While She Sleeps

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While Mariama naps now, the bus carrying two special young friends, our immediate neighbors, and another couple that have been grandparents to our girls for the last few months will leave on it’s way to the airport. The turning of friendship seasons is something that third culture children know by experience and struggle with in different, subconscious ways. Please pray for our three girls who love and release in the ebb and flow of missionary life with regularity and resiliency. 

Pray for us as this dear couple watched our children as we went on date nights, dreamed with Christy of ministry opportunities, played, ate, prayed and walked with us over these months.  They were God’s gift for this season, his grace extended to us all.

Balls, Camps, Refreshments!

With the vision of reaching,
Disicpling and teaching,
Using sport and fun,
Prizes for those who won,
Balls for the practices,
Water after good passeses,
I'm seeing there's a need,
At winners camp to feed,
Oh, my, you want to give,
To youngins who in Nigeria live?

Let me know if you want to give a financial gift toward this sports outreach at the end of December!  You can reply to this message if it comes on your email, send me a private message, or post a comment if you are looking at this post on the blog interface.
This would be a great thing for kids in your church to give toward or your own children to get involved in blessing other children and youth. 

Please pray and see if this is something God would have you be part of!


 I'll post pictures of our teams this Saturday. 
 

New Year, New Life Competition Pt. 2

 Adams is a great athlete, but far more impressive is his desire to use his abilities and training to disciple others.
As he prepares to train the coaches for the New Year, New Life Competition at the end of December, pray that God will show him his message for the youth and children of Hwolshe.  May God bring the right people together to coach and lead the athletes to Jesus.

New Year, New Life Competition

This morning six of the needed twenty-four coaches came to the first meeting for the New Year, New Life Competition in our community.  This two day event will hopefully include 24 teams of children and youth competing in football/soccer, and 10 teams competing in a relay of youth ages 17-21. 

God has connected me with a young man named Adams from Athletes in Action, who is training the coaches before we start our practices with the young athletes on December 1. 

The final events will take place during the week between Christmas and New Years.  Please pray with us for the coaches to come that we need, for the young athletes to encounter Christ through them, and for decisions to walk a new life with Christ in the new year to be made! 

She Smiled

She wouldn’t even look at me.  Keeping her head down as she told me her name, Mary*, and her language.  We sat on the floor in a circle.  Six women from five different languages, gathered together to learn to read Hausa, the Language of Wider Communication in our part of the country.

After reading a devotional in Hausa, I wrote the reading lesson on the white board and we began. Mary read “ki” and then said the sound of “i” was “ah.”  We went over the syllables again, and she kept repeating the sound of the letter “i” as “ah.”  “No problem,” I said in Hausa, “We’ll come back to it, and you’ll get it later.” 

The next time we came to Mary, she hesitantly began, haltingly, reading every vowel perfectly.  We all cheered.  She looked at me and she smiled.

This literacy class is going to be a joy.  We’ve told the women to invite others. It is a triumph, a victory that many women have not experienced.  As each sentence unfolds, I pray that their confidence in themselves, and ultimately in God to teach and build them up will grow.  Pray for Esther, who will be carrying these literacy classes forward every Monday and Tuesday morning in the Orange Hat.   

Training to Tell the Story

Weary, they arrived in the keke as the setting African sun...

I listened to the Nigerian missionary from a different organization sharing in front of our church.  I saw the people around me, eyes glazed over, as the man presenting shared numbers and statistics about how many national missionaries there are and how they don’t have their basic needs met. I happen to know that God is doing great things through this organization, and I hungered to hear these stories, but alas, I’m still waiting!  Zach and I shared our sadness of this missed opportunity to shine God’s glory and faithfulness, and through telling the stories of the missionaries. 

Many months later, we were retreating, and sat for many meals at the same table with a couple without knowing them or even sharing our names.  Finally, on our last meal, I asked them what mission they were with, and he’s the director of this organization that was sharing that Sunday.  I mentioned to him our experience that day, and we exchanged contact information.

This picture has a story! A trail, followed from a village by...

Two weeks ago, I got a phone call, and it was the director, inviting me to share this coming Tuesday to all his field managers, about 30 people, of how to better share their stories. 

Please pray for me as I do a short training on how to share impact stories that give God glory, and that encourage his body to be part of what He’s doing.  Pray that they would be interested in gathering in the future to share their stories in preparations for future church visits, vision casting, and partnership in the Nigerian church.

They roared their terrible roars

Daso is made king of the wild things!

Culture night at our annual retreat featured the "wild things" this year who "roared terrible roars" at their wild king (Daso) as he floated away on his private boat after the rhythmic wild rumpus.  Zach let his creative wild side shine too with face painting before Christy took the stage to narrate one of her childhood favorites, Where the Wild Things Are. Daso enjoyed a chance to put those acting skills in to practice.  There's nothing like children being told to let their wild side run...wild!