The Last Month, Part 7: The day it finally made sense

We prayed and prayed and prayed for this next day.  We'd finally be able to spend all day over there and really knock some Stories out.  We only had 5 left in the Old Testament!  We ate breakfast, swung by the boutiki for tea and sugar, and arrived in Tea Village.  We got to work almost immediately!  This never happens...there is always buffer time of chatting and sitting before we would launch right into work.

We settled in on our little porch and were able to test FOUR Stories...just that morning!  It took us the same amount of time to do 4 that had been taking us to do 2.  We were floored.  When we left to go back to Max's village for lunch, we knew that we only had one more Old Testament Story left...the Story of Isaiah's prophecy.  During our lunch break, I started feeling really uneasy.  So far the women had loved the Stories because so far they had been Stories about people who they acknowledged as great prophets.  Some of the Stories...or at least a version of...are even in their holy book.  So it had pretty much been smooth sailing.  But I knew we were about to get into Jesus Stories.  I kept thinking back to our first day...when Max felt so pressed to warn us about their loyalty to Isl-m.  Abby and I talked about it briefly, but weren't really able to come up with a plan.

We went back to Tea Village and tested the Isaiah Story.  That Story has Jesus all over it, but never says His name.  As we were waiting for the 2 ladies to come in for the first Story that says His name, my heart was about to leap out of my chest...

They could think we're disrespectful...

They could become hostile...

They could resent Max for bringing us...

They could kick us out and we'll never finish our project...

They'll be turned off to Jesus forever...

I told Abby, we HAVE to ask Max about this.  We told him that the next Story was about Jesus.  We asked him if that was okay to play in this village.  We told him that we wanted to respect the women.  We asked him what to do.  He said, "I know that the last Story was talking about Jesus.  The women didn't know because they have never heard, but I knew.  You'll just have to ask them.  When they come in, tell them that you want to respect them and that the next Story is about Prophet Jesus.  They can either say, 'Okay, I will stay,' or 'I will not listen' and leave.  And you have to let them leave.  You have to be okay with it if they want to leave."

Okay.

So which 2 women come in but the woman who is the obvious leader of the other women and the woman who we have pegged as being the "most" Musl-m.  Whatever Woman 1 thinks or says will dictate what the rest of the women will do.  And Woman 2 just seemed like she would be the most opposed to Jesus of any of them.  She was fully-covered in all black and had all of the mannerisms of a staunchly Musl-m woman.

Max told them the situation as I pretty much held my breath for fear of bursting into tears...and this is what Woman 1 said:

"Yes!  This is good to us and we will listen.  The girls have brought these Stories to us and asked for our help.  And we can tell that the man telling them is a very, very, very Sunny man and that he has a good head on his shoulders.  Because he is the one saying the Stories, it is okay for us to listen to them."

Now--if you're just tuning in, you need to know that the original plan was for us to live in our village full-time for the entire 2 years telling Stories ourselves.  We were forced to leave our village due to some security issues.  I have to confess that for pretty much the remainder of my term--up until this very  moment--I struggled with bitterness.  I didn't understand having to leave my village.  I didn't understand why the timing never seemed to go as planned.  I didn't understand why we had been forced to re-strategize so many, many times.  Our language learning was slowed drastically by the fact that we had to live in the capital, where Sunny people were few and far between...and where we had to deal in French and Bambara.  Because of that, we decided to do a recorded Story set...instead of learning to tell  32 Stories ourselves. And in this moment, I got to see why.  God certainly didn't have to let me see...but He did.  God knew that the Stories needed to be told by Nick.  God knew that our voices wouldn't have gone nearly as far as his.  God knew that these little old women, in this little bitty village in the middle of nowhere wouldn't have listened to the Stories otherwise.