Consider the Calling

Not-so-Subtle Reminders

Why does it always feel like this missionary has more to learn at church than everyone else?

When I went to church yesterday (finally back at West Shore), I was feeling a little bitter and hurt. Our extended family is going through a really tough time right now…things are not good. Our situation is uncertain, even scary, and the future is unclear as things seem to continue to worsen.

Then as worship started, the songs were all about God’s faithfulness. I must admit, at that moment, I was in no mood to sing about God’s faithfulness. I was struggling, and my thoughts were more like “God, I’m just having a tough time singing about your faithfulness right now.”

And then I looked up into the choir, singing beautifully before God and the congregation…really into it. And I started realizing something. There was a guy who had lost his job…and God had provided. There was someone who had been through a devastating divorce. There was Jan, the daughter of someone in our SIM family, in her wheelchair and wearing a surgical mask, struggling daily with cancer. And I looked around me in the auditorium. There aren’t many of us here who have had it easy, are there? Sometimes it seems our enemy saves his toughest attacks for the believers, doesn’t he?

I was convicted. If they could sing about God’s faithfulness, well dang-nabbit, so could I. Feel it or not, I would sing along with them, and I would wait longer to see His faithfulness, knowing we might have to wait a while.

Thanks for singing with me, friends.

Doin’ Time

The most unique experience we have had in PA so far has been in Frackville. Yup, we got sent up to state prison. No, we didn’t break out any Johnny Cash songs. Florence’s dad, who’s a chaplain there, got us on the inside to share with the Sunday night worship services with the inmates. So we went in through all the checks and high security, and then had a great experience in church!

As we were told by experienced folk, the crowd will be made up of two parts: genuine believers who have “found Jesus”, and those who come to chapel just to have something to do.

We were amused by the prison twist on a familiar way to start a church service. “Anyone new here this week?” Which meant, is anyone here just starting their prison term? And then, “is anyone going home this week?” To which one guy shouted “I am home!” And everyone laughed.

We were amazed at the reception we got from the believers there. They were truly into the worship experience, which was some good old-timey gospel hymns accompanied by a guitar. And then they were so responsive to our stories from Africa.

For a group of men who are really down in life, they really cared about what was going on in Africa. They broke out into spontaneous applause in the middle of stories from the handicap center. They shouted encouragement as we explained what we do. It was a really good time for us to see some believers who were not in a good situation in life, and yet they loved Jesus and his church in Africa all the same.
They even let us out when we were done.

February 2010 Prayer Letter

February 2010 prayer letter

Please click on the link above to download the prayer letter.

It’s been a couple of months since we sent out a prayer letter. We took some time off for the holidays and as we settled into our house for “home assignment”. But we are still alive and well (no, we did not fall off the face of the earth). We’re looking forward to catching up with those of you we haven’t been able to see yet.

Everywhere we go, people have been exclaiming about the unusual weather we’ve had in Pennsylvania lately. All we can figure is that we must have brought it back with us from Burkina. It has been a bit of an adjustment to deal with all of this snow and cold. But the boys have been enjoying it immensely.

Caleb just turned 4 years old on the 4th of February. He’s going to preschool three mornings per week and seems to be adjusting well. Joel was quick to bond with his grandparents and aunts and uncles…but a little slower adjusting to all the new people that we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks. Since we are often giving presentations on Sunday mornings, it has been a challenge trying to help him feel comfortable going in the nursery. Florence just started attending a weekly women’s Bible study and a MOPS group at our home church. The boys go with her and we are hoping that this added exposure will help Joel feel more comfortable more quickly.

We are fortunate that the majority of our support comes from friends and family in the central PA area where we live; so we have not had to do much traveling so far. But we do plan to do some traveling in May/June once the weather warms up. We had to take our web-site’s calendar down temporarily due to some technical issues. In the meantime, for those of you who live in central PA, we’re around and we’re available, so look us up!

Love,
Dale, Florence, Caleb and Joel

No news is good news!

Sorry to keep you all “in the dark” for so long! We took a “break” from the blogsite over the Christmas holidays and then were busy settling in to the place we will call home until we pack to return to Burkina.

Things are very well for us here in Grantham, PA (near Harrisburg, and right next to Messiah College). So far, in our first week-and-a-half, we’ve had 8 doctor’s appointments, 5 meetings, 6 dinners with friends, and 2 presentations. In addition, Florence and I went out on our first date (without the boys) in almost a year. We visited with both Florence’s parents and my parents again, and saw my brother and sister-in-law in Harrisburg.

We often get some of the same questions over and over again. So for your convenience (and curiosity), here are some “frequently asked questions”:

Q: What are you guys doing now?
A: Our 8-month “home assignment” is meant for 3 things: find more support (prayer and financial, for both us and our ministry in Mahadaga), report about what we’re doing to our friends and churches, and REST & renewal! We’ll spend a lot of time visiting with people and preparing presentations for churches and Sunday School groups. We’ll also do some traveling in May and June. And rest? Yes…I don’t think we knew just how exhausted and nearly burnt-out we were until we got back and gave ourselves some space. Rest is also important if we’re going to be able to minister in Mahadaga for a long time. We’re also meant to find renewal…now that we’re not always the ones being the ministers, we can find ways to be “ministered to”…like a marriage retreat in February, church Bible studies, moms’ groups, etc.

Q: What are Caleb and Joel going to do for school when you go back?
A: We’re really happy about Caleb going to “pre-school” three times per week right now. After three days, he seems to really enjoy it, and the teacher has been giving positive feedback. As for long-term schooling…that’s another task that we have before us while we’re home. We’ll need to find a good home-schooling program for the boys. While we’re on our second term in Burkina, Caleb will complete kindergarten and 1st grade, and Joel will be ready to start kindergarten near the end of our term. If anyone knows of someone who could come to Burkina to teach the boys, we’d be delighted to talk to them!

Q: Has it been hard to come back to the States? Has the weather been too cold?
A: In some ways, it’s been shocking to come home. Going from one of the simplest, poorest areas in the world, to the US during the Christmas season is shocking. All the stuff, all the lights, all the sales, all the cars…etc etc. We kept asking, “why do we need all this stuff??!” But in other ways, we know that we have to do a “brain transplant”. In order to survive, we have to take out our “Burkina brains” and put in our “American brains”. It’s not a perfect coping mechanism, but the two worlds are just too different. And yes, the cold has been a tough adjustment. Fortunately, we were able to “ease into it” by traveling in Europe before coming home. And hey, EVERYONE here has been complaining about the cold! :0)

So I hope that helps some. We really hope to be able to see all of you in the coming months. This is an exciting time for us. That’s one more benefit to living overseas…we enjoy life in the US in a new, fresh way!

That’s all for now. Keep praying for Haiti and the missionaries there. Help however you can!

End of 2009 Newsletter!

4th Quarter Newsletter

Please click on the link above to view our latest newsletter (October-December 2009).

We left Burkina Faso on November 18, and finally arrived back in PA on December 15th. We enjoyed our visits with friends and family in Europe and North Carolina, but we are glad to be back in “home territory” and are looking forward to settling down a little bit. We’re grateful that we had this time to decompress a little. Soon we’ll be ready to start sharing with you our experiences in Mahadaga. It’s been a shock to re-enter the US during the Christmas season, but we’re really glad that we have the chance to celebrate Christmas with our families this year and to experience a white Christmas!

May your hearts rejoice as we celebrate the arrival of our Savior – the coming of the Eternal God as a little babe.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

December Prayer Letter

December 2009 prayer letter

Click on the above link to view our December 2009 prayer letter.

By the time you read this, we will probably be at SIM headquarters, doing our debriefing from our first term in Burkina Faso. It has been a bit of a crazy month as we packed up our whole house in Mahadaga, travelled around Europe, and are finally on the last stage of our journey home. We are looking forward to a little bit of down time over Christmas and the New Year. As long as our 8-month home assignment seemed to us, we are now starting to realize how quickly it will probably go by! There are so many of you we would love to see and the time will fly by just as the last couple of months have. Still, we thank the Lord for guiding us each step of the way and being with us through every part of our journey. We thank you, too, for coming along with us, whether in person or in spirit and in prayers. We’re excited to show you pictures and tell you stories in person so that you can get an even fuller experience of this journey we have been on!

Love,

Dale, Florence, Caleb & Joel

I love Paris in the winter…

The next stop on our trip home was a quick visit to some friends in Grenoble, France. We left the beautiful Pyrenees behind and 7 hours later were greeted by the Belledonne and the Chartreuses mountain ranges that cradle the city of Grenoble between them. We were now not too far from the Italian border! We were also greeted at the train station by friends Marie-Neige and Perrine, two young French nurses who spent several weeks working at the medical dispensary in Mahadaga just over a year ago. We stayed with Marie-Neige’s family, who was incredibly welcoming. Caleb and Joel also had the chance to catch up with their friend, Joshua Lewis, the morning before we left Grenoble. Joshua and his parents, Mark and Carine, and his sister Anaelle, spent 2 years serving with SIM in Fada, Burkina Faso. We often stopped off in Fada on our trips to the capital and the boys had great fun together. The Lewis family recently returned to France after finishing their ministry commitment in Burkina Faso, so it was nice for Caleb to be able to see his friend again so soon!
We left Grenoble two days later for a mini family vacation in Paris. We were able to find a small, reasonably-priced one-bedroom apartment for 3 nights in downtown Paris, near the Cite Universitaire (across from Parc Montsouris, for those of you who are familiar with Paris or who want to look it up on the map). This gave us the flexibility to make our own meals and the location made it easier to get around to see some of the sites. We braved the metro system and are now feeling like Paris metro veterans, though the first few experiences were a bit nerve-racking, especially with 2 little boys in tow!
We didn’t end up giving ourselves much time to actually “tour” Paris, but we couldn’t fathom returning to the US without having seen anything (imagine all the questions!), so on Wednesday afternoon we strapped the two boys to our backs (me, African-style and Dale using a back-pack carrier) and set off to see the sites. Our first stop was, of course, the all-important restaurant Quick, the French version of McDonalds. But once we had the boys’ bellies filled, we were free to play the tourist part. The weather was gloomy and cold, but we were undaunted, determined to tour Paris or bust! In 8 hours we managed to visit Notre Dame (try keeping 2 boys who love hearing their echo quiet in a big place like that!), Sacre Coeur (wish we had known about the furnicular on the way up!), the Arc de Triomphe (Champs Elysees was beautifully decorated for Christmas, but we were too tired to walk along it), and the Eiffel Tower (there was a mixture of rain and sleet up on the top!). At the end of it all, we stopped for some delicious hot chocolate and a freshly made chocolate banana crepe. That was probably the best part of the whole day!:0)
Thursday morning we had a crazy and “never-going-to-do-that-again” experience trying to catch our flight to Dublin. Let’s just say that lugging over 90 kilos worth of luggage and one small toddler (Caleb was wonderful about walking, thank goodness!) around the city and metro system is no easy feat! Nonetheless, we arrived safely in Dublin and have spent the last several days relaxing, staying in out of the cold (read: sorry, no pictures!), and visiting with Dale’s aunt, uncle and cousins. Tomorrow morning we board the plane again for the USA! We will go straight on to SIM USA headquarters in Charlotte and stop off to visit more relatives in North Carolina before heading home, but it won’t be long now!

Where does my help come from?

The second leg of our journey home brought us to Lourdes, nestled in the Pyrenees Mountains in the south of France not too far from the Spanish border, to visit Florence’s cousin, Linda, and her husband, Patrice. Total travel time on Monday from Geneva to Lourdes took us 10 hours and 45 minutes (including 2 train changes), so it was a long day. Patrice and Linda had warm food waiting for us at the end of the line, and we soon discovered that Patrice is a chef! You can imagine that we’ve been enjoying some wonderful meals during our stay in Lourdes, not to mention some interesting conversations on politics and religion. Lourdes is world renown as a place of pilgrimage for those of the Catholic faith. According to tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to a young girl named Bernadette at a grotto located near the river that runs through town 14 times. Mary instructed the girl to build a fountain, purify herself in the waters, and tell the people to come and do likewise. Later, they were to build a place of worship where people could come and bring those with illness to be prayed for. Today, the town of Lourdes receives around 8 million pilgrims each year from all over the world. There are 3 main basilicas that are beautifully made and during the height of pilgrim season, full of worshippers.

Because of the intense focus on the pilgrimages made to Lourdes, it’s often easy to miss some of the other points of interest in town. The Pyrenees, though not quite as high as the Alps, are still quite beautiful, and the town offers some great views of the mountain range. There is also a castle built on the highest hill in the middle of town. The story is that during the Crusades, King Charlemagne chased the Arabs from Spain to this castle where he found it impossible to enter and had to lay siege on them. Near the end, both armies were near starvation, when an eagle flying overhead dropped a fish it was carrying in its mouth onto the castle grounds. The leader of the Arab band took the fish and pinned it to a note he sent to Charlemagne saying that they still had plenty of food and would outlast him. Thus, Charlemagne decided to pursue a treaty rather than completely obliterate the Arabs. The treaty, though, did put the lands under Charlemagne’s dominion and under the influence of the Catholic church.

On Friday we decided to visit a nearby town called Pau. Pau is known for its milder climate and “vacation homes” built by the English in times past. It is also the site of King Henri IV’s main castle. Henri IV reigned in the late 1500s. We were shocked to learn that, while he only ever recognized 14 children, he had as many as 72! Apparently, aside from the 2 wives he took (at different times), he had as many as 56 mistresses among the noblewomen! Also shocking was the news that he only ever bathed once in his whole life! There was a common belief during his time that demons could possess you if you submerged yourself in water, so he never bathed! And finally, we also learned that during his time, because of the cold winter nights, it was common, when visiting a lord, to share his bed, along with his wife and children! Later on in history, the same castle was used by Napoleon III, and more often by his wife, Empress Josephine, who was Spanish and preferred this southern location close to her home country. It seems like so long ago, but our tour guide reminded us that it’s only really been 4 generations since that time. It sure made the castle walls come a bit more “alive” for us!

We missed celebrating Thanksgiving this year, though we did enjoy some roast chicken and potatoes on Thursday evening with our hosts and explained the Thanksgiving story to them. With no Thanksgiving holiday in France, the big burst of Christmas preparations that generally happen the weekend afterwards are also missing, so we are still feeling a bit far off from Christmas! This afternoon we catch the train to Grenoble to visit more missionary friends who spent time with us in Burkina Faso. We are so blessed to experience the fellowship of believers on an international level!

I Lift My Eyes Up

We made it safely to Switzerland, the first stop on our long journey home. Aside from a tiring day and a few “close calls” the trip went pretty smoothly. It did help us appreciate all the little ways that the Lord takes care of us, even making things work out when we’re on vacation!:0) We arrived in Switzerland around 9:30pm on Wednesday, November 18th and were greeted at the train station by our friends David and Aline Lampert, a young Swiss couple we got to know well when they spent a year serving alongside of us in Mahadaga.

Our Swiss hosts have spoiled us! Aside from the beautiful views, we’ve enjoyed some great meals, sight-seeing, great fellowship and lots and lots of chocolate and cheese! Thursday afternoon we walked around Montreux and got some pretty views of the lake and castle (Chateau Chillon). Friday we toured the castle in Gruyere and then the fromagerie (cheese factory). Saturday we took the kids to a nearby water park (indoor, of course)! And Sunday we had a great time getting to know the Lampert and Bussy families. In a couple of hours we board the train again to make a long trek south to Lourdes to visit Florence’s cousin. Stay tuned!

Off We Go!

It’s been a whirlwind of activity the last few days as we’ve wrapped up our first term in Mahadaga, Burkina Faso. Aside from all the packing and last minute work we wanted to get done before leaving, we had lots of visitors and well-wishers. The team at the CAH had a little farewell party for us on Friday afternoon.

.

We spent most of Saturday answering the door as various neighbors came to wish us a safe journey. On Sunday after church, our whole church congregation walked us home and gathered at our front doorstep to pray with us, sing us a farewell song, and then wave goodbye.

We spent Sunday night at the SIM mission station in Fada (the halfway stop between Mahadaga and Ouagadougou, the capital), then continued on to Ouagadougou Monday morning after saying a few more farewells to a few more friends. Monday evening we had a meal together with three other missionary families, 2 of which are also heading back to their homes in Australia in New Zealand in the next few weeks. It was a good chance for some fellowhsip and for the kids to see their missionary friends one last time before we head home.

Though we are only planning to be gone for 8 or 9 months, this seems like a long time for many of our Burkinabe (and non-Burkinabe) friends and neighbors! In some ways it will probably seem like a long time to us, too, as we will be missing out on some milestones in the lives of some of our friends (births, moving, etc.) and we will be away from our SIM Burkina family who is becoming dearer and dearer to us as time goes on. But we are also looking forward to seeing all of our friends and family in the US and Canada. We will even get the chance to visit some of our friends and family spread out across Europe along the way! So despite how hard it can be to say goodbye sometimes, we are grateful for the Lord’s goodness in taking care of us. And we are reminded that one day we will be reunited with many of you for good…no more separation and goodbyes! Let’s work all the more to make sure that as many of us as possible can enjoy that day together! In the meantime, keep checking back in and we’ll try and keep you posted on our travels! Until we meet again!