Shift of Focus

It is funny how your focus shifts from one big task to another.  We have been working on Guam and have now shifted to Burkina for the next few weeks.  So let me share a little about Burkina, what we do and why we go.  Burkina took me captive the very first time I went.  This people group whom I could not speak with, because their primary languages were French and a tribal language, shared an immensely overwhelming sense of love and gratefulness.  You go on these trips thinking you will serve and in the end they serve you.

The Burkinabe (the people of Burkina) live on very small amounts of money and with a lack of food.  Yet through all of this you never see them complain.  Some of the families live on less than a dollar a day.  They will use only one gallon of water a day for everything they need water for.  (That is less than when you flush your toilet once.)  Some of the families have large amounts of children, but cannot feed them.  How do you choose who doesn't get food?  Could it be you? No, if you had no food and died who would take care of your family? One of the children?  How would you choose one?  Would you walk around and look for the weakest?  What if someone came up to you and promised you that your child would be cared for and able to make money and all you had to do was give the child to him?  Did that child just become a child trafficking statistic?  Is that better than a child dying?  Needless to say it is sometimes hard for these parents to love on their children for just this reason.  Other times they have trouble because they have such a small amount of money they cannot afford the doctor.  The number one killer there is preventable disease.



All of this talk of reasons not to love on children, but what happens when the foreigners show up?  The children come chasing the van to follow us to our destination.  Why because even though we don't know them God has given us the gift of love to share.  They will come up and grab your hand and walk around with you.  Some of the children will not have had someone hug them or love on them for a long time.  As you are loving on the children you start looking at their faces and the dirt on their faces.  You realize this, but your eyes are drawn away from the dirt and back to the biggest, happiest smile you have ever seen.  Then you look at the dirty, tattered clothes and your mind starts to race, because you look back at this huge smile.  How is it possible that a child who looks and is dressed like this can be so happy?  What have I been doing wrong?  I have all of these things yet I am never content.  I have parents who love on me.  I have a bar of soap and water I can wash with.  I have new clothes, but I ever thought that was satisfying?  No, I always WANT more.  Do I NEED more?  No!  Now I am stuck in thought about the difference between want and need and just how ungrateful I am for everything.  I wake from my grueling thought process to realize I have just come out of the van and have been at the site for about 2 minutes.  What will happen before the day is out?

Now that you have had a glimpse at the life of a Burkinabe let me tell you what God has in store for our gifts.  You never go on a missions trip with your own agenda.  You go with God's agenda which is to be flexible and help where ever is necessary.  I am not sure how this years giftings will turn out so let me tell you about last years team and giftings just to give you an idea of how things work.  Last year there were 2 engineers, 1 nurse to be, 1 teacher, 3 youth and a college student.  Our engineers encouraged the missionaries just by traveling out to the bush to take a look at a leaky dam.  Because we went out we got more information on the dam than we had over the past 6 months.  (There is something to be said for the physical presence of a person.)  Another time we were at Tanghin and the nurse to be noticed a child with an injured toe.  It looked bad and she talked to the missionary and the pastor.  She happened to have money along to finance the boy getting his foot checked which included a moped ride there and antibiotics.  This may well have saved his life.  Yet another time 2 of our guys were handing out flip flops and inviting people to see the Jesus film.  They ran across a guy who would not be able to come to the movie, but would tell all of his family to go.  This same man was a guard at the airport and when we went to leave he stopped the 2 of them and ask if they remembered him.  They thought about it.  Before they answered he said "you gave me shoes."  I have many, many more stories, but all I am trying to do is illustrate how God gifted us each differently.  God set some of the craziest things every up just so we could see Him and He could show Himself to the Burkinabe.  We were tools, we were God's workers, we were the light in dark places.  In situations like this it hard to see these things until afterwards.  There were many times we prayed as a group, because we did not understand the way we did something.  Had we really done that stuff biblically and the way that we were being called to?  He answered those prayers.

Prayer is the greatest part of a missions trip.  We pray when we are there and even better our prayer warriors back in our hometowns pray for us while we are gone.  The more people who pray the more prayers that go up.  The more prayers that go up the more God reveals himself in exciting ways.  Thank you to all of you who will pray and are praying.

Our team this year will arrive Tuesday evening.  We have 2 high school girls, 1 new male leader, Greg and me as leaders.  We will start some actual team building and bonding on Wednesday.  We have invited the other team members from Grace Chapel to come with us for team building on Wednesday.  We will be going with Grace Chapel and basically becoming one team.  So we are hoping to have everyone grow together and get to know each other.  On the Grace team there are 2 male leaders, 2 female leaders and 7 high school girls.  So we will have a nice team of 16 at the end of the day.  We will actually leave for the airport at noon on Thursday.  That will begin our 2 day journey to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.  There we will be met by the missionaries and taken to the team center.  What will happen after this no one knows.  What I do know is God is going to do some amazing things in and through people.

I have written much more than I usually like to, but this is where our hearts and minds currently are.  Once we are gone on the 26th you will not here from me again until August 7th when we return.  If you would like to keep up with how things are going go to this blog: http://burkina2012.com/ This will be updated once a day when possible.  You will know what is going on and how to better pray.

We will see how the the shift of focus goes upon return.  It is never easy to transition from a trip quickly.  We will be heading for Guam August 11th so their won't be much time for that step.  Hopefully we are given the grace and strength to do exactly what God needs us to do. 

Prayer Requests:

• Safety in Travel
• Team Unity
• Open communication
• Flexibility

getting started

So we have been preparing to move to Guam for the last month or so.  We were hanging out with some of our friends last night and they thought a blog might be really helpful for letting people know what is going on in our lives.  I will give you the run down of the last 3 days.  On Monday we had the first moving group come to move our homegoods that will go by sea.  That group was called Coleman America and the staff that we had were excellent.  You do not always know what to expect when you are being moved by someone for the first time.  These 3 people were fabulous they were professional when necessary, but had fun with one another to help themselves get through the day.  They had all the supplies they needed packed everything better than I ever would have.  When they finished wrapping things up they started moving it out to these big wooden bins on the back of the truck.  The rotten part was that it started raining and they had to re wrap some of the stuff.  To top that it poured again later.  I felt bad for them because they were working so hard.  They were only able to take about half of our stuff on Monday because of the rain so they came back Tuesday.  They came around 8:30am again which was fantastic and they were totally done loading the bins and shutting the with nail and hammer.  We were given all of the seal numbers that go on each crate (bin).  These things go on all 4 sides of the crate to ensure no one has messed with it.  If one or more is missing you will know something went down.  I thought that the people who packed us for this were just great.

Today on the other hand I would not say was as great it was 2 guys they were supposed to come between 8 and 10 and they did not get there until 10am.  They did not have all of the tools they needed, and we had to hold the doors open for them.  It took them a long time to wrap the few things we are sending by air.  They tried to tell us that 2 of our items weren't going to fit.  They turned out to be wrong and the things it in no problem.  I was hungry and annoyed by the time they were done.  I don't even know what the guys names were.  At least with the other group they introduced themselves and had all their own supplies.

We are currently staying on base at Andrews in the hotel they have.  It is a nice little room, but not something you want to sit around in all day.  We will be leaving here on Friday to go to Havertown.  We will be staying in Havertown until we leave for Burkina on the 26th of August.  We will return from Burkina August 7th and Greg will have to come back to work until the 10th and I have to make sure our team members from Burkina get back to the airport.  My parents will be coming to pick me up and I will stay with them until we leave August 11th at 12:35pm.  We will go down and meet Greg there and my parents will be taking my car back home with them so we have something to drive around when we do get to come home to visit.
We fly out of Reagan national, to Detroit, to Tokyo, and finally end up in Guam.  That is a total of 19 hours in the air.  I will probably not have a whole lot of problem because I am a huge fan of sleeping.  Greg may have a tough time because he just can't sleep on planes.  I told him I would try to stay up with him for a while and he told me I would just fall asleep and that I am boring to sit next to on a plane. I will let you know how this all turns out. 

Prayer requests for us:

• Our marriage continues to strengthen and grow
• Our trip to Burkina is fruitful
• Our stuff arrives in Guam without a problem
• We have safe travels