Surgeries

We wanted to send out a quick note to let everyone know how we are doing. Things have been a little hectic. I wanted to be writing about the African interns we just had from IMS (Institut Missiologique du Sahel). However, God has sent our lives down a different track this week. Dylan has been sick a lot lately. He had Malaria three times in two months. This kind of thing comes with the territory of being a missionary. Then this past week, Dylan started complaining about his bottom hurting. He had a small rash from the fact that he'd been having some diarrhea. However, as we were doctoring that, we noticed that he had a bulge in his groin area that wasn't there the last time we checked. I want to say that we were totally calm about it, though I'm not sure that's the word, but we were really concerned. After seeing the local "doctor" and several phone calls with our pediatricians in the capital and in the states, we came to understand that it was only a hernia. Hernias it seems are not a huge deal, but they do require surgery to correct. His hernia is just a small turn in his intestines that have moved through a hole in the pelvic bone. So surgery is needed to get it back where it is supposed to be and to close up the hole. This surgery is not necessarily urgent. However there is a 1% chance the intestines might get twisted up in that small hole they've pushed through and cause a blockage of his intestines at which point "no big deal" has turned into a really big deal and we would just have a few hours to intervene surgically. In some other city in the world we would be o.k. with waiting on this surgery until it was convenient for our schedule and our pocket book, but we don't live in some other city, we live in Dano, almost 4 hours away from a good hospital and pediatric surgeon or two hours away from a not as good clinic with a general surgeon. Through prayer and discussions our family has decided that for our own peace of mind we need to go ahead with the surgery as soon as possible. We are going to try to take care of it this next Monday, in Ouagadougou.

Once again, we find ourselves needing to do a surgery in Burkina. With Andrea's surgery earlier this year we had to pay for it upfront from our emergency savings and get reimbursed from our insurance company. We still have yet to receive any reimbursement. Now we are left with the same situation. Thanks to Dave Ramsey we had saved up enough for an emergency (again!) and we have been saving up to go on the annual spiritual retreat that we do each year in May. Now, because of this surgery, we are going to have to exhaust our emergency fund and all of our savings for WAMR and tighten our belts a little. So we are asking you to join us in prayer that God would work out the details so that we can have enough for this surgery and the spiritual retreat. If anyone of you was able to make an extra donation this month to our mission to help with this emergency, we would of course also appreciate that. I hate whiny emails from missionaries. I hope this hasn't sounded whiny. We just really need support from you guys. We already know that many of you pray every day for us and give all you can, and that is in fact what is keeping us in this good work along with the power of God in Christ working in our lives (Phil. 1:19). In fact, we know that doing all of these surgeries would cost more in the states, so we were thinking maybe God is just getting all of this out of the way for us, before our return to the states in a few years. We know that God will take care of us on His terms and in His timing and it will be better than we imagined.

Some of the initial results of the Evangelist training

In our last post, we talked about leaders that were chosen by the Dagara church movement to be evangelists. We taught them many things over a four day seminar. We are starting to see some good results. Some of the best news so far is that, in the village of Nawile, the church was convicted about the split families in their church. Some of the church members whose family members were not Christian even signed up for lessons. So-dere is now in the process of going through the list. He is teaching each family the good news and trying to draw the rest of the family members into the kingdom. The idea, besides just bringing the whole world under the discipleship of Jesus Christ, is to make for stronger churches and Christians who at least will not have to face persecution in their own homes. It also seems that at least So-dere, and Yawn-ba-cere are beginning to understand how to study their bibles in such a way as to hear what work God is guiding them and their congregations to do in their communities. I've talked recently with Simon and Romain, neither of whom seem to be understanding or applying what I've been trying to teach them about applying scriptures to their lives so far. Pray for them and the other 5 students with whom I have not been able to get in touch. Pray that the Spirit may guide them into all truth. Also pray for me that I not get bogged down in one particular method or idea, but that I can respond to the specific needs they have and can help to equip them for God's work in their communities and families.