I wanted to make this a New Year’s Eve to remember and I LOVED planning and hosting and cooking for all of my teammates and a few other special friends in Kara. We had a candlelit/white Christmas light lit dinner after dark on our patio. Many of us started 24 hours before our meal fasting and praying for the Kabiye and the nation of Togo in this coming New Year. 3 days of cooking produced some yummy results and I am thankful for David’s help and Essowe’s help in giving me the time to cook everything. After our dinner we had a very memorable night of karaoke. Some of the greatest hits were Mike Squires saying the verses and David singing the chorus to The Gambler, Singing “Man Te We Leleng” with Adam and Essowe and little Joanna, who was still awake, getting to sing “In The Jungle” with David, listening to 5 or 6 friends sing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and Mark and Nicole’s dramatic display of a love song duet from Moulin Rouge. We served the meal in courses, everyone having their own course to be responsible for. Here was our menu:
The Bread and the Wine – celebrating Jesus’ death bringing us New life in Christ
appetizer: zucchini à la pesto (I created this recipe and it was very yummy I thought!)
salad course: Caesar salad with garlic croutons
main course: Orange herbed pork roast, herb roasted chicken, creamy potatoes, and roll
dessert course: decadent chocolate cake with raspberry sauce à la mode or apple crumble pie à la mode
palate cleanser: chilled whole cranberry sauce
sparkling cider, wine, and water for drinks
David also built a campfire after dinner because it was so chilly! Some of us girls wrapped up in throws or panyas because we were so chilly. I think everyone had a good time and this made me most happy. I will miss this place, these people, and this culture more than I can really begin to think about right now.
On New Year’s Day Evening we had a campfire with the children and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and did sparklers to celebrate the New Year.
We will miss you, Togo! Here is our holiday tribute to Togo with our jerseys we found in Lome’ last month.
I know Christmas is over, but here in Togo that means nothing. The Christmas paintings of Santa Clause and REd and Green decor and Christmas trees at the post office and for sale at the market on the street will be out until at least the end of the month and the window paintings may not come off until after July if past years in Kara are any prediction of 2010. So, here’s my last red and green post. It is the decor in our house this year, which I’ve already taken down except for the tree. I love decorating for Christmas and our whole family loves to sit and take in the peacefulness of the Christmas lights, music, and serene feeling in the evenings. I will miss Christmas. I didn’t want the season to end this year.
Some Christmas cheer I’ve spotted around town over the past few days in Christmas colors:
Here is our local ATM machine. I love the Santa painted on the window with his own BTCI (Bank Togolese Commerce and Industry) ATM card in hand ready to get cash for Christmas! (The balloons in the left hand corner are also a nice, random touch)
Here is one of the many rice trucks being sent to Kara from Togo’s President, Faure Gnassingbe. He is making rice available at a very reduced price for people to buy for all of their parties over Christmas, The New Year, and Funeral Season (February in Kabiyeland).
And here is one of the 50 kilo bags of rice that are being sold for 10,000 cfa each (A little less than 22 dollars) The bags read, ” Rice is my ‘Faure’ (A play on words because the word for strength in French is “force”) There is nothing better than that”. Pretty good campaign move on President Faure’s part, if you ask me. Presidential elections are scheduled for February 28th this year.
Do you ever have words that you read that strike a cord somewhere deep within your heart that God’s Spirit wants to resonate so that He can begin a transforming work in you? When this happens to me I feel the anticipation build and keep repeating the words and longing to meditate on them. The whole chapter of Isaiah 58 has blown me away as God has put on my heart the disciplines of fasting and sabbath-keeping and then led me to this chapter. The words in verses 6,7 are especially blowing me away:
“Is this not the fast which I choose, to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”
A purpose of the kind of fasting that God chooses being to divide my bread with the hungry seems so obvious but profound. I don’t eat today because the money or food I already have for this meal I am giving to the hungry. I fast so that I can buy clothes for this man who is naked with the food I would have used to buy my meal instead. I fast so that I can spend concentrated time talking and sharing my heart with my children instead of worrying about what food I put in my mouth or how full my stomach is. I fast from this meal so that I can spend time in prayer begging for God to break the bonds of slavery or wickedness in someone’s life, giving time to pour myself out before the Lord instead of filling my stomach.
I’m still thinking and asking God to reveal to me the deeper things of the fast that He chooses. More later on the sabbath verses. I would love to hear any insights you have to share on these subjects.
This year we did a Jesse Tree with our children (most) every night during the month of December leading up to Christmas. We added a couple of days together when we had a late night here or there. The Jesse Tree comes from the passage in Isaiah 11:1-2 “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” This prophesy of Jesus is the inspiration for the Jesse Tree which is an aid to advent, helping children know (and reminding adults of) the story of Jesus, beginning even before creation and up through the centuries, highlighted by imperfect and weak people chosen to be used in the line of the Savior, who would be born as a helpless baby.
Our children took turns coloring different ornaments each night and we talked about God’s plan through each person or story in the Bible that pointed to Jesus. Our kids all really enjoyed this activity and we hope to do it every year.
Essowe and girls have been spending Christmas with us this year, so the girls helped us color the last few ornaments and tell the stories as we hung them on the tree (crooked as it may be…appropriate for a shoot!) Christmas morning. I loved how we were able to keep the focus off of the climax being physical gifts this year, and instead point to the anticipation of the ages… the Messiah…and now we await His second coming.
I want to post pictures over the next few days of the expected, and unexpected, places in our lives here that I see Holiday colors or images. Here are a few shots from our team’s school Christmas party on Saturday: kindergartners with teacher Miss Sarah, 6th graders with teacher Miss Bethany, the 6th graders history quiz (stockings with matching events with places), 4th graders with teacher Miss Jacque, , and o
ne of the snowmen (Aidan) made for the snowman competition
I feel a strong need to write a tribute to one of my dearest sisters in the Lord, who also happens to be Kabiye. It is challenging to write about the beauty in her life because I know her in some intimate ways that I wouldn’t dare reveal at her request or in the raw exposure of a blog post. I will only share things that she has shared with many people or that are personal for me about her. She has endured more and suffered more in her life than I can describe or even imagine experiencing. And yet her suffering is never without the end result of God being beautifully, humbly, and often in a largely unnoticed way glorified in and through her. We have made one another our confidants, tellers of God’s truth to one other, and God has allowed us to share in one another’s struggles and triumphs over the years. I am slow to deeply trust others with the recesses of my heart but time and again God has given me a safe, empathetic heart in her. She has a gift for friendship that crosses cultural boundaries and many other missionaries, school teachers, interns, or visitors that have come to Togo view her as their closest Kabiye friend. My love for her is so great that I often don’t recognize that we are from two different cultures. Our hearts beat with the same culture of Christ and when I remember that we belong to different cultures in this world I find myself mildly shocked back into some of the realities of our limitations together for this lifetime. I can’t wait to dwell with the Lord together in heaven with her.
Essowe was born into a very poor family in a Kabiye village. She grew up only knowing animism as her family’s spiritual reality with God being a very uninterested distant part of anyone’s lives. Ironically, her name in Kabiye (Essowe) means God is there. Her mother divorced her father and left her and her two older siblings to fend for themselves when she was 9 years old. Her father had lost a leg and so it was up to the children to plant and plow and harvest the fields to be able to eat the rest of the year. She went for a very long period of time with no shoes and she remembered praying one day that if God could hear her that he would give her a pair of shoes. She wandered to the market area that was empty from the busy market the day before and there on the ground by a rock were a pair of brand new flip-flops exactly her size waiting for her. She slipped them on and a spark of faith in her heart for the Lord began to grow. God gave her many other little provisions throughout her growing up years and one night after a time of much despair when she was 18 she was lying in her bed thinking about how to take her own life. A few days prior, a YWAM volunteer that had come with a campaign to her village had given her a Bible and had underlined Romans 8:35-39. She felt compelled to pick up the Bible and opened it up exactly to the verse that had been underlined. As she began to read about nothing separating us from the love of God in Christ, her heart melted and she prayed again to him to show himself to her if he was real and to show her his love. Over the next few days he delivered her out of her desperate situation, provided a way for her to go to school in town and eat even though she had no money and she began to devour the words of scripture falling quickly and ardently in love with Him.
The depth of Essowe’s faith astounded me when I first met her and began to share our hearts with one another 9 years ago. She was my language teacher and quickly became one of my dearest friends. She is two years older than me but her life experiences, especially when we first met, and her depth of faith surpassed mine greatly. I was humbled to know her and count her as my friend. God has allowed me over these years to share in and experience many of her sorrows and many of her joys. I treasure the time of grief and courage He allowed me to participate with her in as I held her and whispered the prayers of “Oh, God, help! Help!” in Kabiye as we sat crying, stroking the still warm body of her 3 month old baby girl, Samto, who had died minutes before. I treasure the moments of sharing with her how God became everything for me when I was 16 and He was all I had. I cherish her describing how she watched my first year of adjustment to life in Togo with a brand new baby, intense culture shock, and pale face trudging out to the office to meet with her 3 times a week to learn Kabiye, not being able to concentrate half the time and feeling so ridiculously dumb and incompetent. In her reflections she said she prayed so hard for me and saw how difficult life was and my inward struggles and learned to love God more as she watched Him give me strength for each day until after a year color began to come into my face and she could tell I didn’t have to try as hard each day to survive emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes physically.
She clings to Him as I do, and hope to do, when there’s nothing left to hold onto. He is everything to her and she will stand for His truth always in every situation without compromise. She has sensed the struggles of my heart many times without my having to say a word. She comes with a scripture, a prayer, a word of truth that speaks to the very situation I am in. I love her with the deepest affection and will miss her so much when we move to the states and then to Rwanda. I’m so glad for the sake of her life situation and for the sake of our friendship that this life is but a breath and that eternity is just a moment away.
Oh, Lord, give her a thousand blessings in the age to come for every trial she has endured by your strength and in your name here on earth during this lifetime. Strengthen her by your grace, empower her with your unfailing love, let the testimony of her life increase in the glory given back to you. Provide everything and more for her and her daughters, as you always have.
Our phone line died at our house on Wednesday and we thought it would be back working on Thanksgiving day, but no cigar. Then, we left for Lome’ on Friday for a 5 day trip. I had planned to write my posts on Thursday evening and then schedule them to come out for the next few days. So, I didn’t make the 30 posts in 30 days for nablopomo. Phooey! We’re back from Lome’ and our internet and phone line are still down. So, to all of my 100s of faithful readers (hee hee!) I must post erratically when I can find time at a teammate’s house to get online and post something.
We had a wonderful time in Lome’ visiting with Marty and Murphy, spending some time with the Millers and our teachers: Jacque, Bethany, and Sarah, and having a little family break at the beach. Back in Kara, Christmas dust is in the air and we’re ready to decorate tomorrow at our house! Love and blessings to all of you! I love thinking about Jesus’ first coming this time of year and looking forward to his second coming soon!
Scripture on my mind today: “The LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Clouds and thick darkness are all around him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around. His lightnings light up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness, and all the peoples see his glory. All worshipers of images are put to shame, who make their boast in worthless idols; worship him, all you gods!” -Psalm 97:1-9
