Chili Challenge 2023

ONE Sunday lunch in West Kentucky this past week will now be providing 5,355 meals in West Africa over the next four months! Praise the Lord for such jaw-dropping Kingdom mathematics!

How did this happen?

It started with having friends who are front row with us every step of the way!

Those friends invited their friends to join in bringing a crock pot of yummy chili.

There were 33 pots of chili!

And then TWO churches showed up for Sunday lunch after worship. This was my favorite part. Bringing together two streams of the faith in a common mission to remember and care for the poor.

Each person paid five dollars for a bowl and a spoon to find the best chili around....

and that money is headed to the local church to buy grain 

for the displaced people in our region of West Africa.

There were also baked goods, t-shirts, and extra votes that could be purchased with a donation.

A combo of judges from both churches had the hardest job -

evaluating thirty-three different spoonfuls of chili...

Once the votes were tallied....

...the winners received golden ladles 

and handmade prizes from West Africa.

I cannot say enough how FUN it is to FUNdraise with you, the Front Row team! 

Together we are watching the Lord move on both sides of the ocean.

The Rest of God

"It is true that some facets of God we glimpse only through motion. Only those who stretch out their hands and offer water to the thirsty discover, disguised among them, Jesus. Only those who trudge up the mountain, willing to grow blistered and weary on the narrow trail witness his transfiguration."

-The Rest of God

Philip recently had a new companion join his West Africa travels. Chris is the kind of friend who, upon learning we moving to a remote region of Africa, taught Philip how to start an IV and then offered his own arm for practice. That is a supporter in every sense of the word!

Chris's companionship was a gift from God this trip. He traveled adventurously and reflectively, connected with the life stories of our West African friends in solidarity, and (my personal favorite) sent  updates and photos of the days in real time. It was a delight for Philip to share our West African home with someone new, and for Chris to visit the home of the Host Mom his family has supported for years.

You will soon see the blessing of his fresh eyes in West Africa as he helps us communicate more fully what is happening every day on the ground.

The irony of the trip is that by being in motion, traveling to West Africa, Chris experienced a restfulness from God where the rhythm of life and the nature of cross-cultural travel sets us up for contemplation and communion with the only One who is truly present in every culture.

For grieving hearts

Shortly before this years Host Family Workshop seven of the babies in Host Families moved to their forever homes. That is largely cause for celebration! But for each woman who cared for one of these little ones as her own, there is profound grief. 

"How do I get these ladies to stop crying?" was our ministry leader's question.

Needless to say, the workshop theme this year was grief. By day our ministry team joined in hard, heavy, and healing conversations around the One who records our misery and accounts for our tears. (Psalm 56:8)

By night, though, was a whole different story.

Inspired by our ministry leader's time in the States, Philip texted a picture of cornhole boards to a local friend and asked, "Can you buy some wood and make me some of these?" Having no idea what this was, this friend whipped up these boards the same day.

It was amazing. Hours of laughter, hollering, and friendly competition. 

Play for the bodies and spirits of the women who give it all.

Our Daily Bread

 "It is our daily bread that we eat, not my own. 

So long as we eat our bread together we shall have sufficient even with the least. 

Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue."

-Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Around the 18th of the month, our ministry leader starts to get concerned. This was new information for us that came out in conversation while he was visiting . Each month brings the questions: "Will I find good collaboration at the formula company? Will there be enough formula available for the babies in need? Is Philip going to find enough money this month?"

Month after month and year after year the Lord has provided, but in a place where there is no buffer, where there is no Plan B for these babies, the questions resurface with each upcoming formula distribution. We are looking for more champions for formula. If you would like to ease our ministry leader's concerns, feed these babies, and raise awareness about the Kingdom of God, here is your link:

FUNDS FOR FORMULA

A great big THANK YOU to you for giving and praying.

Photo Friday

Dreams really do come true! 

We watched our two worlds fall in love with each other in a new way this summer. 

If we didn't cross paths with you, maybe you can feel the experience through these pictures.

Twenty minutes before our first big event, hail started falling on us as we set up. A group of friends two states away started praying the hail away, and God threw a party!

Friends from eleven different churches gathered together to represent the church in America, curious to hear of brothers and sisters and the work on the other side of the world. It felt like something out of a Frank Peretti novel since, on the other end of the park, the annual pagan festival was having their own drum ceremony.

Other moments were quieter when our guest joined our normal life: you could find him picking Daniel up from school with us or at a weekly coffee meeting or at this annual Botanical Gardens outing with friends.

As we moved set off across the US, the team in Africa continued with the work. Here we are in Texas on a video call into their prayer meeting.

This was a crazy, memorable gathering in Kentucky where we ended up moving 51 people and a pet snake to the basement due to a tornado threat.

Down in the basement, we kept the party going singing a worship song in French. Can you see Daniel singing and dancing? 

One of the highlights of the trip was hearing the questions other people would ask about West Africa. A young man at one gathering asked to learn "Thank you" and "God bless you" in the tribal language of our friend's people group. It melted my heart. Sometimes the stories told from West Africa were new to me. Other times I was right there when it happened, but still I would hear something new in the telling.

A new tidbit I learned: The first time our partner ever saw a baby bottle was when Baby Sara came to live with our family. Apparently when my back was turned, our friend took a picture of that first bottle so he could go home and explain it to his wife. Now he has taught over 600 families who have lost a breastfeeding mother how to use a bottle.

Sometimes speaking to large public gatherings

and sometimes in intimate, backyard family gatherings

our friend traveled over 4,000 miles of this country 

bringing equal parts laughter and tears with his stories.

The King is Alive

His phone would ring at 3 am. every. day. That was 8 am back home. The work day had begun. People were needing his help. When he would explain that he was still asleep and it is dark outside here, they would answer, "What's wrong with your sun over there?" As a people who rarely leave their own region, there was no understanding of time zones and travel.

By the time our family woke up for breakfast hours later, he had counseled a dad who'd lost his wife in childbirth (twice), coached his own wife through paperwork that needed to be completed, made arrangements for adoptive families to meet their soon-to-be children, or organized three different formula distributions from afar.

People thought he would be enamored by our development, but mostly he reflected, "These things are not eternal." He cared more about getting home to do the waiting work than being impressed by America's latest and greatest gadget. If it's not for Jesus, then what's the point? He truly has more important things waiting.

And this was God's graciousness to us. To let us see our world through the eyes of a West African. To understand why because of greed, wrath is coming. Wanting more than you need is built into the fabric of our lives. This visit was like a little nudge from the Lord to keep us from falling asleep at the wheel in a culture of excess. The needs are great.

One example, when watching a documentary about pandas on the airplane, our friend was caught off guard by the bottle-feeding of rehabilitating pandas. 
"They are giving the bottles we need for the children to animals. I am not okay with this."
Just like that, I was reminded of how much we take for granted. In our world, there are plenty of bottles to go around, even for the animals. Not in his. We do this work side by side and still don't see the world the same way.

But that is not the end of the story. It is a kindness of the Lord to bring us face-to-face with poverty, waking us up, and turning us from the things He knows would make Him angry. Over and over we saw people give abundantly and unexpectedly. So much so that when singing "I Raise a Hallelujah" at church one Sunday, I altered the lyrics a bit and let this be my prayer of praise for the ways we see it now and confident faith in what is to be:

"Up from the ashes

Hope will arise

GREED is defeated,

The King is alive."

A Supernatural Love

"God wasn't messing around with unity. 

He doesn't have another plan. 

He was smart to give us different gifts - 

not giving all gifts to one person so that we would need each other."

-West African church leader

In our final stop, we stayed in the same home for eleven nights. Many of those nights found us gathered in this living room with different groups of friends listening to stories from Africa. What I loved, loved, loved was these three girls who would tip-toe downstairs and listen any chance they got. How lovely to spend summer nights as a teen sitting at the feet of a faith leader from a culture not your own. May there be a supernatural love that blooms from the seeds that were planted.

Seven people, a dog, and two fish

“A true spirituality cannot be constructed, built, or put together; 

it has to be recognized in the daily life of people

who search together to do God’s will in the world.”

-Henri Nouwen

Seven people, a dog, and two fish traveling through Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Kentucky is a heck of a way to spend a summer. Only one night did we need to find a hotel room. Otherwise, we were eating our meals and resting our heads in the homes of ministry champions, as Nouwen said, searching together to do God's will in the world. We didn't create the stories, but each day were welcomed into the unfolding purposes of God.  The highlights make the newsletters, but a lot more time was spent in logistics, laundry, and lingering with people. We saw so much of God's glory 

masquerading as a road trip.

I think of all the radiance of Jesus as "scary man Jesus" (as our middle school class named Jesus of Revelation) with blazing fire eyes and double-edged sword mouth, only for him to choose to hide that radiance and take the humbling form of a man. To need to be fed, to rest, to do laundry. Most of his life was spent on these things. "God will be who God will be. And God has chosen to be Jesus, the Christ." (Seth Bouchelle) A God who could choose to be anything chose to be the fullness of the deity in bodily form.

I recently read that we are the only religion who believes our God became flesh. That fullness lives in us now as we set off for our travels, as we believe for the unseen work in the world....and as we do laundry.

In Her Honor

Philip's dad's birthday celebration in October 2022

Aunt Carla is second from the left

This past weekend Philip gathered with his extended family in eastern Kentucky to say a hard and sudden goodbye to his Aunt Carla. 

I want you to know about this woman whose life was lived to the full all the way to the day of her death. Her story overlaps with yours in a surprising way.

Many, many years ago, Aunt Carla visited her son Chad, who was serving as a church planting missionary in West Africa.  A NICU nurse by trade, when Aunt Carla visited as a missionary's mom, she couldn't help but notice the babies dying unnecessarily due to lack of resources. True to her nature, she saw a need and set out to fix it. The way I've heard the story is that, upon returning to the States, whenever her small group from church would meet, she would set out a jar labeled "Formula for Babies." She made it easy and convenient for her friends to join her in preventing future tragedies like the ones she had witnessed. By the time our family moved to West Africa nearly a decade later, that little village she visited in West Africa had a full-fledged formula ministry. 

When we realized ninety percent of the babies who came to us didn't need to be placed - they had an aunt or grandmother who would like to care for them after the mother's death - we didn't have to invent the wheel. We learned from the formula ministry Aunt Carla inspired in the town four hours away.

If you have, like us, ever looked at our ministry and marveled at what God has done, rest assured we did not do it alone. What we do now is built upon the ones who came before us, like Aunt Carla who visited our country of service long before we did! Join us in thanking God for her today, and for all who stepped out in faith along the path before us.