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 I’m sorry to say that most of that excitement has worn off; however, it has been replaced by a sense of being at home here.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.

As It Gets Harder, He Shines Brighter

Home sweet home.

The past month has been the absolute hardest month of my life. I’ll try to start from the beginning to paint you a small picture of what the past month of my life in Africa has been like.

We met our supervisor, Melissa, in Niamey June 30th and headed out to the village two days later. It was a nine hour drive from Niamey to Melissa’s house. The roads weren’t too bad, but there were quite a few potholes, detours, and speed bumps along the way. Melissa’s home is quite wonderful. It’s a mud block house with a wonderful western style bathroom! She has electricity and running water at her house most of the time. Sometimes it goes out for hours at a time, but so far it always comes back on. Thanks to the Father!

The 3rd of July was our first of homestay. Melissa’s car was getting worked on in Niamey, so Lindsay and I had the wonderful privilege of moving out to the bush in the traditional African style…riding a cow cart. Our village was five kilometers away from Melissa’s and it took over an hour for us to get there riding on our cow cart. The cow cart in and of its self was a huge culture shock. To begin with, two men showed up at our door with a car and two long horned cows at 8:00am and loaded our cots, foam mattresses, chairs, small table, water filter, plastic mat, bathroom supplies and the three of us on to the cart and off we went down the streets of Guidan Roundji and into the bush. It was like being in our own little parade. Looking back on it we really should have thrown out candy. Everyone stopped their daily activities to watch the three white girls ride away on the cow cart filled with all of their earthly belongings. Many people smiled and waved, some just pointed and started, but we waved at them all. As soon as we got out of town, the dirt roads ended and the sand began. We soon found out that it is very difficult to navigate through the sand when it hasn’t rained recently. It hadn’t rained in 60 days. The cows had a hard time of it. One cow wasn’t pulling as hard as the other so one of the men with us took out a wooden hand for a hoe and proceeded to beat the cow. This did little to increase the pace of our slow cow and at one point the cow fell to the ground and I thought we had killed the cow. However, it was still alive and they beat it some more and the cow got back up and continued to take us the rest of the way. This was wonderful example of what it means to be equally yoked. As we were witnessing this event Melissa told us that if the strong cow continued to pull the bulk of the load it would tire quickly, this is why they continued to beat the slow one because they needed it to pull its share to save the strong cow. It totally made sense why the Father had chosen to use this as an example in His Word. If a strong follower was linked with a weaker follower it would soon weaken the stronger one. Especially when it comes to marriage relationships, the relationship should not weaken anyone, but they should be equally linked together to make the best team. This really impacted me and I think it will definitely change the way I look at certain situations from here on.

Eventually we finally made it to our village of Ly On Kara. It was a lot smaller than I anticipated. Our compound consisted of three mud huts, two grass mat huts, and some millet stalk walls at the back of the compound. We eventually meet our two new mothers and our new dad. The mom’s names were Doodoo and Hajia, and our dad’s name was Gonda. Hajia turned out to be a very patient, lovable person. She was easy to get along with and she smiled often. Doodoo on the other hand was quite wonderful most of the time, but she had her moments. Gonda is very entertaining. Everytime Lindsay and I got our phone out he asked if we could call Obama for him. At one point he even asked us to teach him English so that he could go to America to meet Obama. All together our homestay family had 23 children.

One of the very first things our new moms did when we got there was to give us our new Fulfulde names. Lindsay’s name became Hoe-e-mah which means born without birth defects. I was named Say-u-doh which means without a body. We did a lot of new things our first day. We were allowed to pound millet in a really big mortar and pestle and carry water from the well. Carrying water from the well on our head was harder than we anticipated. Our first mistake was that we tried to carry 25 liters of water our first time. This was really heavy and neither Lindsay nor I could do it without severe pain, so Doodoo gave us her round clay pot that was full of water to carry instead because it was smaller. It was better, but still very difficult. I started carrying the clay pot and before long I decided to try and switch with Lindsay. In the processes of switching the pot we tried to sit it down and it broke. Water went everywhere! All of the women with us began laughing hysterically. I think by the next morning everyone within 5 miles had heard of our little mishap and had come to tell us they knew and to laugh at us. That really didn’t bother us, we just laughed along with them. The next Sunday (market day) we bought them another clay pot, actually we bought two because we figured we’d probably break another before the end of it. To our surprise the big clay pots were only 150 cfa each, which is about 25 cents. We gave it to the but they were upset because Fulani have certain rules that they follow called Pullocko (the Way of the Fulani) which says that if another Fulani breaks something of yours they should not replace it because they are Fulani. It actually was kind of a complement because they were considering us to be Fulani then, but we just left the pot there and eventually they began to use it.

We had language study every weekday morning from 8:00am until 11:00am to work on our Fulfulde. Our language teacher, Ishmael, had come out with us from Niamey to teach us. He’s a 23 year old university student from a fairly well off family in Niamey. He happens to know Eastern Fulfulde because he has some relatives out that way. He’s very much a city Fulani and has a hard time living out in the bush. He has been taught in the French style most of his life and apparently it’s a very different style then the American way of teaching. This made many of our class times extremely interesting. I’ve learned a lot about myself during these classes. I get frustrated quite quickly because I ask straight forward questions (Ishmael calls them American questions) and he does not give me a straight forward answer (an American answer according to Ishmael). I realize that this is just a cultural difference, but it really really frustrates me and it makes it hard for me to continue class in a civilized way. I know this is a textbook case of ethnocentrism, but it’s a lot harder to deal with than I anticipated. Usually at this point Lindsay steps up and starts answering more questions because she can sense when I’m getting stressed out. I am convinced this is why the Son sent the followers out in pairs because otherwise no one would ever be able to learn language. Lindsay has been quite a blessing and I could not imagine being in a foreign country under such stressful circumstances with anyone else. We have accomplished so much in our month of language. We have been able to translate our stories and we have been able to translate a series of stories from how the world began to the death of the Son. Linds and I haven’t been able to memorize them yet, but that’s our next goal. We are doing more than I ever thought possible with less language than I ever thought possible. The Father is AMAZING!

As for the food, we quickly learned that though millet may be the most nutritious grain available, it is not the most delightful when it comes to its taste. During the typical day we are offered chutum in the afternoon. Chutum is a mixture of sour milk, millet, and well water. It has the consistency of Mylanta mixed with sand. The taste is very unique and it’s really hard to swallow. Then in the evenings we are served millet paste with okra sauce. This is like sandy raw dough covered in a sauce with the same consistency of snot. Oh and the okra sauce is often green, which adds to the snot image. And that’s it. That’s all they feed us each day. In many ways we should be thankful, because it’s hard enough to swallow the food twice a day, but we could never eat enough to satisfy our hunger. This was the first time in my life I can say I’ve ever actually been hungry where I’ve gone to bed hungry and woken up hungry and had very little relief all day. We ended up having to add in some snacky foods to our diet during our language learning each day. We usually had some combination of fruit cups, pudding cups, peanut butter crackers, oranges, beef jerky, trail mix and dried fruit. Towards the end of homestay we even began to take pouches of tuna, salmon, and even spam out each week and eat the meat on crackers, Pringles, or straight out of the pouch. Turns out I actually like spam. I never thought I’d say that. One day we added up our daily caloric intake and found out that outside of the small amount of millet we were eating each day we were eating about 600-800 calories. That’s a little less than the recommended 2,000. Our diet was really hard to control during our homestay because we were unable to cook anything for ourselves and though we ate every time they offered us food, it was difficult for our bodies to handle large amounts of the food they gave us and they only offered us food twice a day. I was able to use this as a learning experience as well. I had never considered food to be a stumbling block until our homestay. I learned how difficult it was to concentrate on anything when your stomach hurt because it was hungry or was not digesting the food it was given properly. This made me think of all the starving people we try to share the good news with that can’t possibly be making informed decisions on empty stomachs. This makes the concept of “Rice Followers” very real to me.

Speaking of “Rice Followers,” we have some pr*yer requests. Lindsay and I have been able to translate our personal stories into Fulfulde and have been able to share them with the women here. One day after hearing our stories our neighbor lady told Melissa that she had heard about the Way of the Son and wanted to follow, but she had to ask her husband first. Melissa tried to tell her that this was a personal decision that she needed to make, but the lady insisted that she needed to ask her husband because she was afraid of him. Melissa pressed on and as it turns out the woman’s husband seems to be abusive. That is one of our pr*yer requests, but the story goes on. The family that we’ve been staying with has received five 100 kilo bags of millet to pay for our rent and our utilities (the women helping us carry our water), there were two bags of rice for each of our moms and one bag for them to share. Yesterday morning our neighbor lady, the one I just shared with you about, walked by while we were in our last day of language learning and informed Ishmael that she was hungry. She also informed him that she had been listening to the stories about the Son and had been following what Melissa had shared and she was very upset that she had not received any millet. First off I should mention that Ishmael is not a follower. When Ishmael had told Lindsay and I when our neighbor had said it really upset us. She believed that we had given our host family a very large amount of millet because they were listening to the stories we had been sharing and following the Way of the Son. This is not at all true. For one thing, in our home family there are no followers. The fact that she was suggesting that we were bribing people to follow the Way of the Son was highly offensive to us. In so many of our classes we have been warned of doing such a thing and we were trying our best not too, but it was still interpreted as such. I want to plead for your pr*yers for this women. She is obviously open to the good news, but we don’t want her to be falsely open just to get food. This has put me in a very hard position too. Part of me really just wants to give her some food because she truly does not have any food, but I know that that would not be culturally appropriate. The family that we gave the millet to is part of her support network and I know that they will share what they have with her until they run out. Its part of the culture here to share what you have with your support network. Family and friends are like insurance to these people. If something bad happens you can always fall back on them, and when you get back on your feet and something bad happens to the next guy you are obligated to help him out too. I envy their sense of community in this respect, but this leads me to our next pr*yer request.

There have recently been some new followers in some of the villages Melissa works with. Almost all of these people have family and friends that are not followers, but still support them. However, one of the followers is a single man with no family to fall back on. This time of the year a lot of people’s millet is beginning to run out and people are starting to become hungry. The next crop of millet has been planted, but it will not be ready for harvest for many months yet. This particular follower has come to Melissa asking for food or money. He has already asked the chief of his village and some other people for food, but they are refusing to give it to him because he is a follower. This has put Melissa in a tough position because she has no work for him to do and we haven’t been able to come up with a way for him to make money himself because so many people are out of work and are hungry too. They have not been able to form a body of followers yet, so he has no support network of other followers to fall back on either. Melissa has given him a very small amount of money (enough to buy him basic food for a week) and is trying to come up with a way for him to become independent. So, please remember these things in your pr*yers.

Now for some more good times during our homestay. Since Melissa’s car has been in Niamey, every time we go into Melissa’s house we have to ride moto’s. This are motorcycles that we ride through the bush in up to 6 inches of sand. They are quite exciting to say the least. I’m positive it’s only through the Father that Lindsay and I did not die on them. Apparently it’s really difficult to ride a street bike through the desert, who knew? Lindsay’s driver was a better driver than mine and he had a better bike, so they went fast and never got stuck. My driver on the other hand was less experienced and we had quite a few issues. We almost crashed each time I rode with him and I had to get off at least once each time because he was not able to get me and the bike up the hills in the sand. My driver was a real sweet man that spoke no English and no Fulfulde so we would greet each other in French, but my driver was a horrible driver. On two different occasions his bike completely stopped and Lindsay’s driver had to take her in and come back and pick me up and take me the rest of the way in. I guess in a way it’s a blessing I had the worst driver, because I’ve had experience riding with my dad and my brother in the past. My dad always prepared us for the worst case scenarios so I knew what to do if we did crash.

Speaking of my dad, I had to call him one night for medical advice. Lindsay and I were setting up our cots and mosquito nets like we do every night when as I was adjusting one of the legs to one of the cots a child started screaming bloody murder. As it turns out I had caught his finger between the leg and the rest of the cot. It was sliced opened pretty bad. I didn’t realize it was that bad until I noticed a pool of blood collecting under his hand on one of the water containers. I then began to freak out more than he was. He stopped crying as soon as we started to wash it out and he never shed another tear. I, on the other hand, started crying at that point. Had we been in the states we would have rushed him to the emergency room and he would have gotten stitches that night, however we were not in the states. We called Melissa and she told us to keep it clean and bandage it and really that’s the only thing we could do. This really hit me that we were no longer in America anymore. There was no clinic open and absolutely nothing we could do. I called my dad because he is on the Quick Response (medical) Team in my home town and I figured he might know something else to do. He told us not to take the bandages off the next morning, but just and more and to wait until it had healed enough (probably at least 24 hrs) then take them off clean it and replace the bandages. I think the biggest thing he did was reassure me everything was going to be okay. The next morning we took the piece of fabric that we had wrapped around his finger off and added another Band-Aid. It was a good thing we hadn’t taken the other ones off because the one we added instantly filled with blood because the wound had not closed yet. By that afternoon the kid had ran around enough that the bandages were beginning to get loose and the bleeding had stopped. Lindsay and I decided to cut the bandages off and clean it out. When we were able to look at it in the light we realized that the skin was not going back together and there was over a 1/4 inch gap between the pieces of skin and there was sand inside of the wound. The skin was also beginning to turn gray which we figured was not a good sign. We call Melissa and she came out that afternoon and took the kid in to get stitches at our local clinic. I felt much better about everything then. Since then when we wake up every morning we change the bandages on his finger. He gets the stitches out tomorrow!

Here’s another only in Africa story. First off I’ll start by describing our bathroom situation. We have a grass mat that is about shoulder high that is attached to one of the millet stalk walls of our compound to make a round little area. Our toilet consists of a plastic crate flipped upside down with a whole cut out of the bottom and a toilet seat screwed to it. Inside of the plastic crate we put a bucket to hold all of our waste. Our second week of homestay Lindsay wasn’t feeling well so we went into Melissa’s a little early and completely forgot about disposing of our waste. To dispose of our waste, we borrow our dad’s shovel and dig a whole then dump our bucket into the whole and cover it up then, we pr*y that no animals or children get curious and try to dig it up. However this particular week we forgot to dump it and while we were away it rained…A LOT! The fields really needed, but it filled our bucket up so high we couldn’t carry it without running the risk of spilling it, and that wasn’t a risk we were willing to take at the time. So, we kept using our bathroom while we tried to figure out what to do. One morning, after we had put our cots away I went to use the restroom only to find that a baby chick had gotten a little too close to our bucket and had fallen in and drowned. Lindsay and I had no idea what to do. We finally told Melissa the whole story and she recommended that we just dig a whole right in front of our bucket and just tip it over that way, so that’s what we did. We still did not know how to explain to our family that we had killed one of their baby chicks in our waste in our limited language so we just overlooked that small detail and we are pr*ying they don’t ask about it. Needless to say we never forgot to dump our waste again.

Oh and I can’t forget to mention the children. They have been such a blessing. They are so precious. The run and jump and play just like every kid in the states. They are what have kept us sane the last month (well the kids and coca cola on the weekends). Each child has a very unique personality and it’s been fun getting to know each child and how to love each one in their own special way. Some kids like their picture taken, others like raisins, and still others love to be chased and hugged. Lindsay has even taught them how to give high fives and we’ve taught them to say “it’s all good.” I have completely fallen in love with our family and Africa. At the beginning of our trip I never thought I’d be able to say that I’m in love with Africa, but the thought of leaving makes my eyes tear up.

Well I have so much more I’d like to say, but this is getting quite long. This truly has been the most difficult and challenging month of my life, but looking back it has also been one of the most rewarding months of my life. When we began our homestay I was very upset at every past ICS major because I felt that no one had told us how truly hard it was going to be, but as we are now at the end of our homestay I understand why. It was difficult, it completely changed our definition of what hard is, but we survived and if given the opportunity I would do it all again (I would however pack more food, but that’s minor). There is no possible way I could have ever done it on my own. On more than one occasion I wanted to quit and get a plane ticket home and I knew if I got on a plane back Linds would be in the seat next to me. But I’m so thankful I didn’t, but it’s only through His power and His strength. I am an extremely weak person. I don’t like to get dirty, I don’t like to sweat, I don’t like to eat with my hands, I hate bugs, I’m a picky eater and I don’t like blood. But through my weakness He is made strong. If I was naturally strong and brave I wouldn’t see the need for the Father, but the fact that I am by nature a very weak creature (as my high school cheerleading coach would say I’m a “delicate flower”), His power and strength through this whole experience is undeniable. As it gets harder, He shines brighter.

Corn Meal Jello...Gag!

Well the past week has been pretty crazy.

Last Sunday we went to the Father’s House with Harona, Emily’s guard. It was an African service. It was a lot of fun. They sang some songs we knew, but most were ones that we had never heard. The clapped and danced to almost every song. One on their songs was sung by four men, including Harona, and they all danced in a circle while they sang and clapped enthusiastically! It was quite wonderful. The message was delivered in many different languages. The leader spoke in two languages and then there were two different groups of people getting the message translated to them. It was all about the Son’s love. The leader made many good points. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We had a “baby bush stay” on Tuesday and Wednesday. Lindsay and I stayed with the family of a Fulani man named Ibrahim. He works as one of the guards for the Samaritan’s Purse. They had a really nice house. Matter of fact they had to really nice houses. In his compound there were two big concrete houses. All of the day’s activities are done outside in the compound. The day began by fixing lunch. Fatima, Ibrahim’s wife, cooked over a small wood fire. She prepared rice and beans for us. We all ate out of a common dish; they used their hands but insisted we use spoons.

After lunch they washed the dishes and Fatima’s mother came over to get her hair braided. As it turns out Fatima’s daughter is amazing at putting in braids (or treces in Hausa). She was also really fast. Then Fatima noticed that the bottoms of our feet were white so she offered to put henna (or liela in Hausa) on the bottom of our feet. Lindsay and I agreed to this. Little did we know that the whole process of henna in Africa was a lot different from henna in the States. She put this green paste on our feet then wrapped our feet in plastic bags and socks. It was really hot outside anyways and then when you add the plastic bags and socks on top of it, it was almost unbearable. Sweat began to pour off of us. We were sitting on a twin sized bed out in the yard under some trees. Our new friends then instructed us just to take a nap until it was done. Sleeping in this condition proved to be a bit more challenging than we first expected. There were a zillion flies everywhere! We were extremely hot and every time a small spot of sun came through the leaves of the trees above us they would make us get up, move and then lay back down. After a few hours they finally let us take the bags off of our feet, only to find out there was another layer that had to go on that required us to put the bags on our feet again. Altogether we probably had bags and socks on our feet for about 6 hours.

While we were lying around with our feet in bags we were able to watch Ibrahim kill a chicken. I’ve never seen someone kill something and then have to eat it for dinner. Dinner was surprisingly good. The made Lindsay and I eat with Ibrahim by ourselves. We had plain noodles, a boiled egg, probably over half the chicken that was cooked in some really good sauce, and then this corn meal jelloy stuff. The noodles and chicken was delicious! The corn meal jello was a bit harder to swallow. Lindsay couldn’t swallow hers at all so I ate hers too and it was really hard not to gag. We ate some of the chicken but not all of it because we knew that often people give their guests the best they have and it leaves very little for the women and children. Lindsay and I had way more than half of the entire chicken, that couldn’t have left very much for anyone else. So we ate a little less than half of chicken. Fatima came to get our dishes and saw that we had not eaten all of our chicken and she was a bit upset. She left the chicken and noodles and took everything else. She washed our dishes and then brought them back to us and told us we were not allowed to go to bed until we had eaten all of the chicken. Lindsay and I tried to explain that we were full (and this was the truth we had eaten a good deal of noodles and sauce) but she would not hear it and held her ground that we must eat all of the chicken that was given to us. After a small argument Lindsay and I caved and ate the chicken and were allowed to go to bed.

Lindsay and I slept on the porch on a queen sized mattress with a mosquito net over us. The mosquito net blocked the wind which was basically nonexistent to begin with. It was really hot that night and we barely slept at all. Then around 3 or 4am the loudest rooster in the world woke up. I guess the rooster then woke up the obnoxious sheep that “baas” louder than anything I’ve ever heard! I’ve never wanted to kill anything so bad in my life. Finally morning came and we got out of bed. We took a quick bucket shower and prepare for breakfast. Lindsay and I were put inside to eat breakfast by ourselves. There were two covered dishes, two plates and two spoons on a small table facing the corner. Lindsay and I sat down and uncovered the dishes only to find that one of the dishes was the leftover corn meal jello from the night before! I’ve never been more thankful to eat alone. Lindsay and I decided that neither one of us could bare to eat anymore of the jello so we found a ziplock bag in one of our bags and filled it up with enough of the corn meal stuff to make it look like we at least ate a little bit of it. The other dish was full of these little pancake-like circles that were made out of beans. They were really oily and instead of having sugar like the farimasas, they had tonka which is this really spicy, salty seasoning. We haven’t quite adjusted to the idea of hot and spicy things in the morning so we ate a couple of those and put a few in the bag with the corn meal jello. When Fatima came in to see what we had eaten she was pleased and took our plates happily. Unfortunately when we put our little doggy bag in Lindsay’s backpack it attracted ants! So we had to wash it when we got back to Emily’s house.

We then hung out and played cards and watched the daughter braid more hair that afternoon. When we got back to Emily’s house I had a new appreciation for common languages and electricity. Our baby bush stay was a lot harder than I had ever anticipated. We only knew a handful of words in Fulfulde and Ibrahim was the only one that spoke Fulfulde. Fatima and her children all spoke French and Hausa and we spent most of our time with them because Ibrahim had to work. I really was questioning why in the world I felt the Father had called us out into the middle of nowhere. I cried a good deal when we got back. I decided I didn’t have what it takes to live here. Then the Father reminded me that in my weakness He is strong. And then I realize my conclusion was completely right. On my own I did not have what it takes to make it here, but the good news is I don’t have to do it on my own. In the States I could be independent. I had my own car, my own income, I was going to school, and everything was on my own strength. I have discovered that that is one of the reasons that the Father called me here, so that I would depend on His strength, not my own.

Ok! Well, enough about our baby bush stay. We graduated orientation yesterday and we got kicked out of Emily’s house and now we are staying at the guesthouse. We also got our phone for graduation! We can officially be connected with the rest of the country! It’s surprising how many people own cell phones around here. They may not have electricity or running water, but oh buddy they all have a working cell phone. It’s been quite an entertaining trip.

We also had our first day of language learning yesterday. It was a bit overwhelming. We learning how to greet, do introductions, and all of the numbers in Fulfulde and we also learned Hausa numbers too. That was all in a three hour session. They make a lot of sounds that we’ve never heard. It’s hard for us to make the different sounds because we don’t understand where the noises come from in your mouth. But we are working on it and the little bit of time we spent on how to learn language in class is actually paying off. We have the phonetic charts which help us to repeat the sounds over and over until we can mimic them. After our bush stay we realized how incredibly important language learning is!

Ok so another funny story! Lindsay and I went to take a taxi this morning to Emily’s house. We got in the taxi and told them that we wanted to go to the electric company near Emily’s house. Apparently there are many electric companies in Niamey, so we ended up at some other electric company on the opposite side of the town and our taxi driver didn’t understand English and we haven’t learned enough language to communicate very well yet. So, we paid the man and got out of the taxi. Then we had to find us a new taxi to take us to the other electric company. We found on pretty quickly. It seems that many of the taxi drivers enjoy taking the “anasaras” (white people). Many times they will kick someone else out of the taxi and take us instead. The taxi that picked us up already had two people in it and ended up giving us a wonderful tour of the backstreets of Niamay. So the trip that would have taken us about 20 minutes to walk ended up taking us about 45 minutes in a taxi, but Praise the Father we made it just in time.

Oh and to update everyone on my health…I’m doing much better. It turns out I had a bacterial infection in my stomach. I took some medicine for five days and everything in normal again. I am so thankful for that! Thank you for all of your pr*yers.

This may be our last update for awhile. We leave for our bush stay on July 3rd. Please continue to pr*y! If it’s anything like our baby bush stay…we are going to have a lot of stories when we get done!

Love ya!

Krispy Kreme's Got Nothin' On Us!

Hello All!

So we have survived a week in Niamey! So far things have been quite interesting.
The food has been pretty great! Linds and I learned how to make spaghetti from scratch and a whole bunch of other yummy things too. We even had fajita’s last night! Oh yeah and we discover farimasas! They are these donut like things that are covered in sugar that we can buy from this lady at the corner. There is no way these things can be healthy, but they give Krispy Kreme’s a run for their money!

We’ve also learned how to do all sorts of new exciting things. For example, we’ve learned to go to the bathroom in a squatty potty and carry water on our head. We’ve also learned how to bargain with people at the market and catch a taxi. These have been our small victories for the past week. The first time I yelled our destination at a taxi and they stopped and let us in I was so excited!

We’ve learned how to go to the market all by ourselves. We tried out our new skills on Friday with a game. Linds, Crystal, Amanda and I were all given a 1000 cfa’s (which is roughly $2) and we were sent to the market by ourselves to see what we could get for a 1000 cfa. So we have all become quite good at getting a taxi! I was quite impressed. Our language is extremely limited but we are learning how to make each word count! So we went to this little convenience store thing called shatto un. Unfortunately it was closed. We then decided to walk around a bit and see what we could find. We were then bombarded by a zillion people trying to see us all sorts of ridiculous things. They had everything from bikes made of wire to silver earrings. They wanted 4000 cfa for their items and I made the mistake of telling them that we only had 1000. So I accidentally bargained with one man that had silver earrings and I had to buy them. Emily says that I actually got a really good deal, but I was a little bummed about it for awhile. I really do like the earrings though.

So, we’ve encountered all sorts of language barriers. We are still in the capital city for orientation and no one really speaks the language we need to learn. On July 3 we are moving way out into the bush of Africa. So, it’s been difficult trying to find people to speak Fulfulde with. A guard from the Samaritan’s Purse, a man named Ibraham, was supposed to help Lindsay and I yesterday. We walked to meet him, but he was not there. So then Emily, our supervisor, took us to visit a Fulani friend of hers who is in the hospital. We were able to listen to their conversation for a while. Then Emily took us to where some Fulani women were selling milk at the market. With our limited vocabulary we said hello and told them that we were learning Fulfulde. They seemed friendly to begin with, but they though we wanted to buy milk. Then a bunch of men came to try to figure out what we were saying then we were able to communicate to them that we only knew English (they were speaking French). They then began to yell through the market to find someone who spoke English. This was extremely embarrassing and stressful! But finally this really sweet African woman came and said “Friends, friends! How can I help you?” She was such a blessing. We explained to her that we just wanted to sit with the women to try and better understand Fulfulde. She told us that what we were trying to do was very difficult because the women don’t speak Fulfulde to the customers, they only spoke it to one another and they were not speaking to each other. Linds and I decided to try again. Unfortunately they began shaking their fingers at us and shooing us away. We then hopped in a taxi and went home. We learned a lot from this experience. Language learning was going to be a whole lot harder than we expected. We also learned that the Fulani as a people group are very private and if you have not been introduced by someone they already accept, life would be very difficult. Good news is that when we go to the village Melissa will introduce us to everyone she knows, so we’ll have a bit of a head start in that area.

As for me personally…I haven’t been feeling the greatest. I’ve been sick for a few days and we aren’t completely sure what’s wrong. We have an idea so we are trying to adapt my diet to make it better. But, good news is that today I’m feeling a bit better.

Something else that is significant is that we all dream a lot! Every time we fall asleep for two seconds many of us have vivid dreams. We’ve been told it’s because the spirit world is just more active here. It’s definitely a strong hold area. This has made us much more vocal with the Father.

Well if you want to know more or see some pictures look at Lindsay’s blog. I haven’t been taking many pictures, but I promise to work on that :) Please continue to pr*y for us.

Love and miss you all!

Noise in the Bushes!!!

Hello all!

Here we are in West Africa! We've been here for 2 days. It's quite wonderful. We are most definitely the minority. Very few people speak English here. We are going to start our language study soon. We are in orientation for the next 2 weeks. We will head out to the bush soon after that.

The people here are quite wonderful. It's amazing the amount you can understand without knowing any language. I think we often underestimate the power of body language and tone of voice. The laugh and joke a lot. The laugh at us a lot! But it's all good...because we laugh at us too.

We were able to tour the city yesterday with a national and it was a very eye-opening experience. We have all already been proposed to many times. Crystal and I also were able to attend part of a wedding. We sat with the men because the national we were with was the only one who spoke English. It was interesting. We ate our meal out of a giant dish with our hands. We ate rice and sauce. The sauce was a mixture of squash, onions, tomatoes and other veggies with a little bit of meat in it. It was difficult to eat with our hands because it was really hot! I threw rice all over myself and the floor, but everyone just laughed.

As for the noise in the bushes...there a lizzards everywhere! The are probably 6-10 inches long and run everywhere. I'm getting used to them, but when the run through the bushes the make a lot of noise and I jump a lot. It's scary because I'm really scared of snakes and when they are in the bushes you can't see them, you just hear noise.


Well I had better go for now. I'll have internet all day on Saturday, so I'll try to update more then. Until then I love and miss all of you!

Peace,
Krissy