New Year's Campout

For New Years weekend, all of the personnel in Mali went on a campout. It was SO MUCH FUN. One of the couples who works for the company lives in a house on a large amount of land. So we all headed down there for the weekend. When we arrived, Nafi was stirring the biggest pot of chili I've ever seen over the fire. We set up our tents and hung out until dinner time. There were 4 holes in the ground for bathrooms and each of them had a straw wall around it. There were also 2 showers set up in the same way for bucket baths. We had a fabulous time sitting around the campfire getting to know everybody and having a blast. At midnight we walked over to a huge tree where somebody had set up a ball to drop. It was one of those big rubber balls with a handle on it, covered in Christmas lights, and hoisted up with a rope. Everyone counted down as the ball dropped and we rung in the new year. Then, someone started singing and before we knew it everyone was belting out "Don't Stop Believing." As good a New Year's song as any I think.

That night we FROZE. We were pretty far south where it's quite a bit cooler than it is here. I was wearing 3 layers of clothing, and a sheet in a sleeping bag in my tent and I was still freezing. 60 degrees just doesn't feel like it used to. The next morning we slept in, ate breakfast, sat around talking, played games and just hung out. And...I even won the Texas Hold 'Em game...don't worry, we weren't playing for money. Thank you, Randy Dane and Trent Vest for teaching me how to play about 7 New Years Days ago. That evening we watched The Rookie projected onto the side of the house. Man that movie made me homesick. I may or may not have burst into tears when it showed the Ballpark in Arlington...I don't even like baseball. Then we went to bed and headed back to town the next morning. I'd never been camping before I came here...turns out I like it!

Joyeux Noel

I love Christmas. And I was a little curious to see how spending Christmas in Africa would be. I really missed the cold weather, but other than that it was pretty darn festive. We felt SO loved by friends & family back in America and we really enjoyed our time with friends & family here in Africa. Abby, Sarah, and I woke up Christmas morning and started it off with delicious hot beverages. Then we opened all the presents under our tree...and there were tons from parents, churches, and friends back in America! We had agreed on a 10,000cfa limit (about $20) for presents for each other and we had so much fun picking stuff out for each other and trying to be sneaky about it...which is pretty difficult when you spend 24 hours a day with a person. Then we got dressed and loaded up our food to go to the Thompson's house. We also loaded up a bunch of presents that a church had sent for all of the personnel who would be here on Christmas day. At the Thompson's we ate, opened presents, and had a good ol' time. Then the 3 of us went to Nafi's and exchanged presents with her and Rita. Then the 3 of us came home, put on our pajamas, got in the big bed, watched Glee...and...since it was Christmas...we even turned the air conditioner on...watch out.

Caroling Caroling Thru the Sand

On Christmas Eve, the 3 of us, Nafi, and Rita went out caroling to our friends' and family's homes. We had told them that we were coming by to greet, but that we couldn't stay long because we had lots of households to greet. They understand Christmas (Noel) here to some degree, but we used this opportunity to tell them why we celebrate and that we wanted to celebrate with them because that's what we would do with our families and they are our African families. We would arrive at a house, sit down and talk for a bit, tell them why we'd come and why we celebrate, and then sing for them. I'm not gonna lie...at first I thought the singing part would be kind of awkward. I mean, we were singing in English. I'd imagined us just sitting there singing while they all stared at us then looked at each other like, "Whaaaaat...this is so weird." But they didn't! As soon as we started singing their faces lit up and they would immediately start clapping along...in perfect beat, of course, because they're awesome. And sometimes they'd even start dancing. Such a good time. We even stopped at MacParadise for burgers (they're the best in town) and dates (the kind you eat).

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day was amazing. We went over to Nafi's house along with all of the other personnel in town. When we got there, Nafi forced us to make sure the pecan pie (see above) was good enough to serve. It was. Everything was there. A volunteer team had brought over turkeys from America and we made all the fixin's. Our team's contribution was deviled eggs, a pumpkin roll, and cherry dump cake. We ate, cleaned up, and played games with everybody. But the best part was that when everybody left, the 3 of us and Nafi & Rita stayed up finishing the last season of LOST until about 2 o'clock in the morning. All in all, a great day in Africa.

Man, they know how to party...

Tabaski is the biggest holiday for the people here. While it is an M holiday, it has become much like Christmas in the sense that many people celebrate it more for the fun and festivities than for the spiritual reasons behind it. As we asked our friends & family about the holiday, we found that we were told various things regarding its purpose. Basically the head of the family acquires a sacrificial animal...here they mostly use rams. The ram is then sacrificed in commemoration of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son before God provided a ram in the son's place. (Just FYI...most people here say that the son was Ishmael, not Isaac.) The sacrifice is also for the atonement of the family's sins. Then the people have a big party and eat all the meat.

Holidays are always tricky here. We don't want our presence at our family's party to make it appear that we are in agreement with the purpose behind it. And we certainly don't want it to appear that we believe the dead ram we're eating is in any way atoning for our sins. We know that our sins have already been covered by the blood of Jesus...and He is alive...pretty awesome. BUT relationship is everything here. And we see these celebrations as an opportunity to share our beliefs. And it helps us to better understand what our family is searching for from God. So, we went to our family's party. The household that we visited had five (five!) rams...about $1000 of meat. Our people group is one of the more wealthy people groups here, so they really do it up right for this stuff. There was a ridiculous amount of meat being eaten and one heck of a dance party...that pretty much sums it up: meat & dancing.

As soon as we pulled out of our house, we saw rams being killed across the street. There was blood everywhere, rams laying strewn about with their heads half-detached, and rams in the process of being cut up. It's really kind of gory. When we showed up at our family's house, everybody was sitting in the courtyard cutting meat up. Women were doing some kind of loopy thing to the intestines to make them look braided...I guess they take up less room in the pot that way. We sat around talking before we ate the snack (which would qualify as a giant meal any other time). It was meat (ribs for the most part) that had some kind of delicious seasoning on it and had been grilled. Then we sat for a little while longer and drank sodas (a special treat!). Then the dancing began...all the girls and young women were in this one tiny little room with music blaring and booties shaking. So fun. Then we ate the meal....tons and tons and tons of meat that had been boiled in this stewish type sauce on top of rice. We were so full. Nafi had left earlier and they sent her home with about a 10-lb. bag of meat...it was crazy.

There will be more pictures on Facebook, but up there is one of me, our supervisor Nafi, our Aunt Bea, and Abby.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

I know it’s a little early for this post, but if you know me you know that I’ve been listening to Christmas music for weeks now anyway, so really a Christmas blog shouldn’t surprise you that much. One night earlier this week Abby, Sarah, and I decorated for Christmas. Our duplex-mates are going to be in America for the holidays, so guess who gets to borrow all their stuff including a Christmas tree! We had so much fun putting everything up. The thermometer in our house said it was 96 degrees and we were sweating pretty profusely, but at least it was starting to LOOK like Christmas even if it didn’t so much FEEL like it yet :)

AND oh my goodness. Yesterday I picked up my Christmas “package” from my church family at Bear Creek Community Church in Cresson, Texas. I say “package” in quotation marks because this sucker was, in fact, an enormous trunk full of fantasticness. When the men at the airport found the trunk, they weren’t sure if it was mine (and neither was I) because some of the numbers and my name had rubbed off, so they opened it up and I think the air freight handlers were pretty jealous. As Abby said, “That is one big box of happiness.” It was absolutely FULL of American food/candy/coffee, health & beauty products (you should see all this nail polish), journals, jewelry, Christmas music (yay!), Christmas decorations, and more stuff than I ever could have imagined. And check out this awesomeness…it had a ton of WRAPPED Christmas presents so now we have presents under our tree! Thank you so much, Bear Creek family. I love you and miss you so much that there are tears in my eyes right now.

A Heart-Breaking Couple of Days

A volunteer team came in a couple weeks ago to do some dental clinics. The team consisted of 2 dentists, a pastor and his wife, and 3 more women to assist the dentists and do whatever else needed doing. We did one clinic in the big city for the Sunny people and another people group we call the “Hidden” people, but before that we headed out to the bush.

One of the women who came over with the group is Mrs. B; she’s a nurse and she served with our company for 33 years in another West African country. In the first village, on our first clinic day, she went around to different huts to see if anyone needed some basic wound care. She came across a woman I’ll call “Becka.” She was lying in a dark room by herself. Becka is literally missing half of her face because it is rotting away. When you look at her right side you can see bone, teeth, and tongue. And her right eyeball is gone. Abby said that when she first walked into the hut she immediately thought a dead animal was in there because of the way it smelled. Mrs. B and a couple others took her to a bush clinic where they were told that nothing could be done there and to go to the hospital in the nearest town. So they went to the hospital in the nearest town (where we were staying) and were told that she must go to the capital (which is 4 hours away) to get the treatment she needs. Mrs. B and Nafi (my supervisor) both said that Becka’s face is the worst thing they’ve ever seen in Africa…and they have a combined 47 years of experience living here. It was a miracle that she was even still alive.

Abby, Sarah, and I were heading back into the city the next day so we and Nafi decided that the best course of action would be for us to bring Becka, her mother, and her uncle with us. Nafi came to our room to discuss what the next day or two might look like. The girl and her family don’t speak Sunny and we don’t speak French or Bambara so somebody was lined up to translate at the hospital between us, the family, and the doctors. By taking them to the hospital, we were wordlessly assuming all responsibility for this woman, including finances, so we discussed how that would work and what we should say. Nafi told us how to get to a couple of the different places we may need, how to be assertive if the hospitals refused care…just a lot of different things that we hadn’t yet experienced. She even told us it was okay if we needed to pull the truck over and throw up because of the smell. There were a couple of contingency plans discussed, then Nafi said, “If she dies in the truck, this is what you need to do…” I hadn’t seen Becka yet. I knew it was bad. I knew she was dying, but I didn’t really know.

So the next morning we picked up Becka, her mother, and her uncle. The Lord is so good. The hours flew by, the smell seemed dulled, and we arrived in the capital. We spent the rest of the day driving around to various hospitals and clinics until we were finally told where we needed to be. The clinic was closed on the weekend so we made plans to go first thing Monday morning. Before leaving, our translator shared the gospel with Becka and her mom and prayed for them. Then we drove them to the house of some family they had in town, gave them some money for food and transportation over the weekend, and left.

At this point, we’d been told that Becka had a disease called NOMA and that the clinic in town was run by a non-governmental organization who would perform all the treatment at no cost. We looked up as much as we could about this disease and looked at various images online…none of which compared to Becka. We read about the predisposing factors for NOMA, all of which are prevalent in an African village. We learned that most victims of this disease are children, even though Becka is just a couple of years younger than I am. And we learned that the survival rate for this disease is almost non-existent. We were pretty down…but not defeated, knowing that we serve the Great Physician.

We picked the family up on Monday morning and headed to the clinic. After waiting a while (long enough for Abby & I to go put oil in our truck), we were told to go to another branch of the clinic. So we got in our truck, our translators got in their truck, and we all followed a man on a moto to the other place. We were seen by the doctor that some co-workers had already told us about (they have experience with this disease and a little boy they know). He took her to an examination room and then brought our translator, Abby, Sarah, and me into his office. He began talking to Mrs. L (our translator) in French. Some things he had said had obviously surprised her…and even disappointed her. After they finished their conversation, she told us that the doctor said he knew Becka. He said she’d been in to see him 4 months before and that the treatment plan had been laid out for her already. Her family already knew that the treatment would be a long process and that it would all be at no cost. Then he said what I didn’t see coming: that she has AIDS. She’d been told at the previous visit that she would need to take anti-virals in order to even get her body strong enough to be treated for NOMA. We asked if she’d been taking them so he went to ask her and found out that she had not. It was such a gut-punch. I know this sounds horrible, but all of a sudden it seemed pointless to try to treat the skin disease when she was dying of AIDS. And it seemed pointless to try to get her the treatment she needs when, for whatever reason, she hadn’t been complying with what had already been prescribed.

We were told that their transportation back to their family’s house in the capital would be provided and that we could leave. We met up with Nafi and the rest of the team coming in from the bush for lunch. After a small debriefing, we were able to once again see how God is at work. The last couple of hours had been frustrating and disappointing, but it doesn’t change the fact that God has a plan…a perfect plan, with perfect timing. God is really up to something in the people group of Becka and her family. He has raised up new believers, sent more workers, and given a hunger for His Word and a curiosity in His Son. We don’t know what’s going to happen with Becka, but we know that it will be for His glory. She is currently undergoing treatment at the clinic for AIDS to get her strong enough to move to another clinic closer to her village where she can stay and be treated for NOMA. Please pray for her. Pray for her body and pray that the words of the gospel that she has now heard will take root in her heart so that she can be a testimony to her family and others in her village.