Top Ten Books I Read in Africa

I love booklists.  Even when my reading wishlist is miles longer than the hours available, I love to explore what ideas are out there for future perusal.  Along those lines, I put together this list for you. Maybe you'll find a new book to read or an intriguing quote.  These were the books that inspired us or shaped what we were doing in Africa.  It could be argued 2014-2016 were defined by the the books listed below.

#1
2014 - Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud by Philip Yancey
Like the title infers, I read this book thinking, "I didn't know you could actually say these things outloud."  I was stumbling into life in the developing world, my faith desperately teetering in the face of impoverished communities.  Read this book if God has violated your expectations and you're wondering if it's okay to think things like:

"If God gets credit for the survivor, he should also get blamed for the casualties."

#2
2014 - Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development by Bryant Myers
This book became almost like a manual for us.  So many of the things we did "right" were born of the concepts we learned right here.  Philip didn't have to read the book himself because I took seventeen pages of notes and stopped reading so often to say, "You have got to hear this."  Just reading my notes gets me excited all over again.  My only critique is the title.  Our friends may not have electricity or running water, but "the poor" is not what defines them.  I find referring to our neighbors by their economic status offensive.  They are so much more.  Aside from that critique, this is a stellar work.

"At the end of the day, the problem is not that the poor have no voice; it is that no one is listening."

"Are we willing to pay the price? Where are the real transformational frontiers? The ones that make foolishness into wisdom and weakness into power? Where are the places where the false wisdom of the world is unmasked and declared a lie?"

#3
2015- Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O'Brien
By the second year we had a little better handle on survival and were starting to grasp some of the unseen parts of the culture.  I felt like this book was narrating my life.  It's hard to even choose a quote because this book has to be digested in huge chunks of explanation, but I'll leave you with this conclusion and hope you'll get a chance to read the whole book or live it one way or another:

"Finally, perhaps the best way to become sensitive to our own presuppositions-what goes without being said for us - is to read the writing of Christians from different cultures and ages."

#4
2016- Slavery of Death by Richard Beck
Could there have been a more tangible lesson for us in 2016?  Yet this book is just as applicable in comfy suburban America as in a hostile foreign field.

"As biological creatures, we are not saved from the fear of death - that would be an impossible, foolish goal.  We are rather, saved from a slavery to the fear of death."

#5
The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd by John Piper
A powerful book that says our God is not disgraced by our struggles.

#6
The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected by Nik Ripken

"How can someone live the abundant, victorious life that Jesus promised in our world's hardest places?....To me, the most startling thing Jesus ever said was when He assigned His followers the task of going out in pairs to share His good news with lost people. He said that He was sending them 'as sheep among wolves.' Still, He expected them to prevail. In the history of the world, no sheep has ever won a fight with a wolf. The very idea is insane."

#7
A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne
Recommended by a teacher friend in inner-city America, this book is a great help to anyone seeking to bridge the culture gap between the middle class and the poor.

#8
Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile by Walter Brueggemann
I picked this book up because hope was the one thing I had lost the most.  Turns out that is the best time to find prophetic hope.

"...those promises are addressed only to people in exile who have seen the city fall and have suffered the loss of their entire world of faith."

"It is our loss of historical perspective, our reduction of everything to the present moment that results in hopelessness.  The promises of God have no credibility, to exiles or anyone else, unless they are seen over the generations."

#9
Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal 
by Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Our daily struggles overseas would be considered traumatic experiences by many Americans, and yet we had legitimate traumatic experiences as well.  All of it with our children by our sides.  I picked up this book to understand the impact such a childhood could have on them and found it overwhelmingly encouraging.

"We develop wounds from relationships, but we also heal in relationship to each other."

"We need to help our children and ourselves balance the stressful moments, interactions, and even adverse experiences with a sense of wonder and goodness."

#10
Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky
This book was less encouraging than #9, but an important wake-up call.

Which book stands out to you?

2019 Conference

Every other year our missionaries gather from three continents.  This year's conference filled places in my soul that I didn't know were empty.  

The kids and I hadn't seen most of these folks in a year, and some for two years, and Emily's comment was, "It really does feel like a family reunion."

 

  Our guest speaker said it best when he said being among this group felt like he was on holy ground.

 Of course there were the necessary organizational growth and policy meetings, but much more time was given to fellowship, spiritual renewal, and team building.

 These pants.

 Hearing updates about each ministry face-to-face was one of my favorite parts.  You might think ministering in high-risk areas would be disheartening, but the truth is far from it!

What Faith Can Do

Security warnings were updated this week.  The "red zone" as determined by the US government now looks roughly like this:

That's a lot of red in what has long been known as a welcoming, hospitable country.

At the same time, you may have seen on the news that local Christians in the northern part of the country have come under attack in recent weeks.  In a country where the Muslim-majority has peacefully lived alongside Christian neighbors for decades, it is now reported that the jihadists are changing tactics by trying to instill interreligious conflict. (source) This possibility has been present for a long time.  Back in 2017, at the church nearest our house in the capital, bags were searched and everyone had to go through metal screening upon arrival at Sunday morning service.  Of course, a metal detector would not stop the current mode of attack, but it does highlight that Christians have been aware of the risk for quite some time, yet churches continue to grow and the Gospel continues to spread.

It was with all this on my mind that I hopped in the car to take Daniel to school one morning this week.  What I heard on the Christian radio here in the US brought me to tears.  In a light-hearted morning show, the radio hosts celebrated the local hockey team's play-off run by having listeners call in to dedicate a song to the team.  I listened in disbelief to a string of three listeners describing the season with lyrics meant for Jesus, such as equating this play-off run with the lyrics "That's what faith can do."

Really?!  That's what faith can do? Get you through a sporting season???  You are telling me Jesus got this team to the play-offs when we have brothers and sisters around the world whose faith in Jesus might not get them home from Sunday morning worship?

"There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning....Jesus never called us to a life of safety, nor even to a fair fight. 'Lambs in the midst of wolves' is the way he decries our sending." 

John Piper, The Hidden Smile of God

Which faith is yours?

The Goat Picture

I recently printed this picture to put in a frame beside our bed where I'll see it everyday.
What do you see when you look at this African village scene?  The wandering goat?  The laundry?  The cooking pots in the foreground?  The future harvest in the field? The neighboring mud brick huts?

I know this as Yaya's village.  The place where Daniel got a fish bone trapped in his esophagus.  (I feigned indifference while Philip coached him through that experience.  My internal panicking at the thought of being ten hours from medical care was not helping anybody.  To this day Daniel does not eat anything served with bones in it.) At the time of our visit, it was a 100% Muslim village with incredible hospitality and overt curiosity.  I have an inkling that if I enlarged the picture enough, I could step into it and be back there.

I think what I should have done was print a smaller version, rather than an enlarged one.  When I see this picture, I think, "Why are we hoarding resources?"  There is a great big world out there right now living without the ease of a washing machine or the peace of Christ.  And we could be doing something about it.  I need a wallet size print of this picture that I can keep right beside my credit card because often I forget.  I forget that this African village life is still going on mostly unchanged today.  I forget that there is more fun work to be done.  I forget that what seems like a good spending or saving decision in my new context is only valid to the extent it brings good news to the poor.  Do you forget, too?  How do you keep a biblical perspective in a self-indulgent culture?

"Our emphasis on saving makes sense when we consider that most of us think of our options as either saving or spending. But the biblical witness and Christian tradition suggest that there's another option: sharing." 

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: 

Removing Cultural Binders to Better Understand the Bible

Read, Pray, Hope, and Grieve

If you are not up-to-date on the goings-on in West Africa, these two articles are concise summaries of a complicated situation:

Kalashnikovs and no-go zones

 Christians killed in attack on church

I have so many thoughts about this, but I'm not sure about posting such things in such a public space.  At the very least I want to say we are honored to have made this country our home.  Though the poverty statistics and the upsurge in terrorism are daily realities, they are not what defines the country.  In West Africa, you find mothers and fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends, employees, farmers, nurses, and teachers.  They like to laugh with their friends, dance at church, and keep food on the table for their family.

Read the articles, Pray with them, Hope for them, and Grieve together

My Dream Trip

A decade long dream of mine has been to take the kids to the annual musical extravaganza called Spring Sing at our alma mater.  Last weekend, the lights dimmed, the ensemble came on stage, and I started crying....barely into the opening number!

Our seats were in the area where Philip and I sat for chapel every day of our junior year of college.  Two memories unexpectedly hit me with a rush: This was roughly where we were sitting the morning it was announced from the stage that a plane had hit the Twin Towers in New York in 2001.  Three months later, I sat right about there admiring how my engagement ring sparkled under all those chapel lights.

The memories just kept coming.

I remembered how I came to college as a high-achiever who never considered skipping a single high school class.  It was Philip who taught me, "You're allowed three skips in every class.  Why be inside on a beautiful spring day?"

At the same time, I had discovered for myself that you are allowed ten chapel skips each semester.  Since chapel is not a graded endeavor anyway, freshman year I reasoned skipping chapel for thirty extra minutes to study before a test was a worthy trade-off.  I will never forget the very strong reaction of the very same Philip who taught me to skip class: "What?!  Skip chapel?!  Why would you do that? Gathering to worship the Lord together is the best part of the day."  He flipped my values upside down, which he continues to do today.

It's been nearly twenty years since he helped me start to live believing "what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." I was going to mention something about all these memories to him as the musical began, but as I looked to my left, there were four precious heads between us.  Four beautiful ones between us who did not exist in my memories and whose presence in our family tell of the journey we've had together in the intervening years.

Just like that I was on my dream Spring Sing trip....and in tears.

Twelve Lingering Lessons

Reflecting on the lessons that linger from our exposure to African culture, I wonder if they resonate with you, too. Some are inherent to life overseas, but not exclusive to it.  I would love to hear how these ideas have been woven into your story as well.....

sitting on the porch of our last African home

1. If you have it, it's for sharing....whether that's material possessions or your time.  In Africa, there is always time to sit under the mango tree with your friends because time is not considered a limited commodity.  There is no thought of "running out" of time.

2. Let God feed us.

3. Life is not found in leisure and recreation. We had very little of either, but life was full.

4. Purpose and focus. We could do so little in Africa, but that meant we were devoted to our little bit, to doing it well and doing it for His glory.  By necessity, everything else was out of our hands and off our radar.

5. We are wrong.  Learn about God from non-Westerners.  Jesus himself was not "one of us" Westerners.

6. The bar of success is not where Americans think it is.

7. Life works with other rules.  "Normal" is different for different cultures even down to the basic definitions of food, beauty, safety, health, and friendship.

8. Treats are treats.  A treat was just that, a rare and special occasion.  Culture shock included recognizing how readily available treats are here all day, every day.

9. Life is tough. God is there. 

10. Grace. God loved you before you cared.  

11. Choose community. Think community.

12. There is a gift in everyone who visits.  From welcoming those who are like you, you receive encouragement.  From guests who aren't like you, you receive growth and learning.  Both are a gift.

I am thankful we had five years to learn to see how another culture applies the ancient truths of the Gospel, as well as sad to leave because it seemed like we had just begun.  Tell me, in what ways have you learned these (and other) counter-cultural ways of life right here in America?