will attend various training classes in infant feeding and care, maternal nutrition, sanitation and other subjects all wrapped in the Gospel.



Moringa trees at 2 months.

The biggest change will be our efforts to raise up and nurture the Burkina staff who will replace Janet and me and make the “Oasis” a local and sustainable operation.  It will be a larger application of the “if you give a man a fish” principle.  Soon, our mission must become a Burkinabe effort where the local people will learn skills to make it their center and make it even more of what they need it to be.  Even after we turn over the keys, we will continue to mentor and encourage the staff as they teach others the skills they themselves have learned.

Moringa trees at 7 months.

As much as Janet and enjoy holding and looking into the smiling eyes of hungrily feeding babies who once were close to breathing their last, there is more joy to be found in teaching the people among and with whom we work to “fish for themselves.”  Introducing someone to a new tool or skill is as rewarding as and even more lasting than playing with an infant once on the edge of starvation.

One of our sets of twins.

We have looked past the smile and into the heart of a kitchen cook who once could not even turn a computer on and now watch him compose and print menus, sign-up sheets for daily meals, and design announcements for special functions.  He uses emails to communicate with guests and plan budgets.  He is Janet’s and my Facebook friend and even “Tweets.”  Helping Bukinabé to do what they had once only dreamed and to do things that help their community and nation to grow is helping even more people to fish.



The triplets.

Our mission and ministries will grow as God wills and they must become local efforts.  Just as a seeding must grow into a tree, and a toddler grow tall and strong, our mission and our ministries must also develop roots with a solid grip on the earth to grow into a sustainable effort of Burkinabé workers and American encouragers.  

We hope to be around long enough to see some of our first babies, boys and girls graduate from high school and even university as their compatriots steer L’Oasis to whatever it becomes as Mission 3.0.  We hope that you will walk along with us on this new adventure to share the love of Jesus with those who need and Him so very much.

Don and Janet Guizzetti

"You guide me with your counsel,

    and afterward you will receive me to glory.
 Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
 My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."

Psalm 73:24-26 English Standard Version

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Or you can make checks payable to Sheltering Wings
with a note "For the Guizzetti's."  
and mail to:
Sheltering Wings, 5104 Old 66, Leasburg, MO  65535. 
(314) 635-6316.



Open Thou My Lips…

We hope that the Christmas and New Year holiday season was a joyful blessing to you and your family and that the coming year brings the blessings of the nearness of God and the bounty of His providence to you all.

 

Janet and I were given an amazing gift from God, an answer to much prayer and planning.  The swiftness with which we were blessed reveals that God knew what we wanted (and needed) even before we brought our prayers before him.

 

Four days before the New Year we were visited by a friend whom we had not seen since we returned in October and who had not been to our home for more than two years.  As we sat on our front porch talking over glasses of Coke, Blondine noticed the sewing machine I have been repairing sitting on our porch.  Janet explained to her that we hoped to use the sewing machine as the seed to a program to teach widows and other marginalized women to sew and that we planned to do this in a community center in a location we have not yet discovered.  Her face lit up as she shared that she knew of available land in our very neighborhood. 

 

The next day the three of us drove to the land that was actually within walking distance.  We drove down an uncharacteristically flat dirt road to a typical weathered cement block wall with a couple of rusty gates and a matching passage door.  Blondine opened the gates and we all stepped in.  The land was overgrown with waist-high weeds and brambles.  Windblown litter fluttered among the weeds and the occasional lizard scrambled across the block wall.  Janet and I paused in dropped-jaw silence for a few moments as we took in the view.  As we walked among the weeds avoiding tripping on tangled vines and large stones we began remarking aloud, “Look! A mango tree! And there is a papaya tree!  Then we saw what we had hoped to be able to plant ourselves—a small cluster of Moringa trees!

 

The land includes a typical Burkinabé concrete block house with two bedrooms, a living area, and a future bathroom.  The home was filled with assorted lumber, furniture, construction materials, and the obligatory abundance of swirling red dust.  It was small, but very well suited for use as a meeting room with two offices or an office and a dedicated-use room such as for training.  Across the way from the house was a single room “magasin” suitable for much storage such as baby formula, rice and beans, sewing machines, and more.  There was also a small outbuilding with a “squatty potty, a small shower stall, and a room for a lavabo or hand washing sink.  The land has a water tap and hose bib (with running water) and electrical service.

 

We were not there long before we again saw the hand of God.  The property was ideal for all that we had in mind to do as we had shared with the Sheltering Wings board, albeit smaller than our too-big eyes had imagined.  The property was all that we had hoped for, and more.  It is situated across the road from a large school, a short distance from a large evangelical Baptist church and a few houses up the street from a mosque making it an area especially well-suited to sharing the love of Christ, disseminating the Good News, and developing synergies and working with and supporting a local church and a nearby school.

 

We contacted a good friend, a former coworker from the SIL translation center where we had served until last October.  Adama is a true Christian brother who has copious experience working with government agencies, NGOs, and hapless foreigners feeling their way through an unfamiliar social structure and a convoluted and often tortuous legal system to make the initial contact with the “proprietaire”—the landlord.

 

We had a visit from Adama yesterday evening after his meeting with the landlord.  Adama sat in the sofa across from us, his usual poker face belied a nascent grin—he had good news.  The landlord was not just amenable, but wholly supportive of having a social service entity occupy the property.  Not only did the landlord reduce the rent by one third, but rebuffed an offer from a small group of men who arrived as he was bidding “adieu” to Adama and who offered to rent the property at the full asking rate.

 

Janet and I have prayed much before and since finding this property.  There is no doubt in our minds that a God who knew what we wanted (and needed) even before we asked has tipped His hand.  We began the process of planning improvements to present to the landlord.

 

…And My Mouth Shall Show Fourth Thy Praise

 

God again has made His hand visible in ways that make us fall silent and watch Him work.

 

We met with the landlord and Adama, our friend with SIL.  The landlord is a Christian brother who appears to have a grand heart for Jesus and a deep love for improving the lives of the Burkinabé people.  He is very supportive of the work to which God has put our hands.  He is amenable to a long-term (five years or more) relationship as we work to raise up Burkinabé colleagues to whom we can entrust the project.  We shared the rendering of how we would like to develop the land.  He was pleased and encouraging.

 

Now the work begins.  For the next few months we will be rehabbing the home to serve as an office, classroom, and a meeting room; installing water and electrical service; installing an exterior kitchen for demonstrating how to prepare food with Moringa leaves and to feed pregnant and nursing mothers; installing a covered, outside work area for teaching mothers how to safely prepare infant formula, to sew by hand and with a sewing machine, to make soap, and peanut butter; plant a Moringa grove; plant an organic demonstration garden irrigated with grey water; build a chicken coop and fenced enclosure to teach chicken raising and to reward women with laying chickens and the opportunity to have more food and to raise their own chickens;  to teach women basic literacy and numeracy; and to do as we are led to share the love of Jesus Christ with His children and His creation.  As always we pray that God’s providence will supply the resources needed to do the work to which He has put our hands.

 

We will be using some of our personal support funds to get the project started and we have set up a Sheltering Wings Community Center project account which can be found on our Sheltering Wings website page.  We will share a more complete plan and budget as soon as it is finished.

 

While in Africa, we have learned to wait upon God, to listen for His voice, and to trust in His will.  We are blessed beyond belief to watch Him work as we do what little we can.  We are blessed to have mission partners like you who lift us up before the Father in prayer and share of His bounty to follow His leading.

 

May you all be blessed at least as much as you have and continue to bless us.

 

Que les bénédictions de Dieu tomber sur vous comme la pluie, (May God’s blessings fall on you (plural) like rain.)

In His hands

Don and Janet