Burkina Faso Week 5

Greetings from Burkina Faso!

After a LONG twenty-hour bus ride, we finally made it to Burkina with slight exhaustion but great excitement about what we would experience here, and a great week it has been!  Burkina met us with a few challenges but great rewards as well =)

We kicked off our time here teaching Bible Overview at a nearby church!  Bible Overview consists of nine steps starting with Creation going all the way to the Second Coming.  David and I broke it into three parts, I took the first three, he took four through six and I finished off the last three since he’d be preaching on Sunday.  

I was a little nervous to teach Thursday night as this was going to be my first time teaching bible overview in an African church.  Up until this point my experience with bible overview was in a practice setting but this time it was for real!  Upon arrival the electricity went out which meant I was pretty much going to have to teach in the dark.  It was one of those times when I just had to surrender it all to God and pray that his message would be delivered despite the circumstances.  I got up to teach and greeted the church and instantly felt comfortable and welcomed, saying, ‘Although I can’t actually see your faces right now, I can feel the love’ =P.  Things proved to be challenging, teaching with lots of illustrations and me not being able to see my notes very well but overall everyone really enjoyed it and learned a lot and I learned a few things myself, like the need to memorize my notes more and to find other ways to present if people can’t actually see what you’re talking about! 

We finished teaching bible overview on Saturday and then David went to preach on Sunday where he too faced his own challenge.  He was already feeling tired and as though his voice was going to give out and then five minutes before he was going to preach a HUGE thunderstorm came and it started POURING!  The church we were at had a tin roof and no speakers so he too found himself having to just surrender it all to God and was thankful that if anything, it was Gerard who had to raise his voice since he was the one who was translating.  But just as before, God provided him with the strength he needed and he did really well!  The church was really touched by his message on living a life of worship and afterward a woman came forward to give her life to the Lord!  

Burkina Team going to church in style with matching team outfits, oh yeah! 

So all in all the teachings went really well this week!  In other news, we finally got to meet Gerard’s stunning fiancé!  It was so nice to finally meet the woman who has captured Gerard’s heart and we look forward to getting to know her more.  Gerard insists that David and I come to his wedding this November and says that if we don’t he’s going to take us hostage =P  Don’t worry mom, he’s just kidding, I’ll be coming home soon =) 

There’s also a super adorable two year old on base whose name is Elda.  She has become my new best friend and brings so much joy to each day.  She is also my new language exchange partner!  If you don’t already know this, toddlers are the perfect people to learn a new language from as their vocabulary is very simple and to the point so I’ve been having fun trying to learn French from her and have been teaching her some English too!    

Gonna meet up with our other Burkina Faso team from Togo this week to teach Bible Overview again with them at another church, looking forward to it =)

Prayer points:

- Rest for David, he unfortunately has a cold right now and is trying to recover, please pray that he’ll get better soon and be able to finish outreach strong and enjoy the rest of his time here in west Africa.

- Gerard continues to prepare for his wedding and is in the process of finding a home for him and his fiancé, please pray for provision for those things as well as continued strength and joy as he serves.

- Me:  Overall I’m doing okay, I think the greatest challenge since coming to Burkina has been the fact that I’m an extrovert and I’m the only English speaking girl around so I’ve been missing having girl time.  I am so thankful for the girl friends that I had in Togo for the first half of outreach and Gerard and David’s continued compassion as well as my new friendship with Elda and God of course, but yeah, if you could pray that I’d also hang in there and finish strong that’d be great =)

Thank you so much for all of your love and support!  I can’t believe that in just a little over two weeks I’ll not only be finished with outreach but leaving Africa all together!  It’s been an amazing year and it’s not over yet, hoping to make the most of every last bit of it =)  Much love to you all! 

Leslie