H2O, oh no

Because water and power cuts are so much a part of our lives, we don't usually write home about it.  This week, however, seems to be the cultural adventure that never ends, so let me catch you up!

First, water was cut off to the entire city Wednesday morning.  Word on the street is that a part of the water system broke outside of town and the part had to be imported from France.  We keep buckets of water by the toilets and filtered water in the kitchen for such a time as this, so at first all we really missed were showers. 

By Friday, however, our resources had dwindled and, not knowing how long the city would be without water, we bought bottled water for drinking and rationed our stored water down to two flushes a day for our entire family of five.  Ewwww! 

When the water came back, we were awakened in the middle of the night first by the sound of gas pushing through the pipes. 

Saturday morning we discovered one of our bathrooms had flooded in the night because the faucet had been left on during the water cut.

Two of our friends bathed at our house because their neighborhoods were still without water.  (We have indoor plumbing, just like you, but our friends get their water from a faucet in each of their neighborhoods.  As city dwellers, they don't have to pump water from a well, but they do have to haul it to their houses.  Because of this water system, we are all dependent on the city water.)

Our guard noticed an unusual puddle in front of our house and dug down to discover we have a broken pipe.  Wouldn't you know, the water shut-of valve to our house is broken, and the busted pipe cannot be fixed until the water can be shut off.........and we have to wait until Monday to call the water company.  So right now the busted pipe is patched with a black rubber strap.

Saturday night Philip's language tutor, Paul, called in search of water.  He and a neighbor brought all the empty containers they could carry over on a moto, and Philip transported them full of water back to Paul's neighborhood.

Sunday morning, just before our six guests arrived and just after a torrential downpour, we lost water again.  It was out another twelve hours with eleven people staying at the house tonight, and I have to say, not a single person was phased by it. 

We learned a phrase this week that missionaries repeat to each other as they calmly traverse these unexpected catastrophes of everyday life: "West Africa Wins Again."

184 Days Later

Can you believe we landed in this country six months ago?

We are in no way “at home” in West Africa, but we are amazed at how far the Lord brought us in six months.  

Early on in our time here, our children struggled.  We had regression in potty training, we had nightmares, we had buckets full of tears, we had lots of sibling fighting.  We still hear an almost daily, “When can we go back home?” but we haven’t had anyone cry themselves to sleep in two weeks.  That’s progress!  Plus, we’ve seen our kids initiate friendships with kids they can’t speak to, pet camels, sit on a crocodile, and eat village food with a smile.  It’s incredible, and we know there is so much more to come for them!

When we arrived, our marriage needed rebuilding.  In eleven years, God had molded our strengths and our roles and our priorities into our own “Matheny” way of doing life, but in Africa all that was useless.  Time management, home management, and family vision all had to be re-established….and pronto!  When you take away our molded strengths, you are left with our glaring weaknesses.  It took ten weeks until we laughed together.  We still don’t have this “all figured out,” but we are pouring on the grace and getting through this rough patch together.

When we arrived, our faith was wavering.  "The wilderness where faith can thrive is the very desert where it can dry up and die if we are not watchful." (Jeff Manion, The Land Between) Living in Africa is hard for us.  Hard, hard.  We simultaneously feel the loss of comfort and convenience, while observing we have nauseatingly more than our neighbors. 

Now we can recognize it’s a painful season of discipline and pruning, all for His glory, but I don’t imagine any tree understands why its limbs are being chopped off at the time.Philip and Titus both like to scare me by jumping out from the shadows when I least expect it.  You know how it goes, I’ll jump and realize mid-scream that it’s them and pant, “Oh, phew, it’s just you.”  That’s what these last few months feel like:  I landed in Africa and let out a terrified scream, only to catch on five months later, panting, “Oh, phew, it’s just you, God.”

When we arrived, we didn’t know where to find food, or even how to recognize it.  Do you know the background of our youngest son?  He spent his first three years hungry.  He, understandably, asks what we’re having for lunch while we are still sitting at the breakfast table.  Food is love to him, and not having food is stress to me.  Because you have sent extra money to cover the obscene prices of imported groceries, and you have conquered the international postal system to send care packages, we have a large stash of American foods…..and we aren’t taking it for granted!

We have a long way to go, and it is still hard every single day, but we love each other and our neighbors; and we are hanging on every word of the Lord.  

Previous lessons from the Lord have taught us we’ll do nothing good “out there” if we are falling apart in our home.  As you know, we’ve been learning French for four months now.  Lord-willing, we will move from here in September, to a place only the Lord knows.  The excitement and anticipation are building for the next chapter He will write, but will you pause with us now and thank Him for bringing us this far?

Searching for Waterfalls in the Desert

"Faith does not deny pain.

It merely denies it the last word."

-Alan Scott

 It would have been quite a search down dirt roads that get smaller and rougher, through sugar cane fields in search of the "Cascades," but we had an African guide and the experienced Bove family with us.  First glimpse of the waterfalls......

 Then comes the hike up the hill.......

 We kept this little one close the whole time we were at the cliff's edge, but I still had nightmares that night.

 

The spectacular falls.......

Looking at the pictures on the computer, I can hear you saying, "But Sara, that's just flowing mud!"  Yes, you might be right, but at the time, we thought it was as beautiful as any Hawaiian scene.

 These kids spent hours sending sticks (aka "boats") down the waterfall and watching them get carried away.  Summer nostalgia reclaimed! 

 

 It happened to be the day after our twelfth anniversary, too.

 The whole trip lasted less than ten hours - we left after breakfast and were home for dinner - but our day exploring natural beauty with friends refreshed our spirits immensely.  Neither the hot  desert, nor loneliness, nor discouragement, nor pain have the final word here.

Africa Changes You

"Africa changes you," the saying goes.  Here are ten ways Africa is changing me, or better yet, ten things God is teaching me along the way.  

#1 This is crazy.  The world needs to see crazy.

#2 My days were just as holy when I spent them changing my own children's diapers in my own home in my own country when no one noticed.  Geography does not determine holiness.  

#3 Climate control is the key to America's success.

#4 In the first world, you have recreation and abundance.  In the third world, we have poverty and mission agendas.  They are all distractions from the one thing.

#5 It is not safe.

#6 The reward is not coming in furlough, vacation, or in care packages.  (Stop looking for it there, Sara.)

#7 There is no beginning and no end to "ministry."  We are representing Christ when we buy groceries, when we greet our neighbors, when we check our mail, when we put our kids to bed.  This is the same in the US, too, of course.  We just feel it more here as we are literally being watched anytime we leave the house.

#8 I don't love Africa......not yet.  But God didn't ask me to love a location.  He asked me to love him so much that it didn't matter where he sent me.

#9 The missionaries who have come before us are incredible.  Their words have brought much life into ours.  The best advice: "You don't have anything to prove to anyone."  In sorting through our new roles, I felt much like a fellow student at Missions Training International who declared, "I've been going through this whole thing feeling like I'm constantly falling short of the bar.  Then I realized...... There is no bar!"

#10 God provides everything we need.  Even if it comes as the blank pages a the back of a children's Bible to serve as toilet paper for a child's bottom.  He's got us covered.

BONUS:  Now it's your turn to join us in Africa to see what God will teach you.

Children Serving Children

"Balloons, jump ropes, and granola bars to give away," we replied to a church's inquiry as to how their Children's Ministry could help children here.

 

The children collected donations, and we waited for the box to arrive.

"It" arrived yesterday, and with it a gentle whisper from the Father, "Dream BIGGER, Sara!"

 

The Children's Ministry had collected SIX boxes of donations, where I had hoped for one. Amazing!

 

I spend a lot of time overwhelmed by the needs of this country, but the children turned my gaze to be overwhelmed by the good Father who is at work, who has incredible people (some of whom we don't even know!) pouring out their love in big and tangible ways, and who is letting my family be the bridge between the two! 

Beauty in the Desert

"I want to take you to the rain forest," urged Paul, Philip's language tutor. 

I was convinced this was a mistranslation.  Rain forest in our part of West Africa?  You have to be kidding me. 

I do not remember ever being so happy to be wrong. 

Tucked into a little known area thirty minutes outside the city is a beautiful, protected haven of God's creation.  Perhaps it is a little slice of what God envisioned for this area before deforestation took over. 

We literally swung on vines and felt cool in the heat of the day.

Most significant of all, we found this bridge, as Daniel calls it: 

The Swaying Bridge

In our missions training, there was a bridge illustration for the process of leaving home in America and creating home in a foreign land.  They dispelled any hopes of this being a quick process, and had us act out a bridge demonstration.  The bridge they created for the demonstration contained various elements of feeling "settled" or "unsettled" and right in the middle was an area called "chaos."  In the process of transition, it's the area where you are far from home and yet far from feeling at home in your new country.  On the rain forest bridge, it's the area that does the most swaying.  And in the training illustration, chaos was represented by about six inflatable exercise balls loosely held together by a bed sheet.  It looked impossible to cross.

But something happened in that training illustration I will never forget.  As the demonstration family approached the exercise balls of chaos, those of us watching quickly gathered around, reached out, and steadied them through.  "No one is going to fall!" I realized.  "No one watching this would sit back and let friends fall off this precarious bridge."  Not a single person fell off the bridge, and many of the children had fun running through time after time.

As we cross the metaphorical transition bridge toward calling Africa our home, we are somewhere in the middle of that chaos as a family.  I am witnessing the very same amazing phenomenon.  We are not going to fall.  On the other side of this bridge, we will be at home in Africa, but until then you are holding us up.  With every care package, every Skyped worship, every prayer, every bit of monthly sacrifice, every e-mailed word of encouragement, you are just as literally helping us forward as the supporters of the exercise ball bridge.

Thank you.

Wednesdays are my favorite!

On Mondays, I think Mondays are the best day of the week.

When Fridays roll around, it's Fridays I think are the best day.

But on Wednesdays......on Wednesdays, I know Wednesdays are the very best day.

Like clockwork, this precious woman delivers vegetables in a basket on her head to our house every Wednesday morning.....

She laughs heartily at me for not speaking her Djula language, and then talks to me in French, as if I understand that.  Her vegetable delivery saves me the borderline harassment of the overly zealous vegetable ladies on the street.  Even the week she was recovering from malaria, she had the same huge smile on her face.  I anticipate each visit days ahead of time.

Thank you, Lord, for Madeline and the blessing of looking forward to every Wednesday!