So Burkina Faso eats computers. And indeed, my computer is on its last leg. It won't hold a battery for anything, but I decided to do a few quick snapshots. Maybe I'll be able to post an actual snapshot next week. Who knows. Anyway, a few highlights from the past couple weeks:
-Two weeks ago Sunday. Watched a packed church come forward once, twice, thrice to give to the work of the Lord not out of their abundance but out of their poverty. The money was to be split in to three groups - two groups to build two new churches and one group to go to foreign missions (yes, foreign missions!) to send pastors to surrounding unreached people groups. The money was counted on the spot and I joined in the celebration dance when we discovered that the total came to over $300 - an exorbitant amount for the third poorest country in the world. So humbled.
- Not long ago. Drove by the dump. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the hot car window to say a prayer for the two teeny girls that we just drove past...both barefoot and in tattered dresses, both carrying bags of food scraps that they had scavenged from the trash pile of the city dump.
- Yesterday. Old man - could have been the peer of either of my grandfathers - tilted his turbaned head as he begged for money or food. I swallowed a sob as I handed him all the change I had, resisting the urge to throw my arms around him and give him a kiss as I would my grandfather. Wished I knew enough of the Malian languages to tell him about Jesus.
- Yesterday. Thursday School. Screaming with laughter (along with 30 other voices) as my girls strut and primp in front of the little boy playing King Xerxes, each one trying to be chosen as Queen Esther. According to the statistics of the country, only 13% of them can read. But all of them know their memory verse.
- This morning. Jumped in surprise as a man about my age appeared out of nowhere and glued himself to my side as I walked with Kate in the heart of the city. He spoke very good English and informed me that his name is Hakuna Matata - not kidding. He followed me for many blocks and across quite a few highways. He told me all about his music and his work and I told him about a man named Jesus.
- This afternoon. Was was walking back from the market. Remember walking past a woman sleeping on two collapsed cardboard boxes. Later biking past a man in a Tuareg head wrap carefully picking food out of the trash can. Hating myself because these images make me whisper a prayer, but they no longer make me cry.
- Today in a taxi. Kate asks, "Hey, what do those boxes say?" So I lift my sunglasses and squint to look at the one-person truckcar in front of us. "They say, USAID. From the American people." Then I lean forward excitedly. "Hey, that's the seal of the President on the bottom!" I search the box until I see the words, "President's Malaria Initiative" just above the symbol for the Center for Disease Control. I have no idea what the President's Malaria Initiative is, but in my imagination it has something to do with that new breakthrough malaria vaccine just released that is expected to cut infant mortality rate in Africa in half. The vaccine that made the researchers cry when they saw the statistics.
- Every single day. Jesus is awesome. I am so humbled to be here.
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