Lower Dollar Means It's More Expensive for us to Live Here.

Just this month the U. S. dollar has dropped from about 500 CFA per dollar to about 464 CFA per dollar. That means that it will cost us generally almost $300 more this month to have the same expenses we had last month. Please pray that it bounces back up before the beginning of the month so that we can have more normal expenses. We know everyone is having to tighten their belts, and we had to deal with much worse rates than this last year. There is no emergency yet, we would just appreciate your prayers on this issue.

Learning about Weddings

One of the first difficult things for me to understand about Dagara culture was the fact that they don't have a clear line regarding marriage. One's marriage becomes legitimate over time as various requirements are met. A bride price has to be paid. A child has to be conceived and born. But there is no ceremony that says, "Before, this couple was not married, but NOW they are."

This is why I really enjoyed celebrating Yawmbacere's marriage to Kristine in Nakar today - they are the two with their hands being raised like they just won a boxing match. Yawmbacere has had a wife for years before he became a Christian and now he wants to make the promise before God and the whole Nakar church to be the kind of husband God made him to be. As testimony to the fact that they have no precedent for this, they asked, AT THE CEREMONY, not before, if I or Donatien or Severen knew how to do one of these things. I gave Donatien a few ideas and he went with them well.

Cluster Worship Service

I hate to confess my whininess, but honestly I was dreading heading out to Didoro today. I hold nothing against Didoro. It's just that it's the furthest village from us - not by distance, but by time because the road is so bad (2 hours each way). It's so bad I usually suggest that Andrea and the kids stay at home. As it turned out this time, I needed the space in the truck. The western cluster of churches (Nakar, Nyinyime, V2, Didoro, V8) has decided to start a series of cluster-wide worship services. It was God's providence that on a day that I was feeling like a baby, He showed me what great things He was doing without any great effort on my part. I first saw a lady I recognized from Nakar on the side of the road. She wanted a ride to Didoro, then I saw Eric from Nyinyime and picked him up. I gave a ride for 6 people back to their various villages afterward. 150 adults and many children from at least 5 villages were there.

I, as a visiting preacher, encouraged the Didoro church to focus on whole families in their evangelism efforts in Yenvoon and Sanbewn. Another visiting preacher, Domanyuora from Nyinyime, taught a dynamic lesson about how conversion corresponds with our being yanked out of Satan's clutches by Jesus and his Father. In this picture, the two boys on the left represent the Father and Jesus The next boy down the line is humankind and the boy on the right is Satan trying to hold on to the boy. A few moments later in the lesson. Jesus and the Father pull the boy that represents us out of Satan's hands. I need to talk to him about fitting the Holy Spirit into that object lesson.

Give it up

Today I went to find out about what the word is on Sorkawn. As it turns out, the ladies from Sorkawn that requested that we come and evangelize their town have not gotten back with Kpezuo yet.

In Wajiele, they told us that they had met already earlier that morning and waited for us, even though we've never come before 11:00a.m. While waiting on folks to show we read the new bilingual Dagara / French newspaper, Daa-yi and picked "grapes," the exact opposite of seedless - one might even call them fruitless. Anyway, even though the grapes have little, what they have, they give. The lesson in Wa-jiele was on giving, always a touchy subject for me, since I am from the richest nation on earth, and these are Christians among the third poorest nation on earth. Anyway, what I've come to understand in teaching about giving is that the idea that giving should correspond in any way to how God has blessed you (i.e., a tithe or other percentage like that) is totally foreign. They just toss in the lowest denomination of coin they have with them. It's not much up from that to a tithe, but the difference is as much a challenge to their faith as it is to ours. The church in Wa-jiele also saw the importance of the church having a little money to help someone in their community that may need medicine or something. Pray that, as the Dagara test God out to see what happens when they give sacrificially, God would pour out abundant blessings on them.

Severen's Grandad died

One of the main church leaders / church planters in the movement here is Severen. His Grandad died last week. I went to the funeral. Apparently his grandfather, on his deathbed a couple of weeks ago, asked to be baptized. Severen told me as I left the funeral as a rain storm was starting to pour that the Dagara believe that when it rains on a funeral, that is a way of God showing that the deceased was a good person . . . interesting.

They have scriptures but can't read them . . . yet.

I went out to Nyikpier today to coordinate a communication with Kpe-zuo to all our churches. He is the spokesperson for the Bible translation and He wanted to send out a message that any church that wants a literacy course taught in their village just needs to commit 30 students, and find room and board for the literacy teacher and a place for the school to meet. Pray that this is a huge success and that we will have many Dagara that are able to read Mark and Acts - the two books of the bible that have been published in Dagara. Right now we usually have no more than one reader per church (and in some places not even that, or no longer that).

"The church is not the building"

Once again, we showed up for church, and they had already met. However, they were hard at work literally building up the church (or at least the building). I would have offered what little help I could give but it was just the kids and I, and there was an open well on the property (no walls or anything, just a hole about three feet in diameter and at least 15 feet deep). Needless to say, I was not going to let the kids out of my sight while I was there. Pray that they are able to complete enough of it before it rains and ruins the mud bricks.

Prayer

I taught the lesson on prayer this week in Wa-jiele. This is a repeated theme that we teach. You usually don't have, at church gatherings in the states, NO volunteers when the question is thrown out there,”would someone lead a prayer?” However, we frequently can hear crickets for minutes on end when we ask this question. I think it stems from the fact that talking outloud to anyone invisible draws ridicule. Children in the village often laugh at me when I'm talking on the phone, sort of like I laugh at people who are using those silly blue tooth headsets when I'm in the states. I think people are just afraid of the ridicule they think they will receive if they pray outloud. It is also not a common concept to communicate with the creator God without an intermediary, like a witchdoctor or at least an ancestor or spirit of some kind. Although we teach that the Spirit intercedes for as (as well as Jesus being our advocate before God), we speak directly to the Creator. For example, we ask God directly for healing; we don't pray, “Hey Spirit, could you send a message to the Creator God that I'm sick and need healing.” Anyway, I hope this lesson brought out less timidity among the folks out in Wa-jiele.

I haven't just 'moved on' to leadership training.

This Thursday, I gave Kpe-zuo the second lesson for him to teach to Saanba-ire. We won't really know how well the teaching's going until next week.

I was convicted some recently by the comment one of my teammates said about his role on the team. He said, “I'm never going to ask them to stop evangelizing, so I'm not ever going to say, 'I've moved on to just leadership training.'” After reflecting on this thought and praying that I'm not quenching the feeble flame for evangelism by stepping into a place that a Dagara leader should be, I went ahead and decided that I could go ahead with Nyikpier's offer to preach in Sorkawn. I was also secretly worried that Kpezuo would just not go if I didn't. I'm actually hoping to do this one together with Kpezuo. Kpezuo is supposed to talk to the ladies from Sorkawn this week to see if they can setup a meeting time and place in Sorkawn. By continuing to involve him as a liaison I hope to model for him some better methods for evangelism that will instill core values, like having whole families in the church, from the beginning.

The "Sorkawn" -ian call.

This Sunday, when we got to Nyikpier they asked me to teach them a lesson. I decided to teach them the lesson from Acts 16 about the Macedonian call. Although they had already been instrumental in the Wa-jiele, Bavule, and Nawn-moore church plants, I wanted them to consider what the next church plant should be - to pray and see if God would give them a vision for some specific target for the gospel. So after the service, some ladies who were visiting from Sorkawn said, we'd love for someone to come teach us the good news. So I put it before the church.

They said, “What about your church?”

“What church are you talking about?”

“You know, the church with you and Andy, and Chad in it?”

. . . well, their reaction took me by surprise. I told them I would pray about it.