In His Strength

Hello Everyone!

Well, we have yet to have a normal week in the bush. I think I forgot to mention in previous updates that there are now two more girls, Lacey and Lauren, working under Melissa. They are staying and working in a village similar to ours. This means there are two more people at Melissa’s house on the weekends. It’s refreshing to watch these girls experience the bush for the first time. I can still remember how nervous and excited when we first arrived. I’m sorry to say that most of that excitement has worn off; however, it has been replaced by a sense of being at home here.

This week we went back out to our village on Monday morning. Lacey went with Melissa to drop Linds and I off, and to visit some of the compounds with us. As it turns out, most of the women we knew were gone because 40 days prior a man had died and in this culture when a man dies his wife has to stay inside for 40 days and then at the end of that time period there is a celebration and the woman is welcomed back into society. So our women were attending this celebration and we were unable to visit with them. So instead we began our development project.

During orientation there was a section on development and Emily, who lead our orientation, let us look through a whole bunch of different development projects. One of the ideas was to create fly traps out of used water 1.5 liter bottles and some goat poop. It’s difficult to explain, but the picture looked like we could do it fairly easily. The traps were supposed to catch up to 200 flies each day. Then you would take the flies that you caught and feed them to the chickens so that they would get fat. Then you could either eat the chickens for more nutrition or sell them at market and since they are fat they would bring a better price. It sounded like a flawless plan. So, we bought some used water bottles from a man at market and took them out to bush with us. Since we didn’t have anyone to visit due to the celebration, we decided to make our fly traps. Now, I have to warn you that the Fulfulde word for fly is “booby,” so we found great joy in being about to say we were making “booby traps.” So, while Melissa and Lacey were at our hut, we began cutting up water bottles and making our booby traps. However, we had left the instructions at Melissa’s, so we had to go from our memories. Linds and I did not have the same memories of how they were made, so that made our task a bit more interesting, but we got it accomplished. Linds scooped up some goat poop for the bait and we all waited to see if it would work. We quickly learned that although flies like goat poop, they like human sweat better. We did however catch two flies in the trap and then we wrapped the trap in duct tape and caught six more. Next week we are going to adapt our original model and use different bait to see if we can catch more flies.

When the chief got home Melissa talked to him about our concerns with the children. We were very thankful that the talk went well and chef also told Melissa that he wanted to teach us how to make ashia. We had already bought all the supplies, so that night he was going to teach us.

Later that afternoon we went to visit our homestay family. If you can recall from previous updates, when Lindsay and I told our personal stories, some women had wanted to follow, but needed permission from their husbands. Then when the volunteer team was here, they shared with our homestay families’ compound and our homestay dad said he was going to hold a meeting with his wives and they were going to decide which path they believed was truth and what they were going to follow. So we were checking up with them to see if they had met together, and they had. They had talked and agreed to follow the path of Dad! How exciting! That means we have at least three more brothers and sisters in our village. Melissa told our homestay dad that he needed to inform the chief of his decision, and we are still waiting to see how that goes. Melissa and Lacey went home after that.


That evening after dinner we got our supplies out to make the ashia. What we didn’t realize was that by the chief saying he wanted to teach us, what he really meant was that he would tell one of his wives to help us and she would intern tell one her children to teach us. But it all worked out. Ibrahim, Jemma’s oldest son, came over and began to teach us to make ashia. It was a lot of fun. All of the children came over to our little section of the compound. The girls began to sing and dance teaching us the words and the steps. Before long the boys got up and did a separate dance. It was wonderful. One of the songs we learned goes “Isa kissi no. Mi yetti jomirrow. Mi toki loowal Allah.” Basically the meaning of the song is “the Son is the one who saved us. Thanks to the Creator of Everything. I follow the road of the Father.” It was really encouraging. By the time we had finished singing and dancing our tea was ready. As I mentioned last time, the tea comes in three rounds and the first round is super strong. When we got our first round it was hard to drink so, we tried to share it with some of the children, but apparently the children are not allowed to have round one and we soon found out why. By the end of three rounds we were all pretty hyped up on caffeine and sugar. One of the nights we had ashia I didn’t fall asleep until after midnight and typically we are asleep by 9:00pm, sometimes earlier. Before the night was over the kids were already asking if we could do it again the next night.

Tuesday was a really good day. We had a mentoring day with Melissa and we went with her to one of her other villages to do some discipleship with the followers there. It was delightful. We went to a few different compounds to visit with some women, and then we went to the follower’s compound that I had mention in my “As It Gets Harder, He Shines Brighter” update. The one who has no support system and everyone is refusing to give him food. He made us some of the best ashia we’ve had so far, even the first round was really good. The other followers in the village met us at his house and the set a date that they all wanted to go to the river to follow one of the ordinances given by the Father. It was a really exciting time. Please keep them in your pr*yers as this is when persecution usually gets worse. They are also going to talk to the chief of our village, who is also a believer, to see if he wants to join them.

After that went back to our village and we weren’t there more than an hour before our new language teacher showed up. After our first month of language study our teacher went back to Niamey for a few weeks and he was supposed to come back out to teach Lacey and Lauren, but instead he quit. So, since the other girls were getting a new teacher, we decided to have him reevaluate us and get a few more lessons each week. But anyways, it turned out to be a huge blessing from Dad. Our new language teacher is a follower and is probably the most encouraging man I have ever met in my life. He is incredibly sweet and is extraordinary when it comes to translating the Word! We have been translating a series of eight significant stories from the Word from the very beginning until the end. He has been a huge blessing because he understands the root meanings of the words and is able to do so much more than word by word translation.

We had another language lesson on Wednesday as well and things have been going great. Other than my illness, I have nothing to complain about. Please continue to keep my body and my spirits in your pr*yers. (Today is Saturday and I’m still sick).

Well, I know I said I’d post pictures, but due to illness I left my camera in the bush. I’m sorry. I’ll write more soon 

In His Strength,
Krissy

Hut, Sweet Hut

Hut, sweet hut.

Well, Hello All!

We’ve been in Africa for over two months now. Our new hut is quite wonderful. It’s our very own round mud hut with a grass roof. Linds and I are doing our best to make our hut our home. We found camel mussels made of grass at market a few weeks ago and hung the up in our hut as baskets. We also bought several different kinds of fabric to weave into the roof of our hut. We haven’t got it put up yet, but it’s on our list. We also made little signs out of construction paper with some good passages on them during orientation at Emily’s, we hung them on the inside of our roof too.

Our new compound is quite different than our last home. We are now living in the chief’s compound. His name is Dego, he has two wives, Jemma and Laidy. Both of the women are pregnant…very pregnant. They are also super sweet. Jemma is taller and pretty quiet. She has a lot of patience and smiles at us a lot. Laidy is a bit shorter with a lively personality. She makes “ashia” for us almost every afternoon. Ashia is the extremely concentrated African version of sweet tea that comes in a shot glass. The first round is super strong, but rounds two and three are quite delightful. There are also lots of kids at our compound.

The kids have been the best and worst part of our new compound. The kids are super cute and they love to come over and hang out with us. However, since there were three girls from America that stayed in the same compound last year and those girls did not set any boundaries for the children, when we came in they did not respect the boundaries we attempted to establish when it came to us and our stuff. When we go out to our cabana (which is composed of six tree branches stuck in the ground with millet stalks on top), as Linds calls it, to read or study and the children swarm us. If I don’t sit all the way to the back of my chair the children try to crawl in the chair with me. If I’m attempting to journal, I’ll put my journal down for a second to try to get the kids out of my chair and before I know it my journal is missing and someone is writing “Halimatu”(the name of one of the children) in my shoe with my pen. Sometimes we just have to go to our hut and shut the door to get some alone time. It’s a rather stressful situation at times. Even when we go to our hut, this one child in particular refuses to leave us alone. She puts her arms through our windows, throws things through the windows and repeatedly says our names to get our attention. We tell her to leave, but she refuses or only leaves for a moment and then returns. Melissa is going to have a chat with the Chief and his wives on Monday to see if we can get these issues resolved.

The past three weeks have been far from normal. At the beginning of the month a volunteer team came to help in our area. There were eight of them and they all stayed at Melissa’s house, plus Rachel, who helped with translation, and Linds and I on the weekends. Melissa’s house was packed. The team turned out to be a huge blessing. They went to four different villages, including the one where we are staying at, and told a series of very significant stories and then they played games with the kids. A few of the villagers expressed interest and want to hear more stories, thanks to Father! They were also a huge blessing to Linds and I because we’ve been really lacking in male contact for the past couple months because in this culture men and women communicate from a distance and absolutely never display affection publically. It was refreshing to be able to joke around and play games with the guys on the team at Melissa’s house without having to worry about cultural boundaries. Still the last guy I hugged was my dad at the airport and Lindsay has been the only girl I’ve hugged pretty much the entire trip. This was culture shock for me because I got multiple hugs a day from guys and girls alike at school and at home and now I only occasionally get a hug from Lindsay. I think the thing I miss the most from home right now is physical contact because my number one love language is physical touch and people in this culture rarely touch.

This past week we have not been back out to the bush. We started to go out on Tuesday after Melissa got back from Niamey, but I got sick and I’ve been sick all week. We looked up my symptoms in “Where There is No Doctor,” and we’ve diagnosed me as having Giardia. I started taking medicine three days ago and it’s beginning to show signs of clearing up, but it’s been a pretty miserable week. So those of you reading this who knew how scared I was of getting a parasite…I got one and I’m still alive! Please continue to pr*y for me, I still feel really weak.

Over all things have been going pretty well. I’m looking forward to a fresh start on Monday.