Merry Christmas

Living here in Guinea, Christmas could really come and go and you wouldn’t really notice.  There are no lights on houses, no TV specials, no stores full of gift giving ideas, no signs of Christmas anywhere.  It can be difficult to think of all the traditions happening without us back home.  It can be difficult to read how everyone is celebrating the season…BUT, there are also great things about having Christmas over here.  It’s much easier to focus on the real meaning of Christmas when you take away all the hype and commercialism.  There was no mention of Santa Claus at all.

We read from the book of Luke several times and talked about how amazing it was that God would choose to send His Son as a baby in a manger.  Luke 2:10-11, “Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all the people.  For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

When we read that I asked the boys why is it good tidings with great joy?  They knew it was because Jesus would save us all from our sins.  Then we started talking about all the people in our village.  I asked if their religion is full of good tidings and great joy?  They knew too that it is not.  All the people around us are just trying to do enough good things to make up for the bad things in the hope that their god will let them into paradise.  That can’t bring joy to a soul.  I just kept reading that passage and thinking how much I long for my friends and neighbors to know true joy.  To no longer strive to be good enough, but to rest in the fact that God already did everything for them.

Of course, with three boys, we did celebrate Christmas with a few traditions.  We made Christmas cookies (even as our frosting was melting And we sang Christmas carols and had some presents for them.  We asked our guard to give us a few hours as a family on Christmas morning without people needing us.  They think it is so incredibly odd that we would want to be alone for ANY reason!

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day visiting with our friends and family in the village – giving out gifts and offering our holiday greetings.  It’s a bit hard for them to offer those greetings back to us since it is rejoicing in the birth of Jesus, but we appreciate their efforts.  It was such a wonderful time giving gifts to others.  I had a great time of choosing clothes, toys, and candies for each family.  Our boys loved being a part of it and helping kids with their gifts.  I love that we could share our holiday with our friends this way.  I love that we can bring some of our world into theirs and let them know how much we care about them.  I have tons of pictures, but here are some of my favorites…

Taking gifts to friends and their kids

I loved seeing their excited littles faces as we visited different families

Having a fashion show trying on the new clothes

Visiting my namesake Casey with her parents Mohammed and Mawa.

I love seeing how happy they were to get gifts for baby Casey

Sweet baby Casey and I

it can be about impossible to get a group of Africans to smile for the camera! Our group has grown a little since this photo, but these are our guys!

A few months ago Steve and I started talking about wanting to do a Bible Study with the group of teenage guys who spend most of their afternoons at our home.  It’s a little scary at first to think about doing public Bible teaching in a group.  We never forget that Christianity goes against their religion and their beliefs.  Their religion (and I can’t use the specific title here) affects every aspect of their life…so, openly teaching about Christ is a big deal.  Of course, we share about our personal faith with people on a one-on-one basis, but a group Bible study is a much different story.  We spent a lot of time praying about it and in the end decided that we just couldn’t go on NOT teaching them.  We needed to be faithful to speak up and see where it led us.

It has been such a great experience for our entire family.  Our boys love Thursday nights when the whole group comes over to eat.  They hang out for a while when they first get here – playing foosball with Micah or coloring with Ephraim are the big hits!  Then it’s eating all together…let me tell you, those boys can eat!  One of their moms is the woman who does the cooking for us and when she first told us how much rice she would need each week I couldn’t believe it was true.  But, each week not a drop of food is left over.

Steve is going through the book, “The Lamb”, with the guys right now.  We wanted to start with something that wasn’t extremely threatening to them.  This book is one we’ve used with our own boys to clearly explain creation, sin, sacrifice and our need for a Savior.  Much of the story the teenagers are familiar with – it’s the details that have been changed to suit their religion.  We want to start at the beginning and lay the right foundation so they clearly see where the differences started and what affect it has.  After Steve goes through the chapter he asks questions to see if they are following him…yes, we are using candy as incentive for getting the answer right (hey, whatever works!).  They are asking good questions themselves and we are so thankful that we are taking these relationships deeper.

Keep praying for this group of young men.  Pray that they would see the truth of God’s Word.  Pray that they would have the courage to seek this truth.  Pray that we would communicate in a clear way that brings God glory!

Getting some action shots

Soccer is a VERY important part of life over here.  Soccer is THE sport.  I’m amazed when I see boys and young men running in 120 degree heat gearing up for a big match.  Every boy dreams of becoming a famous soccer player.  The market walls are lined with uniforms from all different countries.  When you live in a pretty remote village with no means of transporation and nothing much to do – a soccer match with a rival village team is a big deal.  Notices are written down, (and then usually brought to my house for me to make photocopies) passed around to different groups, and everyone shows up at the soccer field to watch the big game.

It’s just a gravel field at the edge of the village, just homemade goals, but you’d think they are celebrities.  If it’s going to be a big match then they rent speakers and microphone so there can be announcers yelling loudly through the whole thing.  Our village just had a week long soccer match with different grades playing each afternoon.  The boys who spend their afternoons at our house were playing one afternoon, so Steve went with the boys to cheer them on.  He took a ton of pictures and then when they came over for Bible Study he played them as a slideshow.  They loved it.

It may seem like a trival thing, but we want to be involved even in the soccer games.  Whatever is important to them needs to become important to us.  We need to show our neighbors that we care about the things they care about.  It’s the only way that we can become a part of the community.  Praying for these moments of outreach…

Such serious determination

Presenting the team

Our family at our Christmas dinner during conference

School is out for a few weeks…I’ve been looking forward to this little break from the busy routine.  It’s nice to have time to visit with the people coming to the house because I’m not trying to teach the kids at the same time.  Although, now that they know I’m on a break, it seems that EVERYONE needs to come and ask me something.  I had big plans that I was going to make the kids do more schoolwork during this break so it all stayed “fresh” in their minds, but it just isn’t happening – not that the boys mind too much!

We had our annual field conference all last week.  A guest speaker and his family came over from the States to encourage us during morning meetings.  It was nice to hear a hear someone new share things from a new perspective.  It was a very full week of meetings and events, but our kids loved the non-stop action of being with their friends.  Here’s a few photos from the week…

We had a kids day with games and activities...water balloons are a big hit over here.

Trying to catch those water balloons being launched at them

All our missionary kids!

The kids did a Christmas play and Malachi was a woodcutter

Micah in the play at a rapping Jesus - Ephraim is one of his rapping disciples.

All our missionary kids singing Christmas carols at the end of their play

Kinda in his fields

We’d like to share with you about a man named Kinda and his family.  God has blown us away with how He turned a terrible situation in Kinda’s life into something really great.  A few months ago we wrote about a little boy who was near death when we took him into the hospital.  This little boy was Kinda’s son.  It was honestly such a scary time trying to get him admitted and trying to get a doctor to notice this little boy who was unconscious by the time we got to the hospital.  But, he made a slow recovery and is now back working in the fields and getting into trouble.

Since that time Kinda has visited many times.  He brings gifts of vegetables to say thank you for saving his son.  We have enjoyed getting to know him and his family through these visits.  Then Kinda began to express that he was interested in hearing more about God’s Word.  It was exciting to see how God used that medical outreach to start working in Kinda’s heart.  So, Steve and another co-worker (who speaks a language Kinda understands much better than French) began visiting him, sharing with his family about the Bible, bringing them tapes with Bible lessons on it.  There is a small group of believers meeting each week and Steve brought Kinda to join them.  This group translates from their language into Kinda’s language so that he can follow the teaching.  When a pastor came to speak to the group about a month ago, Kinda afterwards prayed with the pastor and said that he wanted to be a follower of Christ.  What a privilege to be a part of this!  Steve is continuing to meet with Kinda to be sure that he is listening to the Bible lessons and really comprehending what he is hearing.  What an exciting time!

Last week, Kinda became very ill and Steve took him into the hospital.  We have watched as his health has continued to decline and we’ve been frustrated by a lack of answers from the doctors.  Steve was just there again this morning and we learned that Kinda in fact has AIDS.  We are so saddened and discouraged to hear this.  We live in a country where the religion does not anyone to know if a person has AIDS, so it is a very hidden disease.  We only learned of it because we are the ones responsible for paying for the medical care.  We pray that we can use whatever time is left in Kinda’s life to be sure he understands the Gospel.  We ask you to be praying for Kinda and his family in the difficult days ahead.

Kinda's son, whose illness started the whole relationship

Kinda's homestead

Putting the trusses together

Steve loves when his construction skills can be a part of seeing Bible teaching move forward.  He had a great opportunity to see that happen a few weeks ago.

A team of co-workers, living about 2 hours away, had just begun daily Bible teaching sessions when disaster struck.  Everyone was meeting together in a building that the village uses for community events.  Right before the teaching began, the roof fell in on everyone.  Thankfully there were only minor injuries, but looking over the damage revealed that faulty trusses were to blame. That’s where Steve was able to help.

The missionary team there talked with the village and the leaders asked to be taught how to build them correctly.  The missionary team then asked if Steve could make a trip out and see the job done.  Steve headed out with his right hand man, Mohammed, and a couple other guys from here on center.  Steve was glad to see excitement in the faces of the men as they started the project.

It was a lot of work to get everything built and set up in just over a day, but when you’ve got the huge team that Steve was working with – you can get a lot done in a short amount of time!  Steve really enjoyed his time there.  Getting to know people and teaching building skills is his favorite combination!  He’s thankful that he can use his skills to help the village move forward with their Bible teaching…

Here’s a few photos of them hard at work…

The portable command center

It takes a lot of people to hoist those trusses

Working with the team

Visiting with friends

Ever have one of those times where the thing you have been praying to happen suddenly does happen and then you want to tell God “wait, I’m not quite ready”?  Yeah, that’s me this week.

Our prayer for so long has been that God would not just give us surface friendships with the people around us, but would give us the real friendships where we truly learn what is going on in peoples lives.  In the months since we’ve been back, God has been answering that prayer, but it feels like things exploded in the last couple of weeks.

We have spent more time at the hospital in the last two weeks doing “ambulance runs”, visiting the sick, getting to know doctors than we did in the two months before.  It’s given us an incredible amount of time to sit with families, show compassion, and show God’s love.  It’s a been time of everything from infected teeth to circumcisions to malaria and typhoid.  Pray that these moments would continue to draw us closer to our community.

Our son, Mohammed, has a very sick, elderly mother who lives about 10 hours away from here.  She has been getting more ill in recent weeks, so Mohammed has brought her here to our town to look after her.  He believes that she is possessed by demons because she talks to people who aren’t there.  We think that she had a stroke some time ago and may be suffering the effects of that.  It’s hard to know because the medical care is inadequate when it comes to serious problems.  It could be Alzheimer’s, it could be any number of things, we just don’t know.  Mohammed has been having chickens sacrificed and concoctions being made by people doing traditional African medicine.  While we don’t agree with it, we are thankful that he’s being honest enough to tell us about it and not hiding it.  It’s giving us opportunities to share what we believe with him.  We are encouraging him to seek the counsel of a Guinean pastor who understands this culture much better than us.  It’s an overwhelming situation for him and we pray that we can be an encouragement to him.

Our family in the village decided to circumcise their girls this past week.  It was really hard for us and we had shared with them that we didn’t agree at all with what they wanted to do.  But, while it makes me angry that they chose to do it – I am thankful that they didn’t hide it from me.  That they are willing to talk about it.  Because you can’t begin to change things if you don’t even know they are happening, right?

A while ago we wrote about a little boy that was near death when he came to us.  Since then we’ve been getting to know the family and developing a friendship with them.  They live not far from us and the father has had Steve come to visit his fields a couple of times.  He told Steve this past week that because we saved his son, he wants his entire extended family to hear the Bible teaching! How awesome is that???  So, Steve is beginning this new endeavor this week.

These are just a few of cultural insights that have come up this week.  There are many more, but this is already getting pretty long!  We are so excited to see God throwing open doors for deeper relationships…our heads are spinning with it all, but we’re thanking Him for answered prayer!

Just hours after baby Casey was born

Our “son” Mohammed and his wife just had a baby girl! We praise God that everything went smoothly and that she and Mawa are healthy. This is not something to be taken lightly in this culture by any means.

We were so honored when he came to tell us that they decided to name her Casey after me. It’s a very big deal in this culture to have a baby named after you. The family is in essence saying that I get to parent her along with them. She is just as much my child as she is theirs.

The name is supposed to be a secret until the religious leader says it aloud during the naming ceremony, but Mohammed needed to practice saying Casey with us a few times beforehand! She had her naming ceremony on the 8th day, her head was shaved and prayers were said according to their religion. Then everyone practiced saying Casey over and over again

Right after her naming ceremony we headed into town to have her first vaccination done. We went to what is considered the pediatric clinic and waited in a room with a bunch of other parents for the nurses to give the shot. They just go down the row and prick them all one by one. Not quite the bedside manner that Americans are used to! They were pretty surprised to see the white lady in the crowd. Mohammed and Mawa explained that baby Casey is my namesake and everyone agreed that it was a good thing. I love getting community approval on things . As soon as the vaccination was finished, the nurse said the price and everyone looked at me to pay up. Having a namesake also means you get to pay for lots and lots of things, but I think it will be worth all the cost!

How exciting to be able to play such a role in the life of a child here. We pray that this is the opportunity God uses to see her entire family come to know Him. Thanks for standing behind us in prayer and support!

The proud parents

Steve and I at the baby naming ceremony

baby Casey getting her head shaved during the ceremony

Malachi and baby Casey

Just a little smile

Being a missionary isn’t usually a whirlwind of excitement.  Sure there are exciting days and those are the moments we all love to write home about.  But, for the most part, it’s just those quiet moments of sharing life together.  I love my afternoons in the village.  I love being in their houses, around their cooking fires and hearing all about their days.

It’s those times when I find out how everyone is doing, who is sick and needs medicine, and the latest news of what’s happening in the village.  I love being just one of the ladies as toddlers crawl all over my lap and kids dig for candy in my bag.  I love talking about the important things in their life.  It’s in those moments when I remember why it’s so important to be here.

We’re here to share in the day to day.  We’re here to know their joys and heartaches.  We’re here to have the friendships that allow us to share our faith.  For me, it all begins in my afternoons…

Mothers and daughters preparing the meal together

Girls go around selling just what a woman needs for that evenings meal...one onion, a little smoked fish, one square of seasoning, a few peppers...only buying for one meal at a time.

Sweet little Daouda - I love cuddling this little cutie!

All in an afternoon - dinner, babies, kids running everywhere, just the usual craziness

New experiences

Yeah, I’m not sure why we feel the need to create a fire and roast hot dogs when it’s SO unbelievably hot.  Maybe because we’re from Michigan and this is just what you do in the Fall.  Maybe because I’m really sick of cooking and this was a super easy meal for a group of boys.  Whatever the reason, we created a little sensation with this “meat on a stick” thing.  As is usually the case, our family really can’t do anything just as a family.  This is good in the sense that we have lots of opportunities for building friendships and bad in the sense that it drives us a little crazy – but that’s a whole other post

Anyways, we made our little fire and soon we had very curious boys wondering what we were going to do with this fire.  Yes, they are used to their moms cooking over a fire, but it’s rice and sauce in pots – and there were no pots to be found.  They wondered why Monsieur Steve would be collecting small sticks and sharpening the ends – are we going hunting???  But, then I pulled out the packs of hotdogs and showed them how to put them on the stick.  This whole process of roasting the hot dogs was honestly quite hilarious.  They didn’t like the idea of patiently waiting for the whole hot dog to be ready, so they would heat it up a minute – take a bite and put it back in the fire for another minute.  I have never seen packs of hot dogs be eaten so fast.

For the most part, I love sharing our lives with the people around us.  Yes, there are the moments where I just want to hide when they are calling at the door.  But, we have such an opportunity to get to know people, to show them we care, and live life with them.  That’s what we’re here for!  The next day, people were telling me all about this new food everyone wants to try…but, I’m not sure I’m up for village wide hot dog roasts quite yet!

He's just too funny