Things I don’t like
That picking your nose, spitting, and weeing in public are completely acceptable Driving through raw sewerage The restricted food situation eg. No weetbix, no dry biscuits and dip, no take away, no consistency as to what is kept in stock in shops… (although it forces creativity) Excessive rubbish everywhere and no way to get rid of it or mindset to do anything about it When power or water cuts last more than 2 hours. Being judged differently by my skin colour. White = rich and therefore, give me money. Being yelled at as ‘anasara’ (white man) by everyone I pass at the market or in my car Having to think so much more about how and when and how much to be generous with money (implications so much greater here than in Australia) The smells in various parts of the street that make you nearly vomit The fatigue and lack of energy that comes with living in constant heat Things I like That the kids can ride their scooters inside because all the floors are tiled Listening to my kids speak French, and I love listening to other kids speak French Having a house helper to clean my dusty floors and windows (she is really sweet) Waiting for cows or sheep to cross the road before I can keep driving Choosing fabrics and designing clothes (though they rarely come out how I requested) Never being cold. (Except sometimes between 4-9am Dec&Jan – I hate being cold) Painting while goats are walking past Learning to make things from scratch like wraps, tzatiki dip, curries, wholemeal flour… No road rules (it suits my driving style) The surprised smile I get from a beggar boy that I say hello to instead of shooing away. I like that when my friend finds me on the street at dusk he walks me home to make sure I’m safe. I like that everybody shakes hands to say hello. I like that everybody says hello as you walk past. I like challenging the ideas of what a rich white person is supposed to behave like here. I like when I remember what words mean in Fulfulde. I like the storms in rainy season. I like to watch my little friends face that I tutor while he tries to remember what sounds p and t and s make. I like that they live happily under a 1.5m high roof made of sticks and material with no walls for their home, with the goats and the chickens constantly walking through, the baby being swung in a ‘cot’ made from a rice sack hanging from the roof. I like the unmodified genetics of the fruit and vegetables, and that when you throw the scraps in the garden, trees grow. I like the interaction that comes with bargaining at the market. I like the feel of my little friend Grace’s hair after we take out the braids together with her sisters, it is just like sheep's wool. I like that my goat Lily follows me if I take her for a walk. I like making our guard laugh. I like African sauces. I like that men dance and hold hands when they are friends. I like all the amazing different birds that are here, satin blue and bright red, and the beautiful camels and donkeys.
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As I write this, Andy is lying in bed with another migraine, as she has done for most of the last 24 hours, in pain, with an ice pack, waiting for the symptoms to ease. As most of you know she has endured chronic migraines since she was 12, having several each month and sometimes for multiple days on end. We have tried everything we know to have them stop. WE have seen the best doctors and specialists in Melbourne. We have tried all manner of medications focusing on every conceivable cause and problem. We have tried diets and supplements. We have prayed for decades, sought out and been told by world renowned healers that she is healed, only to heartbreakingly discover the next day she is not. We have not followed any narrow ideology of healing and therefor have missed the obvious. We have found no answers.
You will not find this testimony on any website offering others the answer. You will not find many posts like this on Facebook. We mostly reserve our posts there as our highlight reel or to air our grievances. Yet I believe that it is as important as any to be found in any of the before mentioned places. Although I am not offering you an easy fix, a fb post about having ‘made it’ or a healing testimony, I am offering you a story of great encouragement and faithfulness. This is a testimony to honour Gods faithfulness and my wife, Andy’s endurance and faith, in the face of very difficult circumstances. When I married Andy the quality that stood out the most was her rock solid faith in God and her pursuit of Him. I knew that quality would be a firm foundation to build a marriage on and which would weather any storm, how true it has turned out to be. The bible gives several examples of trusting in God during the storm. It is also filled with countless stories, themes, examples and even entire chapters and books on what is to be faithful to God during difficult times, when healing doesn’t come, when the hardship seeks to overcome us, where there are no answers, where God is not speaking through miracles, when God chooses to allow suffering for His purposes. This may come as a shock to you. It certainly isn’t the trendiest message to lure those seeking instant gratification through ‘Holy Spirit power encounters’, although for many this is a legitimate means in which God does speak. I liken the difference to the analogy of the body found in 1 Corinthians 12. The body is made up of many parts working together for the same purpose. All have been assigned different roles, all are essential. One part cannot want to be another part because the body would be incomplete. We cannot all be the same part, we would be useless! Perhaps the miraculous healings we see are, to follow the analogy, are a very beautiful part of the body. As soon as they are seen we gush and give glory to God. The problem is that we easily forget that this is only one image of the body. To continue the analogy, it is incorrect to think that a radiant face or elegant figure are the only parts that cause the body to function. The same is true for the body of Christ. It is a very incomplete picture if we desire all of the body of Christ to look and function as the most presentable and desirable parts. I believe that one who is faithful during great hardship is just as beautiful, gives the same glory to God, does not need to despair or be told that they need to be different, and deserves the same encouragement as the more radiant parts. In fact Corinthians says they deserve to be treated with special consideration and given special honour, while the presentable parts need no special consideration! Those enduring great trials may not write a self-help book, but without them and their testimony the church would cease to exist. They are essential. Another theme that is repeatedly spoken of throughout the bible, which seems to go against popular thought in todays society and within the church teaching is ‘endurance’. You don’t need to endure if you have nothing to endure through. The writers were assuming that like them and Jesus, believers would be facing trials of various kinds and were being called to endure through them. “through the endurance taught in the scriptures we might have hope”, “through great endurance in troubles hardship or distress”, “so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the father”. It has been a defining characteristic of the church for two thousand years that its members show the faithfulness of their God by not abandoning the hope they possess as they endure through very difficult circumstances. There is not a person I know who does not face trials of some kind. As the church we can be the example and living testimony as those who are faithful and endure, showing that our God is able to give hope and joy to the hurting and those in distress. I never feel so unloved and alone as when I hear the words ‘Jesus healed everyone so if you are not healed its not His problem’. This teaching casts everyone except those who have been healed into a pit of despair. It is not loving. It does not give glory to God or hope to the hurting world. For those who are healed I rejoice with you. But the way in which he has chosen to reveal His glory through you is not the same for everyone. But the purpose of this testimony is not to offer a critique, so much as hope for those who are enduring. So it is with this in mind that I present to you, Andy, for the glory of God, with great endurance and faithfulness over many years, as an encouragement to those who are hurting. What an example she is of holding fast in the storm. How much of encouragement is she for those who are bringing glory to God through their steadfast endurance in the same way. How comforting it is to know that even though it might not be what we choose, God will be glorified if we are faithful. In my eyes, this example mimics the example of Jesus going to the cross when He chose to be faithful and trust Gods plan and timing, rather than call down the heavenly legions at his disposal. In good days and bad, the example of how God sustains her, offers hope to our world for those who don’t experience Gods quick or miraculous intervention for reasons we may never know. He is faithful. Put your trust in Him. He will sustain you. Andy and millions of other believers bear witness to this. I rejoice in the diversity of the body of Christ. We should see those that function differently than us as an indispensable part. We must stop trying to teach the body to all function in the same way. Who knows, perhaps one day we will work together and delight in out different gifts, functions and roles and be amazed by what God has entrusted and is accomplishing through His diverse bride. Recently I had a dream where I was trying to paint on other people's canvases and I couldn't find my own. As I was trying to find my own, I was tripping over everyone else's in the cluttered room. I woke understanding this dream to be about what I'm trying to do with my days. I had been trying to tag along with different people, seeing the 'educating educators' work happening in schools, visiting Fulani villages where other missionaries do 'bank' work with the local women, some sewing groups learning skills... all good things and all somewhat connected with my skill set. It is easy to look at the ways everyone else does things and change our expectations of what we should be doing and how. But the Godly expectation is simply that you would be yourself. I had felt God asking me to be myself, and perhaps looking into all these things was 'tripping me up' and I just needed to 'paint my own canvas' - not to mention the main theme of the dream encouraging me that to be myself, at least in this season, is to be an artist. Partnered with that, I had lost a lot of capacity as I tried some new headache medication, and art was about the only thing I could manage to do. So I finally acted on the idea of painting the wall on the side of our house with an image of a wise man looking at the star of Bethlehem. At some point I may add the other two but I didn’t manage that before Christmas. Lots of people and kids stop to watch or ask questions, a pretty strange occurrence for them that a white person would be painting in the street... It was after my obedience to this that a young artist found Brad on the street and asked if he could please meet me. This country is so poor that art is the last thing on people’s minds—it is something out of their world, so to meet someone who wants to do art for a living is pretty crazy. But here God brought him along, and I’ve been teaching him to paint. He is part of a group of artists opening a gallery soon but is wanting to improve his skills. So here we've been painting the same image of some wodabbe Fulani - still not finished but the most recent photo is below. I've been so encouraged that God brought along exactly enough that I am able to do in this season. I remember a friend among you writing and praying for “Andy-bite-sized” opportunities to come along—your prayers prayed back home are answered here. We are so grateful for you!
I tried the suggestion of our local friend's headache remedy. Rub a bullfrog's stomache on your forehead. One evening a messenger was sent to our house from our local boutiques - send Brad over right now! Oh no we were worried something was wrong. But no, it was just that they had found a bullfrog and were trying to catch it for me. Brad assured them there were plenty under our house and not to worry. The next day, mid migraine, drugs weren't helping and I was getting desperate, so Belle and I decided to look for bullfrogs under the house... but weren't successful. As Brad walked home, midday, one jumped across his path. I took this randomness as a sign. I closed my eyes before I could see the animal and told him just to do it, and quickly. It felt cold and alive and pretty gross. It didn’t help. Afterwards our animal loving daughter chased the creature around our yard. Our friends were very pleased I’d tried but sorry it hadn’t worked. The next suggestion is the local witch doctor. No, no, thank you, I’d rather have a migraine!
All sorts of ridiculous things happen while Brad sits on the street chatting with his friends. One time a man walked up demanding money. One of our friends gives him the equivalent of 5c and he seemed satisfied. He turns his attention to Brad and demands again. (The white man has money) Brad shows that he has nothing on him. So the man pulls up his shirt and shows Brad that he has an axe with him. Is this a threat? Hmm… Brad remains super cool, and in his newly learnt French, decided to ask the man, would he like a banana? Brad grabs a banana from our friends stall and hands it to the axe man. The axe man mellows, bows in gratitude and says ‘merci, merci, merci “boss”.’ The next day Brad sees him again, still with his axe though this time over his shoulder… he is smiling and waving Brad down trying to get a lift. Ahhh, no, sorry mr. axe man, no lift for you. Each morning I go in our ‘guards’ quarters and get some millet to feed the rabbits. But one morning there is a horrible smell in there. Presently Brad and I discover some sort of “cooked” animal – it has been roasted on coals the night before in an old used fan cover (a popular grilling plate and bowl for locals) and it is in several pieces, some of which still have paws and claws. What on earth is it – has our guard trapped someone’s dog for dinner? That evening we find out it is some sort of African mongoose he has proudly captured, and yes, is planning to eat. But we accidently shame him by explaining Brad nearly vomited when he saw it, and so he throws it away. Nearly vomiting has become much more frequent for me here… seeing the worms still crawling in the cats diarrhea, regurgitated lizards or half eaten kittens left on the front porch, fermenting grass from sheep’s stomaches which have been killed for dinner dumped in the alley beside our house, driving constantly through open sewrage… our friend once even accidently stepped in a human poo!!! Dry retching, but laughing… what a crazy normality we live with now?! Hello everyone and Merry Christmas! It has been a long time since I’ve written and I’m sorry for that. I tried some new headache medicine and it gave me terrible side effects, to the point I had no desire to write whatsoever and hence didn’t. We waited for a number of weeks to see if the side effects would clear up and there would be a positive influence on the number of migraines but neither was working in our favour so we have let that idea go and my body is now slowly re-normalising.
How was your Christmas? Whilst it is completely unavoidable everywhere you turn in Australia for many weeks in advance, here you would never know it existed! Even on the day everywhere functioned as normal, the street filled with people going about their days like any other. The extremely small percentage of Christians celebrate with singing, performing songs for each other and sometimes dances, getting new clothes and hairdos and eating big meals together. Presents are rare and if done, it is only for the children. For us, we spent Christmas Eve with some other missionary families we know, sang and played games and ate. Christmas day, we had presents from home to open that were sent by mail, and the kids whizzed about on the new scooters I managed to find in town. (Not easy since with sand for streets it is not a common toy) We had phonecalls from Australia and then Andy set to work preparing food for a big pot lunch the church was having after the service. We drove to church with our Nigerien friends crammed in the back and a more normal service was had – since the singing and dancing is all on Christmas Eve. The ladies gathered around to try the tuna patties I’d made and were all bewildered by the different taste – though I used all local ingredients they never put those things together. Afterwards we had a quiet afternoon, a visit from our Imam friend wishing us a ‘Bon Fete’, and that was our Christmas. We decided not to invite the world around for a big meal or anything, though it had earlier crossed my mind. Capacity has been very low and we needed to keep it simple. Our friends at the orphanage will soon have their belated Christmas feast and we look forward to joining them, after joyfully being able to provide the majority of the food for them (thanks to the funds you support us with!!) We owe you many an update and it will come in time, I thought to start the ball rolling you’d be interested how our first Niger Christmas was spent. My beautiful friend Erin sent me such an encouragement last week. Here is a snippet. “Then I asked God to speak to me for Andy. Straight away I saw a bunch of bright red, beautiful poppies. I then saw a picture of you dancing with a basket full of these same poppies, you were smiling and singing and skipping along in a colourful long skirt giving them to people. You were coming in to people's situations and lives and bringing His joy to them as you handed out these poppies. Their faces would light up as you came and gave these poppies away. This is who you are! A joy bringer! You were having so much fun doing this.” I’m not writing this to blow my own trumpet, I just think God is very cool because it was just a few days after this that I got to see the picture become a reality. I had organised a ‘birthday party’ for my friend’s ‘adopted’ daughter, because they don’t know when her real birthday is or how old she is, and I thought it was pretty sad that she consequently just wouldn’t ever get to have a birthday. We held it out front of his boutique, and I brought along my face paints. While we were waiting for her to arrive, I started by painting my kids. Every person that walked by stopped and stared, smiling and laughing. I realised pretty quickly it is something people here never see! Some looked very interested so I told them to come over and I did theirs as well, and they were very happy, skipping away covered in flowers and lovehearts. The kids arrived, laughing as they saw what was happening, and I did theirs too, and everyone that saw them laughed. I was thinking of the picture Erin had sent me and my heart was happy realising that God could see me and was using me to spread joy, even in something so small and simple. Sitting on the hospital bed with a friend and her daughter, I count out the money she needs for medicine over the next 4 days. It’s around $70. Medicine for AIDS patients and babies 1-5years old is free, but everyone else, for everything else, has to pay – before treatment. She says to me, “It’s like something pulled you to come and visit me on Thursday night. You said she really needs to be on ‘serum’ (a drip) and the next day the doctor said we need to put her on serum. You drove us to the different hospitals, going here and there in the heat, and she is getting the treatment she needs now. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, it is God doing these things.” In thinking about what we’d be doing here, I didn’t expect how much we’d be in hospitals and health situations. But as we get involved in people’s lives, particularly when they are so much poorer, this is one of the major needs that just keeps coming up. They can’t afford medical care, and there is an epic amount of infections and illnesses in this country. It’s something that is very easy for us to do, but means so much to them. My friend’s son comes over, his feet are too sore to go to school. I wash them and put medical cream on them, bandage them up and put him in and the kids in front of the telly with some multivitamin lollies. It’s some sort of fungal infection that’s eating away all the skin on his feet. He will need something more, but it’s a start. We pray for healing for them all, whether we know them or not. So far nothing miraculous in that way is happening. I wonder if the spiritual atmosphere here is just too dark. Jesus sometimes took people out of town to heal them (Mark 8:22-26) – sometimes he couldn’t do miracles in certain areas. (Mark 5:5-6) I have no idea, though obviously we won’t stop praying. It seems like the acts of love in caring for people when they are sick mean more to them anyway – maybe this is what God is prioritizing. An avenue for His love to come through and slowly melt people’s hearts. That’s what we have often prayed for – ways to show love here, in a culture so different to our own, that we are still getting to know. Pray with us that whatever acts of love we can give will turn people’s hearts towards the one who loves them so much more – so they can live with Him both in and beyond this life. Often when things are hard it’s easy to long for the carefree days of my youth. Maybe that person will resurface, I wonder, maybe I will someday be the same Andy I once was. But there is a danger there in not being content with who I am at the moment, in these seasons of life (mainly since motherhood). As I was praying with some others this week and thinking about it, God gave me a picture.
I had a picture of when I used to do clay at uni, as well as more recently at home. So often when doing clay on the wheel (for it was not my strong point, I was a sculptor) I would make things, let them dry, then decide they were no good and break them up and throw them back in a bucket of water, which after a few days I would reconstitute and knead until it was good to use again. I realised, like God talks about us as the clay and He as the Potter, that even though God made me something for a large portion of my life, he may well have decided He’s through with that and is breaking it apart, soaking it for a while, and then remaking it… and that is completely up to Him! Just like it was up to me when it was my clay. Now He is the Potter, I am the clay. For some reason I felt like in that moment I could let go of the past. I didn’t have to long that ‘that version’ of Andy would resurface, it’s been broken apart and chucked in the water and now I am being made into something different. The thing about making stuff on the wheel, too, is that it has to be ‘centred’. If the lump of clay isn’t centred, your whole bowl/cup/vase will be out of shape, lopsided, or won’t even work. It takes the majority of your time to centre the clay, and a much smaller amount of time to make the pot. This was often a reason why I broke up old attempts to use the clay again, the next attempt more centred. If this is what God is doing in me, perhaps I don’t feel like a new vessel yet because God is making sure this one is centred properly in Him. Remembering that this is the longest and most important part of the process, I take heart. Yesterday I went for a walk to find the clay pots that are made near where I live. I walk on the dusty sand ‘roads’ intermittently interrupted by rivers of sewerage, past the mountain of plastic rubbish which is a local ‘bin point’ – strewn with goats and the odd child or dishevelled man looking for goods that can be used for another purpose; or eaten. It stinks. Either side of me are mud walls or straw and stick fences which enclose compounds, kids outside each one playing in the dirt. They yell “Fofo Anasara!!” “Hey, white person!!” and are delighted when I reply or shake their hands. The sun is beating down, it is 10am but already around 38 degrees. Cows, donkeys and goats are hanging around like the children, outside their compounds or en route to find fodder. Women pass me with loads on their heads, colourful clothes and headscarves, babies strapped to their backs, and we greet each other in French or Zarma. After about 800m of different roads, I find the area amongst all the other compounds where the pots are ‘fired’ – piled up in a hole in the ground and covered with bundles of dry sticks, corn and millet stalks that are burning away. There is no one to be seen so I find a bunch of men sitting under a hangar (a stick shelter) and ask where the women are that make the pots. One of them tells me he will show me so I follow him down a narrow path behind a mud brick home and find a handful of women sitting on mats on the dirt under the shade of a large tree. I smile as I realise one of them is kneading clay between her legs as she sits, and some men in the background are breaking up piles of mud and shovelling it with water to make new clay. CLAY. Yes! I go up and sit on the ground and greet them in zarma which is the most common language in my area. They are older women and smiling at me, but looking at me like I am very strange. They would rarely see a white person, let alone talk to one, let alone have one visit. They talk some more to me in zarma and I say I only know French and a little bit of Fulfulde. Great, they say, we are Fulani. And they start talking to me in Fulfulde. I can hardly understand and so a younger woman with a baby and a toddler comes over and she asks me in French what do I want. Do I want to buy a pot. No, I say, I just want to watch them make the pots, I used to do it where I come from and I want to see them here. So I am welcomed and brought a chair. It is an interesting process and one that is modified so that untrained people would be able to reproduce it. After kneading the clay, (dug from the ground somewhere) she gets an already made pot, and places the other clay over the top, patting it down with a flat rock followed by a wooden spatula until it resembles the shape of the pot underneath. Do you do it like this, they ask. No. I am restraining myself from grabbing some clay and having a turn. Maybe another time. Another woman is breaking apart old dry clay with two rocks, making it into powder to be reused. I watch her and think of the picture God had given me the week before. She smiles a lot and after a while decides she is tired so she lies down where she is with a giggle and starts to take a nap. After I sit with them for an hour I ask if I can come again and watch and listen to them speaking Fulfulde. Yes, there is no problem, you can come. It’s easy to want to stay inside our comfort zones, but at this point in our Niger experience there’s not much choice. You either stay inside the walls of your own home and slowly disintegrate, or you take a deep breath and try another adventure until God opens doors and over time things become clearer and the relationships and situations He wants us to be a part of evolve. Brad is much better at it than me – He jumps in to one hundred crazy situations without blinking an eye, and comes home with a story every time. If you are praying for us, please pray for courage and wisdom, and God’s leading and divine appointments. Thank you! Let me tell you about a girl, who was 11, and every day she walked home from school she got a headache. She tried going to the chiropractor, she tried going to the doctor, and she even had a catscan but noone really knew what was wrong. When she was a teenager she so often had to pull out of seeing her friends due to migraines that they thought she was making it up. There were so many times she laid in bed wanting to be somewhere else. As she got older she tried more often to push through the pain and go anyway, but she would usually come home vomiting. She missed her best friends 18th birthday, collapsed mid way through a yr 12 exam, but being young and without responsibility she could usually conk out in bed for 24hrs without much turbulence to everyday life. Still, she tried natropaths and oestopaths and acupuncture. To no avail, she carried through into her twenties and began teaching. Sometimes she would lie under her desk inbetween classes, hoping the medication would kick in and she could continue her days work. She ran out of sick leave and her friend in charge of leave began to let her go home without putting it on the books. She tried prayer ministry. For years, with different people and the same people. She got pregnant and nothing changed – in fact there was three months straight of migraines every day… so in deciding about more children: the sooner the better, so she could nap while the first baby napped to get through the second pregnancy. When her kids got older, they started to pray too, with exuberant faith. ‘Jesus I pray you would kill that headache now!! – Now mummy, get up!’ – Hunter, 3yrs old. Between the kids and Brad, sometimes the pain would go, maybe 5 times out of every 100. She was prayed for by all manner of family and friends and pastors and visiting preachers and travelling conference leaders. Her faith grew and then it dwindled, it grew again and then it dwindled. She truly believed God wanted to heal her. When she gave up hope, it was God that brought someone along with a word of knowledge or a dream or an opportunity that encouraged her to try again. She tried preventative medication, supplements, diets, she went to neurologists, she did hormone tests. She wanted to do mission and it was health that was the hold up. But God never told her to wait until she was healed. On the contrary, he said ‘Go in the strength that you have.’ So eventually she was let loose to the nations, and the migraines continue. A lot.
This girl and woman is one most of you would describe as joyful and carefree, bringing fun and laughter into the room. I am that person. I love being that person. I don’t want to be the sick person. The hardest thing about my health is seeing how it discourages people around me and how often I let them down. I feel like I am a hindrance to my family, a burden not a joy. People worry, people care. So what? So what is God doing? Where is He in it all? What can I do? What does He say? Well, I don’t really know. There are so many questions. Who’s responsible for bringing the migraines along? Is it the enemy who brings sickness and disease? Yes. But if God is really in charge of everything, is it He who brings it? No. If I for a moment believe the sickness is from God, there is a contradiction in that He deeply loves us, and came to die for us to heal all our diseases. He is the Healer, not the destroyer. But if the sickness is from the devil, is the devil more powerful than God and the prayers of His saints? Of course the devil is not as powerful. So why does the battle still rage? Is it my fault? Have I sinned? Am I not fully surrendered? I have searched this out to no end through prayer ministry. I can’t imagine there is any stone left unturned before God. Who’s responsibility is the healing? If God says He wants to heal me, (and He has) why doesn’t He? Is it up to God to heal outright, or up to His saints with everything He has already equipped us with? He tells us to do the healing, but I’ve cooperated any way I know how. There have been bursts of faith, and to be honest, I saw more breakthrough when I had more faith. But even faith is not something that can appear of my own making, it is a gift from God. And for every moment of faith building, there has been 50 of faith breaking. Letting go of trying to make it happen has been one of the harder theological battles – surrendering that God is in charge, regardless of whether I am supposed to be doing more from my end or not, He is God. Is healing the goal? I believe that He is in charge, that He loves me, and that He wants the best for me. So if He hasn’t yet healed, then perhaps He is doing something greater than healing? Perhaps the migraine is very bad for now, but very good for something in eternity? Perhaps it is very bad for my body, but very good for my faith? Perhaps it is very bad for my capacity, but people see that I still have joy and love despite the struggle, and it encourages them? Perhaps if I was pain free I would love this life more than the next, or more than Jesus, perhaps I wouldn’t be so willing to surrender it to Him? These are ideas that float when I’m in a not-so-discouraged place, but they are still questions, not answers. It’s important to ask these questions. I’m surrounded by situations and lives in epically worse predicament than my own. I have to know the God and the truth I am pointing them towards. I can’t give false promises. They want to know the answers, it’s not enough to say ‘well sometimes He intervenes and sometimes he doesn’t’ – that’s not something to build a foundation on. What about Heaven? I tell you what I want, and what I see make the difference in other people – is such a deep revelation of Heaven and the joy of our eternity with Jesus that it completely transforms this life. Nothing can prevail against the hope of Heaven. So lately, when the discouragement comes, this is what I hold on to. 1. Our hope cannot only be in seeing God’s goodness in this life – it must be even more anchored in the hope of the life to come. “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” 1 Corinthians 15:19 “Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1 Peter 1:13 2. While it remains, there is purpose in the pain. “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” 2 Corinthians 4:17 “In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1 Peter 1:6-7 3. As always, God loves me. Even when I don’t understand. “Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.” Psalm 73:23 Andy asked me this week if I thought I was growing. It was an interesting question to consider. There have been several difficult circumstances which have caused me unease this week. I’m not sure why, but after weeks of not being troubled, I feel as though I have been inundated with difficult information to process and react to.
Early in the week I was talking with an acquaintance who works for a large NGO. We were discussing their work arrangements and the entitlements that go along with the Job. I have to say I didn’t understand or couldn’t reconcile what I was hearing with the image the organisation presents. Later in the week I was talking to another national that had worked with this NGO also. I asked him to tell me about the good work they do, hoping his stories would confirm the image that the organisations PR team paint. I left that discussion feeling physically sick, as the reality of what goes on behind the scenes so drastically contradicts the image portrayed. I don’t know how to respond to the immensity of what I was told. It started to make sense why an NGO doing charitable work would need a PR team in the first place. Lord give me wisdom. I attended my second funeral in as many weeks this week. I didn’t know the man who had died. He was the uncle of a friend I have made. I didn’t feel as uneasy lining up in Muslim prayer lines to pray for God to receive Him and have mercy on him. It didn’t bother me seeing the cloth wrapped body buried in a shallow grave. I wasn’t even overly shocked when the grave digger dug up an old human leg bone, the remains of someone randomly buried on the site long ago before it had become a cemetery in its current form. The crowd waiting didn’t seem to mind either. The bone was dropped back in the bottom of the hole, some sand covering it and the new body placed on top, entombed with a layer of sticks and covered with sand. What I found difficult was how many children had been buried since I was there only a couple of weeks before. Presumably from malaria, the new graves, marked only with a stick, were at least half children. In fact while we were watching the grave digger finish the hole for the man we were burying, 5 other men approached with a wrapped small woven mat, less than a metre long, and carefully placed it on the ground. Another baby who’s mother is at home grieving, as the men do what needs to be done. What do you do as you see the countless new mounds of earth, each one representing a precious gift from God, knowing that for a few dollars or a mosquito net, none of them would be there? Lord give me wisdom. This week the government has started to ‘clean up the city’. Thousands of small shops line almost every road, the owners only source of income, selling everything imaginable. Many have probably started the shops many years ago by buying the few square metres of land from the local Mayor and then paying the daily and yearly tax that is required. Imagine for a moment, the ingenuity and the initiative of men trying to feed themselves in a country without welfare; in many ways, these men shame the very core of our western welfare reliance. For instance you come back to your car, the windscreen having been covered with cardboard to protect it from the sun. With a beaming smile and the pride of initiative the youth removes the cardboard and opens your door, with no guarantee of payment. I love giving these guys a few cents to their delight. But this week it was announced that all shops on all major roads would be bulldozed to present a more beautified city. The owners didn’t believe it would happen, many left their stock in the shops. At midnight the police moved in and so did the machinery. In two days it has been reported that over 4000 shops were levelled and removed, many still full of stock. There have been wild scenes of fighting, and even more uncommon here, grown men weeping as they consider what they will do or where they will go now that everything has been taken. Men that have forged something from nothing, taken welfare from no one. Where do you direct your emotion as you see this and are powerless to help or intervene or provide any reason to the destruction? Lord give me wisdom. As I was about to attend the funeral of my friends uncle, my other friend told me that his neighbours wife had just dropped dead of a heart attack. She was 40, had 8 children, was the only wife to a tailor earning a meagre wage. She was buried after we left the cemetery, attended only by men, 4 hours after she died. The next day my friend told me he was tired, no one had much sleep. The 9 month old had cried all night, the other children also crying out for their mother. I offered to buy the child some baby formula as he was still feeding when his mother had died. We went to visit, giving the milk and also a sack of rice. In typical fashion there were no tears. The husband was stoic and very hospitable. The children were as always interested in the white person, the baby soothed with a sugary drink. My thoughts were of the days ahead. Who will care for the children? Who will cook the meals? Who will show them love in a country where perhaps the only love they are shown is from their mother? Lord give me wisdom. On top of these issues our family continues to face health issues. Andy has had many migraines for the last couple of weeks, one leaving her bed ridden and in pain for three days. Sickness and pain is never pleasant, but it is different dealing with a chronic illness over many years, with no ability to control the pain or know when or if it will end. It leaves primarily Andy, but also the family feeling tired and having the feeling of never being able to ‘catch up’. Lord give us wisdom. So the question asked was ‘am I growing’? In many ways, the attributes of growth I might consider, eg having answers or good doctrine for the above mentioned difficulties, provide little outward example of growth - and yet still I have a deep unshaken hope and belief that amongst the turmoil, God is at work and that He is Good. My heart resonates with that of Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. I know it is not me that is facing most of the hardship, but I long that those facing hopelessness would know these same truths that I have come to believe. Even when all is laid bare, when it seems as though there is no hope, there is a God who loves us and wants to give us His strength to endure the brokenness of this world. “We are hard pressed on every side, perplexed but not crushed, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. …..Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, since what Is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal”. 2 Corinthians 4:8-18. My prayer is that I am growing in my hunger to make these truths known. I can’t stop much of what I see and experience, I’ve tried. But God is able to do immeasurably more than we can imagine, if only we know who He is and trust in Him. I go out to show and tell that truth in any way I can. |
AuthorWe are Brad, Andy, Hunter and Belle. Hoping to keep you connected! Archives
May 2019
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