Posts Tagged ‘religion’

Taking a step of faith

Posted by Steve and Casey Cretsinger on Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
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 our guys!

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!

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Answered Prayer

Posted by Steve and Casey Cretsinger on Wednesday, October 19th, 2011
Visiting with friends

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!

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It’s been a long month…

Posted by Steve and Casey Cretsinger on Thursday, September 1st, 2011
Praying at certain times of the day

Praying at certain times of the day

This week brought the end of Ramadan for everyone in our village.  It’s been a month of fasting, special prayers, and feasting at night.  A month more dedicated to pleasing their god than any other month.  It’s been a very long month for me, so I can’t imagine how long it was for all of them.  It was filled with frustrating conversations with moms who won’t drink all day and so have sick, starving babies.  It’s filled with days of watching people work in their fields – sweating terribly – and they won’t even swallow their spit.  It’s filled with special, more fervent praying.  It’s hard for us to sit back and watch all this – watching how hard they are all trying to make their god happy.  To make themselves worthy of his favor.

We’re thankful for the opportunities to learn more about their religion, however, and to learn how we can challenge those beliefs.  We’re thankful that even though we don’t share those beliefs, we are able to still care immensely for each of them.

This month came to an end with a day of feasting, which turned out to be a tough day for us.  In past years we have been a part of the feasting that we were invited to and gave out candy to kids as part of their customs.  But we have been talking with someone who left this religion and became a believer and his thoughts have really challenged us.  He advised us not to share in the feasts by visiting with people and to not follow the culture on this day especially.  He said that we have to stand firm on this or the people will think that we are in fact being won over to their religion.  He shared a lot from his heart and since he knows so much more than us, we decided to follow his lead.

We’re glad for the opportunities to learn from the wisdom of those around us.  We pray that we can continue to use this guidance so that we may make a greater impact here.  Pray for the people here.  Pray for their hearts and minds to see that everything they try in vain to do is really worthless.  Pray that they will seek after Jesus who already did all the work for them.

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Baptism by the river

Posted by Steve and Casey Cretsinger on Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Steve reading what Micah and Malachi wrote about their baptism

Steve reading what Micah and Malachi wrote about their baptism

Last year our boys watched as one of their friends was baptized during the Easter service we had at a nearby river.  They have talked about it many times since then and as this Easter approached, they both asked if they could be baptized as well.  The boys have expressed their faith in Christ for about two years now – growing in their understanding of what that means as they get older.  It’s been so wonderful as their parents to hear them tell us that they have decided to follow Jesus. We have gone through the book “the Lamb” several times with them and it’s done an amazing job of explaining God’s plan of salvation in a way that kids can truly grasp.

We sat down with the boys and asked them why they wanted to be baptized and what thought it meant.  We talked about John the Baptist and why baptisms are important.  We wanted to be sure that this was something they understood and choose for themselves.

Easter Sunday our team of missionaries headed out to the river while it was still dark.  We set some chairs up by the river and Steve shared a message on the Christ’s death and resurrection.  We sang some songs afterwards and then Steve shared Micah and Malachi’s thoughts on their baptism.  Steve took them out into the water and baptized them.  It’s a special memory for us – that our boys were able to share their baptism with their dad in such a big way.

We pray that they will continue to grow in their knowledge of what God desires of them and how they can serve God even as young boys.

On a side note, our story wouldn’t be complete without a mention on how their is an “African twist” on things.  Many people go to the river to bathe and wash their clothes, so it wasn’t a surprise that we started to have some spectators part way through.  I got a little nervous when several of the older ladies went topless while doing the laundry, but I think I kept them out of the photos!

Steve sharing the Easter message

Steve sharing the Easter message

Micah's baptism

Micah's baptism

Malachi's baptism

Malachi's baptism

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Believers worshipping together

Posted by Steve and Casey Cretsinger on Friday, January 8th, 2010

IMG_4989There are so many difficult things to living here.  There are some days that we feel just throwing up our hands and saying it’s all too difficult.  But, there are also the days when we see God working in a very real way here and we are encouraged to keep going.  This past weekend, Steve took a handful of believers from our village to meet up with believers from a couple of other villages so that could have a special Christmas service all together. (more…)

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Fasting comes to an end

Posted by Steve and Casey Cretsinger on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Visiting a villageThere is feasting, visiting family, and a special tradition of kids going around asking for candy from everyone as the season of fasting for Ramadan ends. Even though we don’t share the same beliefs, it is important that we show a genuine interest in what is going on around us. Friendship is the only way to be able to share our faith and so we need to extend that same courtesy and learn as much as we can about their religion. (more…)

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Learning culture through “oops” moments

Posted by Steve and Casey Cretsinger on Sunday, September 7th, 2008

Birthday partyThe other day Steve noticed that our neighbors baby had a some lint in his hair and Steve reached over and took it out – which was followed by a small gasp from our neighbor. Steve said “oops, what I’d do?” Our neighbor said “the baby has hiccups” – as if that explained anything to us! We asked a couple of questions and learned that people here believe that if a baby has hiccups you need to take a thread from a skirt and ball it up and put it in the baby’s hair which will make the hiccups go away.
A couple of days later I saw a pot with a liquid I hadn’t seen them cooking before, so I asked what it was. My neighbor told me that it was like a coffee. I went on to ask if they were all going to enjoy a drink together, but she very matter of fact said “no, it’s for washing the baby.” I pondered that for a second and asked why you would wash the baby in it. I was told that this liquid would keep him healthy and when he grows up people would like him. The baby wears a bracelet on his wrist for health and threads around his neck for future riches. When we ask why they do these things or why they think it will work – the answer is usually “because that’s what Africans do.” We’re learning a lot of cultural insights that we see happening, but there are so many things that we don’t see and it will take a long time to begin understand this culture. (more…)

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