Getting pulled over by the cops is something every ex-pat in Niger dreads. There is a lot of corruption that influences the motives behind a police officer pulling over a rich westerner… But when I heard about it all, in my heart I said no. I said, I’m calling on your favour, Lord, I believe you are going to favour me on the roads here, and that I’m not going to get pulled over unfairly, get wrongly accused, or demanded to bribe. God totally honoured this prayer. There are a few quite funny stories, about Belle charming the policemen in French and smiles and them laughingly sending me on my way without even checking my papers… but a few days before we left the country was a pearler. It was a female police officer who pulled me over and wanted to check my papers. I was friendly, as normal, and without thinking, I complimented her on her jewellery. Those who know me will know this is pretty standard, I wasn’t trying to suck up. She looked at me for a moment and told me to wait… because she was giving it to me!! Hahahaha… she took off her necklace and her earrings, and gave them both to me, and told me to have a good day. I said thanks, and may God bless you! I’m telling you, this felt like such a cool send off after 18 months. It definitely hadn’t been an easy year and a half. But here was a random gift, from a Nigerien woman, and even though she didn’t know it, I decided God was saying something through her. I decided he was saying, “Thanks Andy, I totally value what you’ve given me while you’ve been here.” Isn't He a cool Father?
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The sky is blue and the clouds are beautiful. I’m staring at it, every day, thinking how beautiful it is. Realising that I didn’t have it for 18 months. Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve been missing until you find it again. I was used to the dusty hues of Niger sky, blending into the houses made of the mud the same colour as the sand… everything a different shade of dust. I remember arriving and feeling like it was harder to breathe in Niger than in Australia… I remember months of wanting to get out into some kind of treed area out of town to breathe deeply and clearly. But I can’t believe how good it actually is, to be able to see the blue of the sky, and breathe it in, as long and deep as you want.
Surprisingly there’s not much culture shock coming back to Australia on this occasion. Now and then I am discovering things are ridiculous… there was a news report about a woman getting mauled by a dog in Perth… however many hundred kilometres away. It seems ridiculous to me because of several reasons. I’m hearing about it through a tv, rather than in person, and I don’t know the woman; it’s not a friend of a neighbour or a brother’s boss. It’s ridiculous to me because of how many hundreds of kids and adults are not just “attacked by a dog,” but die every day in Niger without anybody knowing why; there are no autopsies, they are buried within 24hrs – often within an hour or two. But the reasons why are awful, not just on the poverty front of people unable to afford treatment for malaria or other diseases, but it is very common that men are poisoned by their wives, or children’s souls were eaten by a witchdoctor, and they die within the day… for example. But no one ever hears about that, hundreds of kilometres away… nobody thinks it’s worth putting in a news story. When horrible becomes normal. I bet a lot of people can instantly imagine a situation where this is true. If you don’t know what you’re missing, how do you even know how horrible your normal is? I hope we might have shown some people, some children, that horrible doesn’t have to be normal. That there is more beyond their experience of life so far. There is hope, there is love. I still want to show that to people here, too – trapped within their own kind of horrible, even though they live in a beautiful country. Darkness is in every culture. But Jesus has set us on fire, people, and we are the light of the world. We are the star that points to Jesus, to the one who took horrible on His own shoulders, so we could be set free from it. |
AuthorWe are Brad, Andy, Hunter and Belle. Hoping to keep you connected! Archives
May 2019
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