missions night at calvary chapel bend

this next sunday night i’ll be having the opportunity to share with the church about my trip to africa…

since i’ve been home i’ve had plenty of people ask me about my trip. “how was it?” “are you ready to go back?” “tell me about your trip.” honestly, i’ve had a difficult time sharing with people that ask. i need to hold back so i don’t overwhelm them with details and information. there is so much that happened and so many experiences i encountered, what do i share? where do i start? there are so many highlights, which ones do i talk about? it would be easy to sit down for an hour or two and talk about what happened, but i haven’t had the chance to do that with anyone yet. it’s usually just 5 minutes in passing that i get to share.

so i’m looking forward to being able to share with the church body this next sunday night in more detail.

breakfast with the president (and more pictures)

i’d rather have breakfast with this president any day…

no, i’m not getting into political blogging, though that would probably be a sure-fire way to increase the traffic to my blog. and no, i don’t have anything against our current president. but this morning i got to enjoy breakfast with the president of the assemblies of god churches in burkina faso. funny, last night i had a dream i took a last minute trip to burkina to see all of my friends over there. but instead, i woke up in bend oregon. i’m not complaining, though. i’m not quite ready to be away from my family again. in fact, i never look forward to being away from them.

first video

it’s taken me longer than i had hoped, but here is the first video from africa…

to give a short description of what is going on here, we are visiting a local bible college where future pastors will study for three years before becoming pastors. they bring their wives and children to the school and each family lives in an eight foot by eight foot ‘cell.’ what a sacrifice they make in order to become pastors.

this video was taken at the beginning of the chapel service for the day, and since we were visiting, they sang us the ‘welcome song.’ i never did ask what they were singing, but i’m sure it was great. enjoy this one, and there will be more coming soon.

home

it’s been a few days of adjusting up to this point…

i got home on tuesday night and its now friday morning, so i apologize for keeping everyone in suspense. i hit the ground in the u.s. running, so i haven’t had much of a chance to make another post to let everyone know i arrived home safely.

i had a wonderful homecoming, with my wife and kids welcoming me home. my two older kids latched onto my legs and hung there for a bit. what a joy. my youngest just sat in the stroller and smiled with a big cheeky smile. she’s only 8 months, so i wasn’t expecting much from her. it’s amazing how quickly kids grow. i was gone two weeks, and all my kids grew considerably while i was gone.

so there has been some adjustments to being back in the states as well. the first thing i saw as my plane was getting ready to touch down in redmond was a crew cab diesel truck. haven’t seen a full-sized truck in a while. wednesday morning when i got dressed i put on jeans and tennis shoes. haven’t worn clothes like this in a while. first night home the temperature was down in the teens. haven’t felt cold like that in a while. first meal i had when i got back was a salad with chicken on it. haven’t been able to enjoy a good salad in a while. but these are all things that don’t matter much. i think the greater adjustment has been remembering my friends in africa and how little they have, then looking around here and seeing how much i have.

in america i think we all know deep down that “stuff” doesn’t make us happy, but we sure give it a fair try, don’t we? cars, houses, recreational toys, clothes, food. we have so much. yet the majority of the people i see here in the states aren’t nearly as happy as those i met in africa.

well, i guess that’s all for this post. short and sweet. just wanted to let everyone know that i’m back and i’m getting back into the swing of things, though i think i’m swinging a little differently now. keep checking back because i plan on uploading some more pictures and also some video clips i shot while over there. hopefully they’ll be up early next week.

Wend na songe – God bless you.

final day

tonight we depart for home…

well, i figured it was time to post once again. this will be my last post from burkina faso. we depart tonight around 11 pm. so i write this post joyfully, yet a little sad. i’m joyful because i know i’ll soon be back with my wife and kids whom i miss dearly, but i’m a little sad because i’ve enjoyed my time over here so much and met some great new friends. i’ve also had many great experiences. i can’t even hope to summarize them all on this blog.

i know when i get home i will be asked by many people about the trip and how it has affected me. “how much time do you have to listen” will have to be my response. in fact, i don’t think i can even put into words everything that i have experienced and that has affected me. instead, i think a lot of the lessons learned and situations experienced will have to be observed by others in my life. i do believe this trip has changed me in some ways, but not all the ways i expected.

protests

what’s a trip to africa without a little excitement…

since i have many family and friends reading this, i’ll start out by saying we are all okay. but yes, there is protesting taking place in ougadougou today. last week in po there were protests because of the high gas prices. apparently, they asked permission to protest in ouagadougou and were denied, but decided to protest anyways. we came back to the compound for lunch and won’t be going anywhere for the rest of the day. in fact, it was quite a feat just to get back home, weaving through burning tires and people on the verge of rioting.

when we left the compound this morning things were pretty normal, except for many of the shops being closed down and a little less traffic. we knew there was a chance of protests, but when we left the compound this morning it seemed that there weren’t going to be any. we were wrong.

it’s a new bible!

no, that’s not the heresy were teaching at the wenpanga center…

actually, that is a statement one of the pastors in attendance made the other day. studying and teaching the bible verse-by-verse has had such an impact on him in the last week he is now looking at the bible in a whole new way! isn’t that awesome? the Lord is so good to us.

back at the wc (wenpanga center)

below is an excerpt from my journal…

we had a great day yesterday (sunday). we split up and went to four different churches. i went to marcel’s church and was able to teach. i had a great time. the service started at 9am and ended at noon, but nobody was restless and stirring. there is even a section just for the kids and they were very well behaved – for a 3 hour service!!!

first week complete

we’ve made it through the first week of teaching…

what a great week. we’ve been teaching three 2-hour sessions each day, alternating old testament and new testament days. in some respects the week has gone by really quickly, but in other ways i feel as if i’ve been here for a month.

mooré rap

and you thought rap was just for the ghetto…

no kidding, at the beginning of the conference they called this old pastor up and he rapped for us. they actually refer to him as the mooré rapper. i would like to upload the video, but the connection is slow and the page is in french. i’m learning a little bit of french, but its way too late to start trying to upload the video. when i get home though, for sure.

we had a great day at the wenpanga center. shay and john started their teaching today, each one taking one of the epistles to timothy. i’ll start tomorrow afternoon at 3pm ouaga time. by then all the pastors will have eaten and we’ll be enjoying 100 degree weather, which means i’ll have the job of keeping everyone awake.