Uncensored

A month or two before I moved to Burkina Faso, during one of my morning prayer times in D.C., I heard the Lord give me a word.

One word. Very specific. Very clear.

I didn't share the word with anyone at first, and then over the phone I told it to my mom. This word excited me, because it held unlimited possibility. I thought about the word and dreamed about how God might want to use it through my life during my time in Africa.

But, even though this word was still very abstract and had yet to take on real form because I hadn't yet moved here...the word was clear, as was the challenge that came with it.....

Uncensored.

I try to describe it, and add things to it, to expand upon what this word means for me and will mean for me....but there is nothing else to add. God's word is perfect. God's Word is perfect. It stands alone.

Uncensored.

I don't know in all the ways that God wants to use that word in my life. I get little flashes of this at times, but nothing whole. I will be riding in the car, and all of a sudden I will hear the Lord say, "see that! right there! UNCENSORED."

Or as I'm walking, again He will whisper, "Look, uncensored."

Or in our home, "uncensored."

Or in my heart, He tells me, "this right here, what you're feeling, uncensored."

I have been bucking this word though lately. I have been hearing Him encouraging me to be "uncensored" in a particular area, but it is hard. God rarely challenges us with the easy. But He knows me, and He knows what I need, and what others need, and somehow He merges those two together. For His glory.

So, with His grace and strength I hope to begin to be obedient to live out this word.
In whatever way it is going to look like.
In whatever way He challenges me to use it.

So that is my word. My one word challenge that God gave me even when I didn't ask for it. With a plan and a purpose in mind, even while it is still abstract to me, it's not to God, because He has a vision and a course for my time here in Africa. And I know that part of it has to do with this word.....

uncensored.

SIAO is here!!

Before we moved to Burkina Faso one of the things we were greatly looking forward to doing was going to SIAO (Le Salon International de L Artisanat de Ouagadougou) in October. SIAO is one of the largest and most important art trade shows on the African continent held every other year. And it takes place in the city that we live in.....what are the odds?! So awesome!

Vendors come from all over the continent for ten days to sell their art and it is a huge boost for the economy in this very struggling country. 

You can pay for two different admittance. One ticket will get you into the "air conditioned" buildings, and the other ticket will let you walk through the artisans set up outside.

It really is just like an American fair, like Arts in the Heart of Augusta that we would go to in GA every year. Or any other one in any other city in the states. There is food, and vendors, and music, and people. The only difference is that they are all African here. Selling African food and African art with African music. Otherwise completely the same. :~)

So we set out yesterday to experience the grandness that is this fair, leaving the kids at a friends house and headed out with a group of friends to shop for a few hours.

 

Isaak enjoying some refreshment. It's called Fandango. And it comes in a bag. So gross. The ingredients are literally water. And sugar. It's like adding a pixy stick to water and drinking it. But dude they are so cheap, about $.25, and in 100 degrees even cold sugar water is refreshing (except for me, I did not drink that. I have no desire of becoming a diabetic).

Our group stopping to drink some freshly squeezed pineapple juice. The thing with glass bottles on this continent, is that regardless of whether you buy a drink in a glass bottle, you can not just walk away and keep that bottle. You must drink it there and give it back. Your money only covers the cost of the fluid actually inside. Because they reuse your glass bottle for the next customer. Everything is recycled here!

Me and a gal from Ghana. We stopped by her booth to buy some clothes. I picked up a really cute skirt and dress and Isaak got two shirts (one of them seen here, so very African of him!) Obviously there are no dressing rooms to try on the clothes so they just took the dress I was looking at and all of a sudden my arms were in the air and two ladies were pulling that thing down over my head on top of my clothes! Ha ha! She was so tickled that we bought clothes from her she asked for a picture.

Some of the stuff was....very different. A very wide range of styles, as seen in the chairs with the people feet. African's like some different stuff. I, personally, would not buy a chair with weird people legs, but hey, kudos on creativity!

Most of the stuff was really cool though. Tons of masks, and sculptures, and jewelry, fabrics and clothes, art work, all kinds of nick knacks, baskets, and furniture. I picked up some kid sized purse/backpacks from Madagascar, a change purse from Togo, some Touareg earrings from Mali, and some clothes from Ghana. Shopping success!

We stayed for three hours and only saw half of what was there. By the time we left the concerts were starting and a lot more people were starting to come in. It'd be fun to go back in the evening and experience it then...but at this point, I just want to go back again! Love that one of the first things we learned about this country after finding out we were moving here....we got to do! What a fun time.

Afro gone bad.

So I tried to give myself an afro.

This afro, specifically. I was motivated to turn my white-girl hair into this awesome spiral mess for the embassy's Halloween party tonight. Gosh, I love her hair. I dream of having hair this big.

So before I left DC I asked the African American gal who was cutting Sydaleigh's hair if she could give me advice on how to give myself an afro. She kinda squinted her eyebrows together and looked at me like, "You do know you're white, right?"  To which I was like, "Oh am I? Sometimes I forget." :~)

Anyways, she told me that I could find these styrofoam thingy's at most beauty stores to wrap my hair in overnight and by morning it would be all spirally and to tease it out and voila....afro.

Well, I never got around to buying those styrofoam things she told me about, so I had to improvise.

I took about fifty strands of hair and braided each piece really tightly up to the scalp, and then wrapped each piece around a bobby pin and tucked the end through it. Same concept. Way less comfortable for sleeping purposes.

Ummm, to say that I looked ridiculous would be the understatement of the century. It looked like I had worms coming out of my head. Not my best look. :~)

By morning I couldn't take the bobby pins poking me anymore so I took them out and started the process of unearthing my hairdo. This is without the bobby pins before I took the braids out. Still looks like I got worms. Not my best look. :~)

An hour later though, with the help of Isaak we undid all those braids to reveal...

hair like this. It was the biggest scariest puffiest hair I've ever had. Shoulda taken a picture of it then. It was awesome. For the moments that I had it...it was awesome. I lost a crap load of hair in the process, but it was totally worth it.

And then we went to the Halloween party and after five minutes......FIVE MINUTES of being outside in the humidity.....

THIS happened.

It just went, kurplunk. And that is what I walked around looking like all night. Half my head was tightly spun, the other half lay flat and frizzy.

Definitely not my best look.
Definitely not.

I was going for 70's disco era, but it just kinda looked like a bad 80's perm job.

Definitely afro gone bad.

Next time it will be better...... :~) Oh, there will for sure be a next time. I will have an awesome afro. I.will.

Sydaleigh's habitat

A little over a week ago Sydaleigh brought home a clear pink topped box that said "Habitat" on it and directions to catch something and keep it alive for two weeks. She had to do research on what she caught and learn what it needed to eat and the different aspects in their natural habitat and to try to recreate that environment.

Sydaleigh had her heart set on catching a lizard. So, her and Isaak set out one Saturday to catch a lizard. Two hours later....do you think they caught one? Nope! So, Isaak being the great dad that he is and not wanting to disappoint his daughter paid some kids to catch one for him!

And that is how "Slip" came to our home.

Sydaleigh decided that it is a girl, and she shall be called "Slip".  Everyday she had to look for food for Slip, and when I say "she had to look for food" I mean....she looks around for a minute, points out a centipede or fly, and I take the net and catch it and feed it to Slip. 

The habitat was going well for the first week. At least it appeared to be. We watered Slip and gave her fresh leaves and insects daily, but we started noticing that no matter what we fed her, she wouldn't eat it.

And then this afternoon when we went out to check on her, I noticed that she was, dead. Well, appeared to be at first. We took her out and put her in the grass because she was definitely dying but we thought if we put her back outside it would give her one last fighting chance. No such luck. She crawled under a small nearby tree and closed her eyes forever. Marvelly was really really upset. Poor girl. She's a super sensitive kid. She took quite a liking to Slip.

I think Slip just lost the will to live. And totally starved herself which ultimately led to her death. Not eating will do that to ya. 

Dumb lizard. Now we gotta go find another "Slip" for Sydaleigh's habitat so her teacher doesn't find out we killed the last one. I will not have her grade affected because you couldn't stomach eating a freakin' fly.

Our crazy trip to Bobo.

We packed up the kids and drove with two other families and the wonderful Mr. Berry, our adopted African uncle, down to the southwest part of the country to the second largest city here called, Bobo Diolasso (but really just called Bobo).

The guys had some work meetings they had to attend on Monday but we all went down together from Sunday to Tuesday to get out of Ouaga and see a little more of this country we now call home.

What a three days it was. 

The drive alone is an adventure in itself. Driving the highways here, is, bumpy. It's one thing to drive through the dirt city streets covered in pot holes at 20 mph.

It's another thing to drive on a "highway" outside of the city. Isaak is very grateful for the defensive driving course he went to in DC. It's come in handy when you're swerving all over the road at 60mph trying to avoid not only potholes, but the oncoming vehicles that are also trying to avoid potholes on the other side of the street.

I knew this would spell disaster for Marvelly's car sickness tendency so I gave her some Dramamine and she had no problems at all! She slept almost the whole way there, which was about a 4.5 hour drive.

Despite the inevitable brain damage from the roads, we had a very nice drive. This was my first time driving through Burkina Faso, outside the city, and even though I brought my book to read, I found I couldn't pry my eyes off the window. It was just too beautiful. There was just to much to see and take in. Why would I want to miss that for a book I could read when I got home?

So I sat and watched the African world zoom by. 

We passed village after village. Men working in the fields. Women carrying baskets to and fro. People converging together under the shade of a nearby tree.

They are lands untouched by progress.

It was beautiful.

The hotel, on the other hand, left much to be desired. :~) When we arrived in Bobo we checked into our hotel to get unpacked. I'm not sure what we were thinking. I'm not sure what we all were expecting. I think the expectations were this though.....if we're staying at a 6 Star hotel, the most expensive hotel in the city, it's going to be nice. Not great perhaps, but certainly nice.

See, that's the trouble with expectations. You just shouldn't have them....ever. :~) 

*Note to self....stop having expectations.

This 6 Star hotel, the most expensive hotel in Bobo....is the equivalent to an hourly motel in the states. At first I was thinking maybe it was equivalent to a Motel-6....but no. Motel 6's are nicer. This would for sure be an hourly motel in the states. The kind that pimps and crackheads frequent. The kind that American's (including me not that long ago) would tip their noses up at and not be caught dead sleeping in.....because these are the motels in the news that you find dead people in!! Ha ha! Granted, the hourly motels aren't nice, but at least they have water.

Ours had no running water the whole time we were there. :~) Touché Burkina, touché.

Our room was actually one of the nicest out of the bunch too. Ours did not have roaches or a used condom on the night stand like our friends....so I was feeling pretty good!

The pool area wasn't half bad either. So long as you sat in a non rotted piece of lounge chair, and steered clear of the holes on the pool floor with sharp broken tiles....it was great. It even had a kid area where Marvelly could comfortably swim.

However, the no running water for three days was rough. Well, I take that back. At some point the water briefly came on at the exact time Isaak needed to take a shower. So fortuntely Isaak was able to bath one time while we were there. The rest of us had no such luck.

No shower.
No sink.
No toilets.

To say that it was stinky would be a drastic understatement.

When it's been 100 degrees outside and you have been walking and sweating profusely in a most unlady-like fashion for the majority of the day, you've gone and roamed the maze that is the Grand Market and been stepping in fish bones and eggs and all kinds of animal poo, had no soap to wash your hands because there is neither soap NOR water here, plus the fact that you haven't been able to flush your toilet in a while......yeah, that don't smell so good after three days.

Isaak had to open the windows while we slept because the smell of urine was making him nauseous. And that says a lot because he doesn't smell anything! (the hotel staff graciously placed a large water pail outside our door, but really, dumping water down the toilet really only pushes it down far enough that you can't see it anymore, you can still smell it though.)

I had to spit clean the girl's faces before bed, cringing every time I put my tongue to my hand wondering what exactly I was ingesting from my own unwashed skin.

Oh Burkina, though you are making me smell the rankest kind of rank....I love you yet.

It wasn't just our hotel that had no running water. It was city wide. Which I discovered when we went to eat at a nice restaurant Monday night and Marvelly had to go poo.

So I take her to the toilettes where I discovered that this restaurant also doesn't have running water so they too left a large pail of water outside the stall door for our use. The problem was this....I couldn't remember just how to flush the toilet using the pail of water.

Luckily Jean was close outside the door so I popped my head out and said, "Jean, get in here! Marvelly pooped and the toilet won't flush!" So she came in and told me that Sophie pooped in the other stall and she just left it because she couldn't flush it either! So now both stalls, the only ones in nice restaurant, contained our daughter's poo. Something needed to be done. 

A week ago when we had no running water at our house I remembered Isaak bringing in some water from the pool and saying it needed to be poured in the tank to flush it.

Okay. So Jean hauls in the large pail and we try to take off the lid to the tank. Except the dang thing is like glued on! Who the heck glues on a toilet tank lid! We could only shimmy it off about one inch and we looked at each other in that moment and said ...."maybe we can just pick up the pail and pour the water in the one inch space really slowly and really carefully."

This is one of those moments where I should have looked at my past history and said, "disaster is imminent, put down the pail and leave the poo as is. "

But I didn't.

So as Jean squeezed into the corner between the toilet and the wall holding up the large bucket of water, I stood neck to the toilet and wall on the other side holding back the toilet lid.

Okay, here's the thing.....when you are holding a large bucket containing several gallons of water and you have a one inch space to pour it in, chances are it's not gonna come out slowly.

Which it didn't.

It came out fast.

And it spilled all over the toilet, the floor, our shoes, and floor length dresses.

None of it made it into the tank to flush the poo away.

So now the bathroom not only still contained rank smellin' poo it was flooded with water. Nice. 

After we saw what we did, we looked at each other, laughed, and said, "let's get out of here!!"

And we bolted outta that bathroom before anyone could see that we were the culprits behind the flood. Though the fact that our shoes were sloshing and leaving behind wet foot prints may have given us away. 

Oh Burkina.....the things I go through for you.

Despite the...difficulties.....we had a good time. We all, kids included, got to spend the weekend with some dear friends. The kids found some fun ways to entertain themselves.......

we explored the city on foot, visiting the Grand Market and a Catholic Church.

We were all suppose to speak to a number of Burkinabé students about American culture, but none of them turned out to speak English (we were told they were all English speakers) so only Jean and Mike spoke, seen as they speak French pretty well. I had planned to talk to them about Motown music since I was born in Michigan and Motown came out of Detroit, but since I wasn't speaking, I got to hang out outside for a bit and race a bunch of Burkinabé kids who were hanging around doing races with Sydaleigh, Marvelly, Luke and Ben. We had the best time!

We went mask shopping. I'm not really into masks so I picked up a necklace and a tablecloth, and we found a shop run by these women who recycle black plastic bags and make everything from dolls, to purses and coaster, you name it. The girls each bought a little doll.

On the way out of town we stopped at a nice ice cream shop. Oh my gosh it had four ice cream flavors! We were so happy!! Most places have one or two, but they had four, FOUR....vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and banana. Happy day!

On the way home me and Isaak were talking about how in the states we'd be so upset if an ice cream shop only had four measly flavors. Most places you go there is at least ten. Baskin Robbins has 30. Even the self serve yogurt stores popping up on every corner have tons of flavors and toppings to pick from. Stepping back from my culture has taught me much about gratitude. Many times having "options" only leads to furthered dissatisfaction. I feel like Jesus is using this land of Burkina to slap the dissatisfaction right out of me. Teaching me to be content with two ice cream flavors. Shoot....to be happy when we can find a place that even serves ice cream! What a sweet treat. That ice cream was good down to the past drop...as Sophie and Marvelly demonstrated!

So that was our first trip through the frontier of Burkina to Bobo. That's what they call the outlying land here. I had been calling it "the bush", but in Burkina it is known as "the frontier".

I liked Bobo. It was smaller and less busy. You didn't have to worry about mowing down fifty people when you backed up in the car. People left you alone when you shopped (for the most part). In Ouaga they crowd and push and live in the chaos that comes with city life. Bobo was a little slower. A nice place to escape to when life in Ouaga gets to be too much.

However, next time I will know not to come expecting the hotels here to be the American equivalent. There is no American equivalent here. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world for a reason. Never in my life would I have looked at water in a hotel as a luxury!! Oh Burkina....I salute you for your continued ability to teach me how to live your way!

Gosh this place makes me smile. :~) No running water and all.

Jesus and Odette.

Lately when Odette comes to work she has been listening to music on her phone for part of the day. Yesterday she brought a small hand held radio.

She has been listening to music. And singing. And humming along.

If I am being honest, at first when she started listening to music it really bothered me. Silly. But everything is an adjustment here, especially having someone in my home three days a week for 9 hours a day. Someone that is a stranger, and does not speak my language.

And the first time she turned on her music I got really annoyed. I kept thinking, "this isn't her house, what is she doing? It's drowning out Marvelly's show! How rude!"

That sounds awful but it's true. My heart has not been pretty at times during this adjustment and I have to go to the cross daily, sometimes hourly, to empty myself and fill back up with Jesus.

But I recognize it. I know that this is new and hard and the only hope for me to walk this new life with grace is to walk it with Jesus.

So that is what I do. I walk with Him. And He whispers sweet encouragements to me and helps me to love and give and empty myself.

And I am seeing progress with my attitude towards Odette. Earlier in our arrival here I would dread the days that she would come, feeling awkward and out of place in my house. Not knowing how to act, or what to do, or how to interact with her.

But slowly, Jesus has begun to take those feelings and transform them. I no longer feel dread for her work days.

I look forward to them now.

I still feel awkward at times, but that is to be expected. Whenever she walks by the dining room in the mornings and sees me and Marvelly playing "people" with the silverware while we eat cereal....she's gotta wonder what the heck we are doing! And I don't blame her. :~) It's a very real possibility that she thinks we're completely weird....

But I am okay with that. Everyday I get more okay with that.

And I like it now when she listens to music. I like hearing what she listens to. It's just nice. It adds a wonderful new energy to the house. And a week or two ago as her phone sat on a chair in the hallway I heard it softly singing, "Hallelujah", and when Odette walked by she was softly singing it too.

"Haaaalleeeeeluuuuujah." 

"Praise Yahweh."

And she was. As she went about her work she was softly singing praises up to Jesus.

I can't really describe that moment. There was no translation needed.

That is one word that transcends every language.

Even "Jesus" is not spoken the same in different languages. In French it is Jésus (jayzoo), in Spanish the 'J' sounds like an 'h'. In Hebrew it is different yet.

But Hallelujah? It is the same.

And for the first time since I met Odette, I understood her perfectly.

But I didn't say anything. I'm pretty limited in what I can say right now. :~) So I tucked that moment away in my heart to see what else may come of it.

Yesterday when the girls got home from school I turned on their children's praise music as they painted. Odette was in the kitchen washing dishes and above the running water, I could hear her humming along to a song that was playing. She did not know the words in English, but she knew them still. Sydaleigh looked at me as she heard her too, and with eyes bright and big, she said, "Odette knows this song!"

Yes. She does.

She walked out of the kitchen still humming and I said in my broken french,

"Odette, tu connais cette song?" (I didn't know the word for song in French, so I just said 'song' and pointed to the ipod)?"  Translated....You know this song?)

She looks at me with a smile and says, "Oui." And off she walked to finish some other work.

Me and Sydaleigh looked at each other and I told her, "Odette knows your Jesus songs! How cool!"

Over the next thirty minutes as we sat and painted at the table listening to praise music Odette would hum to the songs she recognized, like, "Go Tell It On the Mountain" "Amen" "God is So Good".

And we would sit and smile and sing along and get excited for every song we heard her humming knowing that she must know and love Jesus like us.

As she got ready to leave for the day I heard the Lord encouraging me to ask her....and tell her. Even though I already knew the answer, He kept prodding me nonetheless to, "Ask her, and tell her. Don't let the opportunity pass."

I was suddenly nervous. It's crazy how fast I got uncomfortable and nervous at the idea of "point blank" asking her. My French is so broken. Communicating does not come easily. But I knew the basic words to say. If I could just muster up the courage to say them. If I could muster up the courage to be obedient to the Lord's simple request....

...so as I was standing in the kitchen as Odette prepared to leave I said, "Odette, tu amour Jésus?"

To which she again replied with a smile and a "Oui," and a hand on her heart.

I said with a smile, "Moi aussi." She smiled back big and nodded her head, understanding.


And there it was. In seven small words we shared our mutual faith in Jesus.

It was nothing fancy. There was no testimony or fan fare. It was simple and bare bones and stripped of everything but Jesus.

Just seven small words. And in that short exchange there was a greater depth of knowing each other than our past two months of effort.

And to think it all started with Odette's music.

In our shortcomings to communicate with each other the Lord in His faithfulness used music to provide a means to communicate a greater depth of understanding between us.

Since moving here I have been daily stripped away of so much. A little bit at a time He just continues to shed off everything I thought I knew about myself and life and Him. I wake up and feel naked and exposed and vulnerable. I try to cover up with the familiar but there is very little that is familiar left to cling to. And in it's wake He is teaching me new familiars. New truths. New ways to live. New ways to love. New ways to communicate. New ways to worship.

It's very humbling to be stripped down by the Lord. To be stripped of everything that you know and is familiar. Many days I feel like I am having to learn how to live all over again.

But He is faithful. He is rebuilding me. Of everything He digs up in my life He is planting something new. I wake up daily and present to Him my meager offering and He takes what little I have to offer and multiplies it.

The Lord doesn't need much to accomplish something significant. He showed me this again on Monday. He took my meager offering and created a beautiful exchange from it. He took a few children's songs, seven words and an obedient heart....to show us that we are both daughter's of the King.

 "It is good to praise the Lord and make music to your name, O Most High, proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night." Psalm 92:1-2

12 years married.

Saturday night me and Isaak sneaked away for a date night to celebrate twelve years married. It's the first time away we've had with just the two of us since moving here and we were very happy for a couple hours just for ourselves! Although, after being married twelve years, we've learned to go with the flow. We are at ease with where our life is and recognize that alone time doesn't happen frequently right now. So we treasure the time we do get and have learned to find moments to connect amongst the chaos.

On the recommendation from friends we went to a restaurant called Gondwanas. Every room has a different theme and this is the room we were seated.

Not sure what the "theme" is, but the floor was covered in sand....so I'm going with "Deserty".

The food was absolutely amazing!! The best restaurant we've eaten at so far. Isaak got their food challenge item of sorts, it was four or five burgers stacked on top of each other, and you have to eat every last bite....says everyone who has eaten it. I think Isaak would have called it quits after the first two patties had the thing not tasted so good....and the fact that we had a group of friends in the corner peeking over to monitor his progress. AND, there was an older gal from my bible study sitting across from us who came over when she saw what Isaak ordered and conveniently mentioned that she also ate it all. Naturally after that he ate every bit of that monster burger. Poor guy, his body is not used to eating so much food anymore! Ha ha! He would not be put to shame.

I had the capitaine brushette. I normally get capitaine when we go out so I can get my fish fill. In Francophone African countries they call this fish capitaine, but it is really the Nile perch. Oh my gosh it is SO good. Best capitaine I've had yet! My mouth was so happy! 

Fun night. That morning I got the idea to write out a list of questions to talk with Isaak about over dinner. Questions about our last year together and the upcoming year of marriage. Honest questions like, "what changes would you like to see in my this next year?" "What is one area of our marriage you would like to see us improve on this year?" "What is one new thing you'd like to learn this year?" "name one high and one low from this past year." It was nice. We rarely get dinner dates just us, without kids present or other friends being there, but when we do we often just shoot the breeze. Talk about whatever. Silly stuff. Life is so busy and it's so easy to "miss" each other and not really talk about meaningful things. This gave the conversation over dinner some extra depth and insight and that's always a good thing. :~) After twelve years together we still need a lot of that. I think I'm going to make this a tradition and do this every year. As a way to look back and reflect on the past year we spent together, ask real questions, and get excited about the next year together.

So, twelve years and counting. This past year was a crazy ride....no tellin' what the next one has in store! But, glad that Isaak will be there walking through it with me.

We visited a farm.

This is Pastor Jaque. He runs a farm way out on the outskirts of town. A farm I had the pleasure of visiting with Marvelly and a few other families on Friday.

My friend Heidi with Go To Nations works with Pastor Jaque to help train Christian Burkinabe men in children's ministry. And together they set up a field trip for a few kids at his farm for the afternoon.

But this is not just a farm. It is also a school of sorts where men come to learn about Jesus and are discipled in God's word. And they learn to farm. The course runs for a length of time and after which they are sent out to start a church and start a small farm to help sustain the needs of them and the congregation. The Burkinabe men in the back of the classroom are three out of the twenty two students who learn here.

The buildings on this farm are not what you would see in the states, but the animals are no different.

They have a large building to house the chickens.

Cows. There isn't much grass so they just graze in the dirt. :~)

There were goats. And that little guy was the life of the party right there! He didn't like us much at first but after a while of being manhandled by a bunch of kids he warmed up.

There were a few very cute, but very smelly pigs. 100 degree weather has a way of making everything smell that much worse.

That little baby was adorable.

Speaking of little baby.... :~) This guy followed us around quite a bit. He sure is gorgeous.

His mom works on the farm (she's the gal pushing the wheel-barrel) so he just hangs out and meanders while she works. In my watching I'm finding that this is very typical. In the states we would have child welfare services bangin' down our door if we left our kids to fend for themselves while we worked. But most people, especially women here, have no other options. They can't afford school, and this little guy is too young to attend anyways, and the mothers have to work somehow to earn a living, so the kids are often left unattended.

The little guy wrapped to his mothers back is still too young to walk so she carries him with her all day long while she works. You see this everywhere. Babies swaddled to their mother's backs....while they work, or zoom down the road on a moto. It fascinates me how strong these women are. You've got to be pretty hard core to do manual labor on a farm all day in 100 degrees with a baby swaddled to your back.

They waste absolutely nothing here. We learned that every piece of poo from the animals is collected and put in this cylinder hole where it sits for two weeks or so and ( I think) water, or something, is put on top of it and the gases from the poop are slowly released and fed through a tube that goes into this device in the ground where they collect it and use it for electricity for the farm, cooking, all sorts of stuff. I'm not poo power savy so I don't know all the technicalities around this, but it's still so cool.

We went for a hike in the bush to see their beehives. They have bee houses all over the property in trees and around them where the bees come to make the honey. This is one of them. They have to be careful to always leave some honey behind because if they removed it all the bees would not come back.

And this is some of the honey from the beehive that they sent us home with!

 

Honored to have been able to meet Pastor Jaque and see all that he is doing for the Lord. He is very passionate about serving Christ and raising up other men to do the same. It's men like him and those four awesome gals below who are helping to bring Jesus to this nation. I love seeing and learning about all the ways God is using people here, a country I didn't even know existed 13 months ago. I love how God sees and desires to bring His life to all His people and there is not a single corner of this earth that has escaped His attention.  Even way over here in a little land locked country that most people have never even heard of....God is busy spreading His light. It's very inspiring. Great day. :~)

(Ruby, Heidi, me, Nicole, Anne )